An Awesome Week

I know I have been a slacker at posting. We have so many pictures to post. I hope I get them all posted one day. I just wanted to tell you about this last week with Dallin to start with. We have been able to get help from the state for Dallin. One of the ladies we work with went to a seminar on the SARRC Center and thought of us. After a phone conversation, a 4 hour face to face play with more questions, Dallin got into this week long research and resource group. We came down a week ago and what a difference we have seen. First, SARRC stands for Southwest Autism Research and Resource Center. What an amazing place! We did find out this week that Dallin does have autism and the severity is low. We have always had concerns and worries about autism. But, hearing the news this week was kind of hard. It wasn't the autism part, it was more knowing that life is going to be a little tougher for our big man. As a mom, I don't want to see struggles. But with what we have learned this week, hopefully we can help Dallin to manage and bring down parts of his autism. He will always have autism but they hope we can help him to learn what he needs to do. This week was a very hard but rewarding week. We worked so hard on communication. They believe, and so do I now, in the Pivotol Response Theory. This is where I show Dallin a truck, say truck, he repeats it, I say it back and he gets the truck. Truck is a word he can say but doing this was hard. Dallin's autism was keeping him from understanding to say truck back. After 2 days of figuring out what we needed to do, we had our breakthrough. It started slowly and new words were even tougher. After a lot of work, Kristen, the amazing woman who worked with just us all week, and I saw a difference. Now, it is starting to click. I am so proud of our Dallin!!! We love him so much!! I wouldn't trade him or the struggles we have had for anything. Dallin belongs in our family and makes our family an even better one. I know I will get to post more and more successes we have with Dallin!