ALL THINGS LINCOLN

I am in awe of Lincoln as he blossoms daily.  From a little boy who was marked off in every category except 1 for having Autism when he was just 23 months old, to a 3 1/2 year old little boy who has come SO far! I remember the day so clearly that it truly hit me, that in the natural he appeared to have Autism.  He stood in the back yard for a solid 20 minutes playing with mulch,  He would drop it over his head and watch it fall...over and over.  It was heartbreaking to watch.  Those were the days that when we went somewhere or left somewhere it was nightmare! He always had to be in the stroller strapped in with an iPad or something to catch his attention!

Just last week we went to he zoo and didn't even bother taking the stroller! He did amazing! 
Yesterday, Daniel and I were driving.  We let the kids get out of the car to play for a short bit.  When, it was time to go. Lincoln laughed and stayed behind not wanting to leave.  I was interested how Lincoln would respond, so I told Daniel to pretend he was leaving in the car and I would hide beside him and see how he responded.  You see at one time, Lincoln would have been so engulfed in rocks or mulch or transfixed on something that he would have not cared that we were leaving.  We would have to physically carry him to the car with him screaming and hitting the whole way. So, as Daniel started backing up, Lincoln starts yelling, " No Dad, don't leave!  Wait for me Dad, wait for me!"  I quickly ran and grabbed Lincoln and said, "we wouldn't leave you Lincoln!" I was amazed at how he responded!! Praise God that his mental cognition is what it is today!

Lincoln has improved dramatically in some of his scores that I follow. There is an evaluation system for when you start a new therapy or diet etc.  This gauges how "Autistic" the child is.  I used it for the first time immediately after Lincoln had been in speech therapy and 17 hours of ABA therapy for one year! His first score was quite high for all the therapy he had.  Then we started Lincoln on a GFCFSF diet and 4 months into the diet is when his score had dropped.  We didn't know if it was because of the diet or if because we removed him from some pretty intense therapy and he just needed a break. In November of 2012 we took Lincoln out of all therapy (See this blog) and off all diets and have just been seeking God and believing He healed Lincoln and Lincoln's scores have fallen dramatically!!


Read below and it tells you about the evaluation system.

I did this first in April of 2012 and his total score was 82. (0 is no Autism and over 100 is severe)   
This put him in the 80 percentile for Autism.

In August 2012, his score went down to 61! This put him in the 50 percentile.

As of today (9 months since last checking) his total score is 35!! This puts him in the 20 percentile!

My favorite part was when the tool asked what "type of behavior or treatment" were we measuring.  I simply wrote, "God  :)"

HE is amazing and I love walking this out and watching the manifestation of healing ever present in Lincoln's body! Praise God!

 

 

Some Professionals have developed the Autism Treatment Evaluation Checklist (ATEC) with the intent to assist parents, physicians and researchers evaluate virtually any treatment for autism. The scores are weighted according to the response and the corresponding subscale.  
The ATEC evaluates 77 items, such as whether the child knows his or her name, makes eye contact with others, or has symptoms such as bed-wetting, diarrhea, constipation and so on. These are divided into four sub-groups that measure the child in terms of:
 

• Speech / Language / Communication (14 items)
• Sociability (20 items)
• Sensory / Cognitive Awareness (18 items)
• Health / Physical / Behavior (25 items)

 
ATEC scores range from 0 to 180. The lower the score, the better. If a child scores zero or close to zero, that child can no longer be distinguished from non-autistic children and thus can be considered fully recovered. The important benchmarks in scoring are as follows:
 

• ATEC < 30. This level places the child in the top 10 percentile. A child with score of less than 30 – or, better still, less than 20 – would have some ability to conduct normal, two-way conversations, and more or less behave normally. Such children have high chances of leading normal lives as independent individuals.
• ATEC < 50. This places the child in the 30th percentile level. The child has good chances of being semi-independent. More importantly, he or she will not likely need to be placed in an institution. For many parents of autistic children, being able to achieve improvement up to this level is already considered very significant.
• ATEC > 104. Even though the maximum score is 180, any person with a score of more than 104 would already be in the 90th percentile, and be considered very severely autistic.

The range of scores, and their percentile levels, are shown in the table below:
 

Percentile	ATEC score
mild autism 0 – 9	0 – 30
10 – 19	31 – 41
20 – 29	42 – 50
30 – 39	51 – 57
40 – 49	58 – 64
50 – 59	65 – 71
60 – 69	72 – 79
70 – 79	80 – 89
80 – 89	90 – 103
90 – 100 severe autism	104 – 180