Gryffin’s progress is galloping faster than I can document at the moment, it’s exciting beyond belief! Just today, he’s come out with some priceless little speech pearls, all the more priceless because – as is the case almost all the time now – the words are crystal clear. Last night, he spent 20 minutes on the phone with my Mum – first time anyone has ever had a 20 minute phone chat with him, without me in the background repeating at least some of the words.

So, as if in a journal – and so I don’t forget these little pearls – I’m listing some from this week.

On deciding it’s time to lower his Brachiation Ladder down to his own level, he says “Excuse me Kristen, come and lower my ladder now please.”

“Today I got two pocket monkeys” (pocket money – but way cuter!)

I put on some new face cream, he sniffs around my face and says ‘What’s that pleasant smell come from Mum?” (not bad for a 4 year old!)

I tell Joseph that my friend Claire brought me champagne today, he says “Claire’s a lovely girl”

“That’s incredibly clean” he says, looking at dishes in the drying rack, and the current family favourite, “Mum, please can I please go to Scotch?” (just one of the most expensive private schools in Melbourne…)

We’re all profoundly in love with this child. Who knows how much longer we have to go before we can hang up the program boots, but the finishing line is certainly in our sights.

~ kristen

Gryffin shows off his treasure from the hardware store

The past few months have been so eventful, it’s hard to know where to start. First, to our #1 son – I have begun to write about him several times, but the changes are daily… I’ve begun to edit a video, but he keeps getting more and more athletic, with better speech clarity and concentration… I can’t keep up! But I promise to upload a clip very soon.

~ kristen

(taken from our august newsletter)

I heard him calling out at 6am, I was hoping for 7. I swept him up in my arms and brought him back to bed with me thinking I’ll cuddle him back to sleep and we’ll lie uninterrupted til 8. Dad’s away, it’s possible.

So the breathing is getting slower and deeper, I’m feeling confident and then it starts:

“Parrots fly. Fruit Bats fly. Ladybugs fly and Bumble Bees fly. Come closer Mummy”, he draws me nearer as if he’s the parent.

“Fruit bats fly and Kookaburras fly, Flies fly and Bees fly!”

This week we’ve added another exercise to our daily therapy ‘program’. It really is as if each new technique we add is building and building like a fabulous symphony of brain function, with communication often being the most obvious indicator of progress.

As I lay there thinking what a wonder this whole process is, Gryffin sat up and delivered the most complete sentence I’ve ever heard him say:

“I’m a bit hungry Mum. Get up and make some porridge now please.”

So I did!

~ kristen

I can’t believe we’ve been home a month already…

Before leaving for the US, I had every intention of writing a long report of how Gryffin did on his Assessment at IAHP. I figured I’d shared everything in my book, so would just update with all the details, blow by blow.

And then he stunned us with his exceptional results – he was awarded 7 Victories for his accomplishments thus far – and I found myself feeling like I’d be bragging if I did tell the story…

Two weeks ago a timely email arrived from my friend in Costa Rica – Susan Lutz asked to interview me for her blog, Mother Jungle, and I found myself telling all.

Dad and G at IAHP

Whilst IAHP has played a massive role in the success we’ve had with Gryffin, it’s only one part of our holistic approach. I was reading in the Mindd Foundation website this week about some children who have – like Gryffin – experienced benefits from Homeopathy, Glyconutrients, Supplements, Wholefoods and NAET as part of a ‘biomedical approach‘. It was very apparent to us on this visit to IAHP, that Gryffin’s condition is a product of ALL the work we have done with him since the day he was born. By the time we found IAHP, we had spent literally hundreds of hours working with him across a great many therapies and supplements . It was as if I had researched and adopted local therapies which gave us an experience along the lines of an IAHP program, with some pieces missing – pieces which IAHP more than filled in.  Now we really see what a wonderful foundation this work has given him, and where to from here.

Click here to read more.. »

He cups his head in his hands and says “Oh my god!! Oh my god!!” after finding a toy he thought he’d lost. ‘Bloody, bloody’! he says as he nearly spills the pancake mix. And do I tell him off for swearing or blaspheming? NO WAY!!! This is progress!!!

I have yet to blog about the Assessment we did at IAHP, about his amazing reading demonstration and the 7 Victories he was awarded whilst we were there, because frankly, I DON’T HAVE TIME! It’s chaos over here – setting up his new program and our life so we can maintain it as we dash for the ‘finishing line’ of Gryffin’s ‘project.’ And amidst the choas of rearranging our lives this final time, are the improvements we are seeing EVERY SINGLE DAY.

Let me summarise for you here just some of what we’ve seen since we started his new improved program on March 23rd – yes, this is JUST IN THE LAST 3 WEEKS!!!

- Gryffin’s speech has improved out of sight – today he said ‘look Mummy, I’m dancing’ and then ’Bronte, come dance with me’. 2 weeks ago he didn’t have the ‘you’, ‘me’, ‘I’ in place at all in his speech and did not say full sentences like this.

- He sang along with a song today – almost every word. Again, unheard of previously. He has also begun to comment on our facial expressions – ‘Mum, are you OK?’ ‘she’s upset’ etc. Every day there is some additional word, expression or verbal trick up his sleeve and he is LOVING surprising us

- His hips have tightened up INCREDIBLY and he is jumping often, from a height of up to 2 ½  feet off the ground. He practically bounds up and down the stairs and is jumping on the trampoline MUCH higher than before we left  for the US and wants to jump many times each day, loving this new skill

- Gryffin’s thighs have grown markedly (I guess from the jumping!)

So, the full report will follow once I’ve caught my breath, but in the meantime, I remain the proud mother of a small child who swears – a lot. Is that wrong?!!

~ kristen

I love my iphone. Honestly, I don’t know how else I’d be able to capture slices of my day, wherever we are, whatever we’re doing, and in half decent quality – without carrying a bag!
I had to share this little gem from a few days ago. We were sitting on the couch and Gryffin told me he doesn’t like my face anymore… I just melt watching this.

And as with every video I make these days, he immediately wants to watch himself on the screen!

~ kristen

What an experience it is to finally visit The Institutes For The Achievement Of Human Potential in Philadelphia. We’ve been doing a program from The Institutes for the past 3 1/2 years – more intensely at first – but what an amazing feeling it is to arrive, to have an assessment with our little boy and to know how far we have come.

One of the highlights for me was meeting the man himself, Glenn Doman. Glenn began IAHP in 1955 and the list of people he has collaborated with in developing his programs is extraordinary; some of those include double Nobel prize winning chemist Linus Pauling, Dr Edward B Le Winn, a paediatric neurosurgeon at Albert Einstein Medical Center, Adele Davis – Nutritionist and even NASA who had to research the brain because of the effects on astronauts of travel into space.

Click here to read more.. »

This week, Gryffin has discovered his love of the Trapeze, and here’s why.

I’ve learnt many things from The Institutes in Philadelphia. But one particular concept holds incredible promise for children of all abilities. The concept is “Function Determines Structure.”  I described this concept in my book:

‘I am what I am because of what I do.’ A lack of function determines a lack of structure. Therefore, require no more of a body than lying on the floor and the body will be able to simply lie on the floor… ~ p.192, Naturally Better.

This is discussed at length in the book ‘What To Do About Your Brain Injured Child’ by Glenn Doman – founder of The Institutes.

We were seeing severely brain-injured children arrive with bodies that were almost invariably tiny and sometimes twisted, with shoulders, eyes, mouths and feet that were frequently abnormal, with heads so tiny as to be microcephalic, and chests so shallow as to barely supply a breathing apparatus. Click here to read more.. »

My baby had his birthday last week. I’ve made a short video – it’s all footage from my iphone so the quality could be better, but here’s 4 minutes of our angel at 4!

Our work with Gryffin continues, but we could not be prouder of his achievements!

To healthy, happy kids!

~ kristen

SPRING HAS SPRUNG…
Yes, the sun is out (more often at least!), Australia has a new female prime minister and many of Victoria’s desert plains have been converted to lakes because of torrential rain. What’s next I wonder?!

We’ve just had a shoot here this morning for our local paper and – in typical style, as soon as the photographer arrived wonderboy decided to hang upside down from the basketball hoop on the tree out the front! He’s such a performer!

Here he is at left, busking at the market last sunday – 5 minutes after Dad bought him this guitar!

~ kristen