This morning, after imploring my daughter Anna for months and years to ask questions and periodically to teach/ tell me something I don't already know, she asked her first freely generated, fully unprompted and non-contextually demanded question about what a word meant - something that normal children are asking by toddler age - 2-3 years old, maybe 4 - I'm not a child development specialist: "What does 'fanfare' mean?" She asked this after hearing her phone text notification, called "fanfare". After I explained and acted out the word by acting like an emperor making an entrance and making up a fanfare-type series of sounds, she said, "See, I'm teaching you what the word 'fanfare' means!" Which is kind of backwards - I'm teaching her, but she's at least trying to learn a word for the first time in her life that I didn't cue up or prompt somehow. What a... Continue reading

(1) Today our daughter Anna told us a particular food was giving her reflux because it had canola oil as an ingredient, then asked me, "You get my point?" This is something she never asked before. Typically when she is talking to me I have to ask her, "What's your point?" and she often doesn't have one or I can ask questions to have her realize her point, such as not to buy something again, not to hire someone again, to buy more of something, etc, but most often her comments leave me wondering, "And so?" That's why this was so surprising for her to say. We had just switched back to a brand of Ginkgo, Carlyle, after a stint using a similar looking ginkgo gummy that didn't work - our daughter didn't develop for the whole time she was on the other brand for over a month, nearing two... Continue reading

Our autistic adult daughter Anna keeps progressing in her language at a faster rater than in the previous few years since I've been adding Citicoline and Ginkgo supplements to her diet. We're still doing Duo Lingo Chinese language program (just passed day 1,000 straight) and this was very slowly helping her progress (maybe a new or unexpected statement once a month or so) to now one a week, perhaps more. I stopped writing some of them down but decided I should go back to it, because later I just forget that she said altogether and why not document the changes? Yesterday our daughter said "I have options" when she was talking about taking a shower or a tub bath, "options" being abstract as a concept and nothing I could teach her - she stopped leaning language at the level that could been seen or done as an action, and an... Continue reading

I asked my autistic adult daughter, Anna, to click on various icons and commands to back up my computer via external hard drive, as usual. After the backup had finished, I asked her to click on "eject" to prepare to remove my backup external hard drive from my computer. She had done so but it was not responding, so I said, "Try again", then had to repeat that several times, which she did, but each time as she paused, we saw together that it didn't work. As it continued to not respond to her mouse clicks, I stated the obvious, "I'm having problems with my computer." Anna said, "That's a shame". Later she said, "That's such a shame that your track pad mouse thing is broken". She has never used those terms to my knowledge in her life, and likely never attempted to do so as the result of prompting,... Continue reading

I'm continuing to record the use of new words and expressions our daughter Anna is spontaneously using - correctly and in-context - since I started giving her Citicoline and Ginkgo supplement gummies bought online, daily. I apologize for having missed several in the last few weeks, having forgotten them after not recording them immediately. Our adult autistic daughter's rate of spontaneous use of new language has continued with around one new word or phrase every week or two, which is compared with at best one every month or several since I started this gummy supplement combination, even though we've been out of Ginkgo supplements for a several days (less than a week) as we await a delayed Amazon delivery of another brand we're going to test out. Today Anna used the new verb correctly in context. Our dishwasher had filled with 2 inches of water after last wash and we... Continue reading

Our autistic young-adult daughter spontaneously used an idiomatic expression in a sentence yesterday again, around 2 months after starting ginkgo biloba and citicoline, this time saying "No siree, no siree Bob". This was in response to my pulling a stretchy-fabric with black gaiter from my neck up to my head, which momentarily looked like I had a spooky criminal mask like people wear to rob gas stations or something like that when they put on panty hose or a ski mask, and she reacted saying to take it off an saying she was scared that I was going to hurt her or kill her, it was then I realized the stretchy gaiter, which I was briefly having trouble getting off (it was tight, too long etc.), made me look like a criminal wearing panty hose or a ski mask on my face as she's likely seen in movies or the... Continue reading

My daughter Anna, now 22, just restarted Ginkgo supplements (gummies) after more than a week after we ran out. On Jan 23rd 2023 (about 3 weeks ago) I posted my daughter, who isn't initiating new word with any frequency outside those I'm still teaching her, which still flabbergast me what she doesn't know - most words other than those we use with some frequency she has never picked up or half of what they mean - I'll have to do a post about this some time, but it's stunning how abnormal very affected autistic people's brains are working - hers anyway - I'm pretty sure I have high functioning autism but could pick up new words, not so for her, unless I'm doing ABM lessons with her which I haven't done more than a few all years. However during a discussion on Feb 14th evening about whether she had urgency... Continue reading

After several hours of working on clearing off my desk of clutter and setting up a system to track new habits for both all of us (cleaning and chores that aren't getting done) and for my autistic daughter Anna specifically (academic stuff she need to repeat over and over like she does in DuoLingo Chinese), having already created such a list for myself as part of my 2024 resolutions to build new habits to support everything I want to accomplish (inspired by the books Tiny Habits, Atomic Habits, and Extreme Ownership I listened to on Audible, and that famous Admiral's speech on starting every day making your bed), rather than relying on willpower, including her in a bunch of the work such as labeling and formatting our chore checklist, she suddenly used an idomatic expresion she has never used before, telling me, "I don't want Tom feeding me words in[to?]... Continue reading

Our autistic daughter Anna has been learning Duo Lingo Chinese with me now for over 800 days, and I've been gradually implementing Dr Gundry's Plant Paradox book avoiding lectins to accelerate Anna's my weight loss (which we're doing using intermittent fasting, mostly by skipping breakfast and eating lunch as late as we can, sometimes just eating a large dinner and an after-dinner snack - sorry I forgot to post about this - I will in subsequent post). She's been slowly adopting new language (English words) but nearly always after coaching and practice, although suddenly today she's used not one but two new verbs she appears to have spontaneously learned like most people learn most things, by observing and understanding their use in context then using them in a similar context that matches. Maybe it's the Citicoline (brain and liver support) and/or Ginkgo (brain support) gummy supplements we've started using in... Continue reading

“I wash the bras periodically”, Anna says, slowing down to say “per-i-o-di-cally” as if reading a word for the first time in a dictionary. We’ve been doing DuoLingo app’s Chinese course for nearly two years on a streak but in reality started a few months before staying in the streak. It’s teaching her that learning what words mean is just something you do regularly, something she didn’t used to do before we started that course. It’s teaching her - and I am as well - how to learn a language as an adult, including asking her to look up and then we use words in Chinese for things that we say in English a lot. My daughter Anna has had particular difficulty with using time in sentences because she doesn’t understand it at all, but we use “every day”, “yesterday” “next week”, last year etc all the time in Duo... Continue reading

Today my autistic daughter who is now shockingly an adult (hard to believe how long I've been trying to help her recover!) prepared a new dish for dinner on her own, not notifying us, not asking for permission, help, or even for me to taste it at the end, which has NEVER happened! This is new and it jolted me into writing another blog article even if it isn't polished or lacks pictures. The truth is the ABMNM lessons work to advance her mental organization and development profoundly although you never know how it'll manifest itself, as in this case, in her individual ambition and drive to make the sauce for Macaroni and Cheese like the one from Whole Foods hot bar. I did once recently, maybe a month ago, try to make a cheese sauce, but she did it differently than we did. I'm a ABMNM® practitioner and decided... Continue reading

ANNA'S FIRST SIGNS OF UNDERSTANDING/ SPONTANEOUS USE OF AN ABSTRACT NOUN The last few days of Chinese - and life too, actually - have been really challenging with Anna, where she struggles to learn basic things from language most people knew before school age, like what "this" or "that" are used for (ie, "this" is usually used for nearby stuff, "that is usually for stuff farther away), which was what happened yesterday. She has trouble understanding what I'm saying and what we're learning at Chinese again because it's doing something she can't or doesn't do in English most of the time, now. I get so frustrated having to explain to a 20 year old how to use "this" and "that" in a sentence, and there's difficulty even having her understand the teaching that we often have to so sideways into teaching other basics of language just for her to understand... Continue reading

Anna has started using adjectives spontaneously! WITH ME (HER MOM): Anna's mom (me) was trying to show her something at the center island - preparing food, telling her what to do next, and she said: Anna: I don't need you're stupid instructions!" WITH HER DAD Her dad said, "It's been a while since I did the Snake impression," meaning imitating the Snake character in the Simpson's cartoon show. Anna: "Yeah, it's been a while". Dad: "Don't you miss it?" Anna: No not really, it got old." We're so excited to hear the push-back adjectives, spontaneous in the moment! She has been able to use adjectives is a rehearsed and prompted way, such as saying "it went bad" when food looks rotten and "Are you sick?" if I cough, but the those have been used dozens if not hundreds of times but us and her in certain wrote sentences. But spontaneous... Continue reading

My daughter Anna just said, “Why are you asking me that for god’s sake?” Spontaneous exclamation language she learns herself and uses spontaneously is the gold standard of normal recovery. So her recovery continues! Using a mixture of ABM (Anat Baniel Method) techniques and Son-Rise program inspired approaches, plus fully reality based home schooling. I will start translating multiple curriculum approaches and books into purchasable books for kids with autism that get them off to a good start academically while helping them recover. Continue reading

Today my daughter was saying she wanted to do comparing her new white TY beanie bunny with a grey bunny of the same kind that was in the Easter holiday decorations bin, but wanted to use her cell phone instead of get the grey one down. I said I'd get it and she fought me, and I kept fighting to get it down, since most of the time she fights me and I think she'll prefer the outcome, I'm right, as in the recent example when she fought me on setting up the keyboard for easy and regular use in our living room, only to immediately join in and be excited within seconds of my playing the Mario theme and another show theme she loved as my initial piece to play. Only this time it was 180 degrees the other way - she was saying she now didn't want to... Continue reading

Our autistic child rehearses the messages in videos and music she watches multiple times until she knows them by heart, even if they are upsetting or confusing or downright counter to useful perspectives I want her to have. So I finally decided to create the memorization notebook, whether for words or concepts like pi = 3.14. She needs to have something in her brain that sticks and is reliable to recall, other than songs' often nauseatingly mixed messages, like Cindy Lauper's "True Colors", "Girl is on Fire" by Alicia Keyes, Christina Aguilara's "Beautiful" where they are saying positive things with negative feel and minor keys so she's confused and depressed by them, or cartoons like the Simpson's where she sometimes learns and enjoys episodes where beliefs that absolutely will NOT help her and will undermine her progress are being promoted. She knows the golden rule, Grant Cardone's "Success is my... Continue reading

ANNA HASN'T BEEN UNDERSTANDING OR RETAINING DEFINITIONS OF ABSTRACT/ SOPHISTICATED CONCEPTS FOR A LONG TIME, WE ONLY NOW REALIZED IT I’m a Practioner of the Anat Baniel Method (ABM) Neuromovement. I realized having Anna be told what more abstract concepts and words was failing to stick because she didn’t understand words being used to explain them, and the words to explain those words, and so on. She didn’t understand how what a word 'means' is how it can be expressed in other words, which requires spontaneous speech to phrase the meaning in other abstract nouns, like a car being "a way people get around" or a "conveyance", which can only be defined this way by someone who knows what a "way" or "conveyance" is, for example, or knows synonyms for a word - our child still doesn't know or remember what 'synonym' even means, or it doesn't "stick" because she... Continue reading

I'm an Anat Baniel Method® Neuromovement® practitioner with an autistic teenager. I also so the Son-Rise Program with my daughter as a team leader, but was never certified in that. I've been writing these blog posts often without posting because I don't have time or prioritize making them pretty with pictures, include both my child and my own growth and development (I have high-functioning autism most likely - never diagnosed) and more brief and elegant, but decided I'm now just going to post so you can see a lot of the data points I'm saving by drafting posts, in the nearly original form - this is one of those. USING ABM NEUROMOVEMENT "DESK TRAINER" / "NEUROMOVEMENT FOR YOUR BUSY LIFE" For the last several weeks I have been use anatbanielmethod.com's "NeuroMovement for Your Busy Life" (formerly known as the "Desk Trainer") series with my daughter -sitting on couches in our... Continue reading

I've been doing ABMN lessons (Anat Baniel Method® Neuromovement®) consistently now for about 2 weeks, after doing lessons only inconsistently before, and getting more progress from the inside out from her, as well as coming up with some really inventive and useful lessons for and with her on-the-fly. Our daughter has giant problems putting her legs near each other after years of begging, ordering, coaxing, etc.. It's part of the mental scars of her autism in combination with crippling pain from inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) that has gotten all screwed up in her brain and we cannot convince her otherwise. When she used to cross her legs for years when she wouldn't poop more often than once every 7-10 days and it was just torture to see her suffer but resist pooping that would end it (when she eventually did, she felt great and we were always al relieved, and... Continue reading

CAREER vs AUTISM RECOVERY My daughter recently turned 18 and while this is wonderful that she made it here, given I was often afraid she wouldn't survive til adulthood between her debilitating inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and self-endangering behaviors her autism caused, such as her often running in the street as a child to see my reaction, climbing onto and walking on our windowsills and elevated deck railing, and trying to cover her head with covers despite multiple attempts I made to help her not suffocate, it's still bittersweet. I had hoped she'd be further along in her autism recovery and feel torn between completing my autism recovery by creating a career for myself that I didn't do when younger, which is time consuming and must take place away from her, since she loves to interact continuously with me when I'm around her and I can't get anything done. It's... Continue reading

INNER EMOTIONAL CONFLICT IN AUTISTIC KIDS IS VERY CONFUSING & REQUIRES DECODING Yesterday (TU 5/21/19): I said I would make pasta and sauce. my daughter said she couldn't eat with sauce because we were out of parmesan cheese and it was too late for us to get it before dinner (implying she didn't want it with sauce if there was no parmesan cheese on it, too). I said, maybe you can try another cheese (since we have several in the refrigerator) like feta or cheddar. This set off what was about an hour of severe upset and argument from my daughter that nothing I could say about the feta would quell. She likes to have it with butter (if there's no parmesan cheese / sauce). Acknowledging this didn't stop her upset. She said she doesn't like feta on pasta. Acknowledging this didn't stop her upset. Remembering that one time I... Continue reading

I am getting comfortable with a reduced Son-Rise Team thru Firing and Attrition + Anna for the First time Ever Finds Word Mispronunciations Funny, Suggests Adding Punctuation (adding a period) in a Text I was asking her to send. This following a dramatic drop in my staff after many frustrating months trying to train and and let go people in a timely way, I'm discovering low levels of very intense coaching and teaching by me is more effective than I realized. I find it hard to fire Son-Rise Participants, need to run my Son-Rise Program more like a business from now on Don't blame the Son-Rise Program! They tell us if someone isn't performing well it's important to let them go and feel comfortable about it, but I just struggle with that still. It's my belief system or experience holding me back, to have so much trouble firing people or... Continue reading

Anna's becoming more cognitively and socially sophisticated in little steps. For example: Fall 2017 (Sept/ Oct/ Nov) on-going: Inner Conflict Expressed Anna started having inner conflict expressed outwardly, like you're listening to the character Hamlet going back and forth whether or not to do something. It started when she started copying the father in a youtube video telling his daughter she can't get a toy (and is pretty deprecating of her interest in it which I don't like). After many retellings of this somewhat distasteful video, she starts quoting it when she's deciding not to buy something, like deciding not to buy fritos because she says they it made her sick once. It's often there's discomfort around the issue, like she's saying it over and over rather than just walking by the thing, she'll bring up not buying something 20 times, asking what I think of it, what she thinks... Continue reading

"[Anat Baniel Method International] will be offering three consecutive days of Anat Baniel Method® NeuroMovement® (ABMNM) private sessions, at no cost, to children 0-12 years old on December 7-9, 2017 at the ABM Center in San Rafael, CA." Consider getting a free taste of this therapy this week! It's not too late! It will raise your child's mental processing speed and aid their recovery - it has for my daughter and myself. I'm going to be going to the Anat Baniel Method 3-day free kids' lessons this week Dec 7-9 and wanted people to know there's still room for other kids! I've been doing ABM for about 2 years on myself and my daughter and have noticed I'm getting smarter and faster at doing complex mental tasks, and my daughter's progress in her Son-Rise program (which I run and primarily use to help her recover) has sped up and is... Continue reading

In the attempt to get my Son-Rise home therapy program participant training automated - at least in part - I am recording and uploading training videos so i don't need to repeat myself with new trainees, who are mostly coming from UWM (Univ of Wisconsin, Milwaukee) and Marquette. As you recall, I have a "Training Pyramid" of I train people, and am constructing a website with an organized training library which I can put on for them to watch based on what I have that's available, with the intention of putting all my training online. For now I'll just post them how I find or record them but subscribe to my youtube channel and/or to this blog (see the "feed burner" box at left to do so), and you'll at least be able to see them as they come and decide if they have value for training people who are... Continue reading