Kevin's Healing Journey: A Happy Thanksgiving and a Sad Goodbye

Monday, December 5, 2016

A Happy Thanksgiving and a Sad Goodbye

We have much to be grateful for this year and had a very happy Thanksgiving with my family at their home. As usual, Kevin was very happy and excited to be visiting family. He enjoyed being with Grandee and Pap, his cousins, and the uncles and aunts. We even got to have all the cousins overnight at Grandee & Pap's house. We arrived on Wednesday and had planned to leave on Saturday but ended up leaving on Sunday instead. When it was time to leave Grandee and Pap's house to go home, Kevin was very sad and crying. He has never done this! I've always said that as happy as he is to visit family he has always been equally happy to return home. It's a three and a half hour drive home and Kevin was still crying 20 minutes after leaving my parents house. So I crawled to the back of the car to get his movie player. I was surprised that playing his favorite movie didn't make him happy right away -he did eventually calm down and enjoy his movie but it was sad to see him so upset to leave the family.

This new emotion is happening at other times. He seems to be very sensitive to other people's feelings. If Kevin hears a baby crying in a store - the tears well up in his eyes. As my family, even my young nieces and nephews, will tell you - the tears well up in my eyes easily too - I call them my love tears. I have to be extra careful about this emotion around Kevin now so I don't cause him to get upset. We also saw this happen when we took him to see Beauty and the Beast, he got upset when the actors were acting scared or upset.

I think this is a good thing...that he is showing this new emotion...but I am also wondering if this is the start of adolescence...? Which I am not even ready to think about yet. I'm still waiting for him to achieve childhood milestones...and so it's not easy to think about him progressing to this new stage of life before catching up. I know...I can't stop it...but I'll need time to wrap my head around this and stop the tears from my eyes. For now, I'll just consider this new emotion as progress on his healing journey and be grateful for it.

1 comment:

KCTuesday, December 06, 2016
How fortunate Kevin is to have parents who are so sensitive and alert to the changes he goes through . . . . God has led you this far and will continue to lead. Merry Christmas!
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My Blog

This blog was created to keep our family and friends updated on Kevin's healing journey. It is also our hope that others may find this blog to give help and hope to other delayed kids.

About Kevin

They told us Kevin would never walk or talk. But with lots of prayers, hard work, and extra hands, he began walking when he was four years old and we continue to have faith and hope as we wait patiently for his speech to develop. Kevin is now eight years old. He is diagnosed with Cerebral Palsy due to a brain-injury he had before birth that was caused by a stroke. In 2006, before Kevin was 2 years old, we found Glenn Doman’s book "What To Do About Your Brain-Injured Child" that had answers to help children with special needs and developmental delays. We began an individualized home treatment program for Kevin immediately and have been dedicated to our program ever since. We spent three years with the Doman family at The Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential (IAHP) and now we are with Matthew and Carol Newell at The Family Hope Center (FHC). Twice a year we return to Philadelphia where Kevin receives a neurological evaluation to determine the progress he has made in the last six months. Then they provide us with an individualized, program that puts me in charge to help Kevin develop and reach his fullest potential.

Do You Know a Delayed Child?

The best recommendation we can give to another parent with a special needs or developmentally delayed child (brain-injured, brain-damaged, mentally retarded, mentally deficient, cerebral-palsied, epileptic, autistic, athetoid, hyperactive, attention deficit disordered, developmentally delayed, or down's) is to read Glenn Doman's book What To Do About Your Brain-Injured Child and/or Dr. Coralee Thompson and Dr. Philip Maffetone's book Healthy Brains, Healthy Children. By simply reading these books, you will gain valuable information to help your child which will begin to unlock the potential your child has. And best of all you will learn that there are other options to helping your child that you can do yourself. We would also highly recommend attending the parent course at FHC or IAHP. To read how our journey began and the successful progress Kevin has had refer to the January 2010 blog archive.