Dylan and His Family Continue on a Pathway to Wellness

Update Almost Three Years later

What a pleasure it is for all of us to see this determined young man reach this moment with his wonderful family right by his side. Here is his story with the recent update from his father.

Dylan at 6 months old: He was developing normally and was a very smiley baby.

Dylan was born via natural delivery at 38 weeks. The baby developed normally reaching all his milestones until the age of nine months. At this time, he started to have ear infections and needed antibiotics repeatedly to treat them. It was after this that parents noted a change. Dylan did not crawl or creep like the other kids of his age.

Dylan at 12-months-old: This is when we started seeing a decline in his development.

He could not really have a conversation with us, he just repeated sentences that he heard on TV.

By the age of 16 months, Dylan just started walking, his speech was below average for his age. At 24-month, we started seeing him covering his ears every time he entered a place with a lot of loud noises, and also started making lines every time he played with his car-toys and he could not really have a conversation with us, he just repeated sentences that he heard on TV, over and over, and it was hard to tell if he was understanding when we spoke to him.

At age of 5 Dylan was diagnosed with high functioning Autism and his family began Dylan’s journey.

At the age of 3, he started speech therapy because his speech was well below his peers and at the age of 4, he was diagnosed with Tourette’s syndrome. At age 5, after noticing that he did not make eye contact, his speech was still behind, and his fine motor skills were not age level, we decided to get him evaluated. This is when he was diagnosed with high functioning autism.

At age 6, he had to work a lot at home in order just to keep up with the school material, he would literally work on school material every weekend all day long, he had to cover all the topics over and over and he had a hard time understanding basic concepts, such as knowing when to add or subtract when doing word problems.

When he was 8, our poor kid had to spend all weekend revising schoolwork with us so he could barely make it through. Fourth grade was a really hard one for him because his reading comprehension was not improving so we started researching to see what we could do to help him, at that point he had already gone through speech therapy, occupational therapy, ABA, and brain training. Unfortunately, as we learned after taking the “What to Do About Your brain-injured Child” course, all those therapies were targeting the symptoms and not the root cause, so he was still having a hard time at school and the amount of work needed to be done at home was just increasing as time went by.

“His list of friends got shorter since they could not understand him, and he did not really seem to understand them either.”

Dylan at age 8:  He used most of his time doing schoolwork to be able to survive.

His hearing was very sensitive, and he covered his ears every time there was a loud noise. He did not like the sound of a vacuum cleaner, thunders, blenders, etc. and he could not get out the car if this was running and did not like the sound of cars on the street.

We contacted The Institutes to sign up for the upcoming “What to Do About Your Brain-Injured Child” course.

“After a few months of doing the program, we started seeing improvements in his communication”

Dad took the course and Mom two months later, the first thing we did was start with a crawling and creeping program, and we also made some changes to his daily diet, and just with that we started to see some changes in him.

Working on his creeping

“It felt kind of surreal seeing how they fully understood what Dylan was going through”

After a few months of doing the program, we started seeing improvements in his communication and he was also doing better in those subjects in school that he likes the most, such as math. When Dylan took the STAAR tests for writing, math and reading, he passed two out of the three tests; in math the test showed him to be a year ahead of his age, in writing he was at about his age level, and the one that he failed, reading, was still very challenging for him.

“Dylan worked tirelessly day after day, he even met his 6-months goals in about 6-weeks.”

In Summer, as soon as school was over, we visited The Institute for his first evaluation, the minute we walked in, it felt kind of surreal seeing how they fully understood what Dylan was going through, almost as if they knew him from before. They made a really challenging program for him and Dylan decided that he would work as hard as possible, to make everyone at The Institutes proud of him.

Janet Doman, and Susan Aisen congratulate Dylan on his accomplishments

Back at home we changed everything, our focus was Dylan’s home program; we made all the nutritional changes not just for Dylan, but we did incorporate some of it for everyone in the family. We started running every morning, very early to beat the heat of summer, the most important thing for the family was Dylan’s neurological program. During the whole summer, Dylan worked tirelessly in his program, day after day, he has been so committed, that he even met his 6-months goals, set by The Institute, in about 6-weeks.

He loves his running program.

He enjoys doing his brachiation he always makes it look so easy.

“Dylan’s overall performance in school has been so much better”

After 3 months of working on the program, Dylan started school, in 5th grade, and from the beginning we were able to tell this school year was going to be different. Although he is yet not ready to be graduated from the program, his overall performance in school has been so much better, and this is not just talking about grades but about how he is understanding what he is being taught. As an example, in math, which in previous years we have had to spend numerous hours with him practicing to make sure he would be able to pass a test, we have not had to spend any time with him at home practicing, and with just the time and explanations he gets from his teacher at school he gets it and has been able to get good grades. The reading comprehension is still challenging for him, but we are seeing much better responses from him in that area.

Dylan now reads more sophisticated books.

It has been now 6 months since our visit to The Institutes, and the changes we have seen so far are significant, from the improvements in his communication skills to his school grades, the list continues to grow. Dylan is now able to spend time playing and having actual conversations with his little brother (Ethan 8-yrs), which is something he had never done before; he also tells us about his day at school, with a level of details that we can understand.

Dylan and his family.

Though this is by far the most difficult program one could ever imagine, it has been so far the most rewarding one, and while there are some hard days, seeing all the progress he has accomplished in such a short time it does makes us believe we can achieve the family goal of getting him to fully develop his neurological potential and see him to be graduated for life.

Dylan loves baseball and enjoys going to watch his favorite team the Houston Astros as a reward for his hard work.

Staff Update

Dylan has now completed a full year of school in the 5^th grade while working hard on his neurological treatment program at home. Last year, he was below his age level in reading, understanding, speech and writing. To complete his school assignments, his parents spent many hours with him after school.

Today, one year later, he is equal to his age level in reading, understanding, speech and writing, he is ahead of his class in mathematics, and works completely independently. On the most recent reading test, he was the only 5^th grader in two classes to score 100%. He recently ran in a 5 km race and finished in the top 10 for his age. After school, he plays piano, he has earned his black belt in Tae Kwon Do and has been accepted on to a local baseball team. His health is great, he had only one illness this past year, lasting half a day.

The staff agree he is ready to graduate to life which is to say he will enter the 6^th grade in September. Now he will have the chance to prove that he can excel, and claim is place in the world without doing a neurological program each day. We will check in with him in one year to confirm that he is doing well above average and making his goals easily.

“Dylan finished 6th grade strong with 4 A’S and one B overall in his classes so he will continue K level for the next school year. His health has been excellent, he did not miss a single day of school. His brother got the flu THREE times and Dylan did not get it a single time. Of course, Dylan does follow the diet and physical program and Ethan does not, which kind of explains why.”

“Here is an email we received from his science teacher:”

Thank you so much 🙂 Dylan was an absolute pleasure and privilege to have this year! He always had a smile on his face and was eager to learn! He is the kiddo we love spending our days with.

“Dylan also continued on the swimming team where he got promoted to the Gold level; he swims for 1 hour and 15 minutes Monday through Friday, and the past couple of months he has been busier also trying out for select baseball teams and last night he actually got invited to join a AA team. He is SUPER excited about it. As you can see, he has continued to be active and always follows his diet. Mom was able to get back to work since Dylan is doing so well.

Dylan and his family
There is a lot to celebrate now!

Dylan is now halfway through 7th grade and working super hard as usual. He joined the cross-country team at school during the fall and had a great time and joined a baseball team and he has been swimming 3 times a week. He is now 5’5” and keeps growing and eating a LOT!!”

Update from Dad

“Dylan finished 7th grade, and he did have a great year, he did have to put the extra time studying but he handled it well, he is still in the advanced classes for all his subjects, and he mastered his Spanish class.”

“His greatest accomplishment from last year was for him to be able to “meet grade level” score on the STAAR TEST which is the state test in Texas; In the 2 years prior he got an “approaching grade level” score, and this was the first time that he has been able to get a meet grade level score; the graph below shows how he has been improving, one thing to point out is that when we contacted The Institutes he was in 4th grade, when we knew he was needing a lot of help, and how it improved after just one year in the program, he would not had been able to do it without you all’s support and of course his hard work.”

This family never gave up. They join a legion of families all over the world who have proven that that their child has tremendous potential when given a fighting chance.

They never gave up they believed in their boy and each other. We predict Dylan’s story will only continue to get better and better.