Eating snack.. and Crying at the Same Time?

Ryan was upset at school. He had a coke and chex mix.. and should have been happy as a clam.. at snack time...but .he was crying Why?

So I asked him tonight after we came home from Willies Restaurant and he said on his letter board

YOU TO WOULD CRY IF MOM DECIDED TO STAY HOME.


I mentioned when I dropped Ryan off that I needed to go home and clean the house up . We also got to swing for 30 minutes extra at therapy this morning and was having lots of fun...before coming to school. That is why he was crying

Ryan's Tortoise Story

This is Ryan's story he spelled out on the letterboard. I will be using no dashes.. the entire story is letterboard.

Some tortoise swam, extremely lost. Nothing to ride. Alligator did stop soon. No one rides like this on there own. Soon some riders swam in lines around this extreme sea.
Storms grow.( I asked Where are these storms? he spelled " In the water")
So, each tortoise caught a wave. They made it to land.
The end.

What do you want to write?

Working on handwriting found these write and wipe flash cards with the alphabet on them..Kumon..so told Ryan lets try to practice your name like you wanted to do with Amy at OT. So we did that and I got the letter board and asked Ryan what other words would you like to practice writing and he spelled


I-L-O-V-E-Y-O-U-


Yep...........my sweet boy Ryan.......he is the best!

Ryan's "BIG QUESTION"

Saturday night, I went searching for Ryan and found him sitting alone in the basement in our "Soma-esk" type room as we call it. ( For those of you who don't know, that means a room that is quiet and no visual distractions.) Ours has a big couch in it... and that's exactly where he was that quiet Saturday night. So, I said to Ryan, "I bet your sick of mom always asking you all these questions all the time." "How about you ask me a question.....any question you want." Then Dad walks in the room. I say, " Hey how about you ask Dad a question!" "We could ask "How" questions or "what" questions or "why" questions?" Trying to get him thinking about how to start a question. (Silly, because he already knows, but I still felt the need to tell him.) And then Ashley walks in the room. And Ryan writes W-H-A-T- N-O-T- T-O- D-O- S-O- I- H-A-V-E- O-T-H-E-R-S-T-O- P-L-A-Y- W-I-T-H As Ryan was pointing to each letter, Paul and I were both fighting back our tears. It made us sad because we thought he may be thinking that he was doing something wrong and people didn't want to play with him. So I said to him, " Oh Ryan, we didn't know you wanted more friends to play with." Dad said, You just have to tell us that's what you want and we'll make it happen buddy." It's our fault, not yours, we just haven't invited people over for you to play with. We had no idea that's what you wanted!" Then I said , " Well, who would you like to come over, you name them and we will ask them to come play!" Ryan writes, M-Y-N-E-I-G-H-B-O-RS. " Which neighbor would you like, he says, L-A-U-R-E-N- A-N-D- A-N-D-R-E-W.

So, the "BIG QUESTION" that socked us in the stomach that night... We had no idea again that he really liked and or wanted to play with others. Don't worry a new dawn has come to our home and we are going to be playing A LOT with the neighbors! It's all good.

Stealing at church!

It was about 8:30pm and I said.. Hey Ryan lets all sit down and talk before we go to bed.. Ash and Dad too!.. so I asked Ryan on his board.. what would you like to talk about tonight. He spelled C-H-U-R-C-H. Ryan had left the table and was walking around in the area while we were finishing dinner earlier and Paul and Ashley and I had been talking about about hearing from. God.. So, I think he felt like chiming in.


I said..OK... church is....... and he spells S-O-R-T- O-F ..then big pause. .. like couldn't think of word.. So I said are we talking about all churches or our church.... If its our church lets spell out the name...he easily spells H-O-P-E. On we go... Hope is sort of S-T-A-L-L. oh do you mean stale like boring.. and he started to get upset and hit N-O.. oh.....how about we take a break for a second could see he wanted to leave.... he left the table and Paul said. I guarantee he was trying to say steal ... will explain in a second... so we all went up stairs and Ryan was sitting in our bed and I said... hey Ryan... I think I understand... were you trying to spell steal or stealing and I said it is spelled STEALING... so ..if you were could we try again.. tell me what your thoughts are maybe if something is wrong .. you know mommy I will fix it at church .. and here we go.........I said church is sort of............... and he easily writes S-T-E-A-L-I-N-G M-Y T-O-Y-S. Paul had hit it on the head!

See I work in the room and have brought in two of his therapy balls , his bean table and many other toys. I always say..oh here are your toys Ryan. When we go to church each week I bring his own toys for him to play with.. well kids take them and many of the kids like his toys , don't have many so I let them take them home.. and buy Ryan more..........thinking Ryan didn't mind...........................UHHH I had no Idea! I understand why he used the words "sort of"............I would have never known.............it bothered him

O.T. Appointment Yesterday!

Grammy had taken Ryan to O.T. for me for the last two weeks. Yesterday I went with Ryan and WOW! when I used the letterboard standing,sitting on the floor, in the chair.... he was just unbelievable. His pointing in two weeks had greatly improved. I knew it had but coming back to OT it was very obvious.....Amy was getting prepared for handwriting and asked me to ask Ryan what he would like to practice.. we could practice your name, shapes, draw animals? So I asked him and he said R-Y-A-N. So each letter we audiotorially said the direction of the letter twice ..down up around kick it out.. letter R.. then drew... ( remember he is a auditory kid!) brought in the letter board and said.. I knew this is easy but keep us on track.... what letter is next? He pointed to Y on we went. Nice way to create active participation of a task:)

So, the BIG NEWS.. Ryan has never grabbed for the letter board wanting to communicate...well it was the end of the session and he grabbed the board and pencil and pointed G-O .. Yep.. I was thrilled..so I said Go Where? I know where Ashley wants to go ..shopping! Ashley said yeah! but where do you want to go?... I am thinking for sure McDonald's ( we were all hungry) and he looks right at Ashley and spells W-E C-A-N- G-O - T- O - Y-O-U-R-S-T-O-R-E. Ashley gave Ryan a huge hug and said that is so sweet Ryan.. so then I said.. oh Ryan OK.. after that where do you want to go and my hungry guy...points to yep you guessed it.. M-C-D-O-N-A-L-D-S.. It was a good day!

Last night

One more post for today, last night at the kitchen table we did a mini session with Ryan. we got a kid's magazine that we order called Appleseed's and Dad read Ryan a story about Pyramids. After the reading, we asked him a couple questions. Mom said, there are pyramids in many different places(the ones in the article were Egypt and Mexico) Can you name one of the places we talked about that has pyramids? Ryan easily spells M-E-X-I-C-O.Then, we asked him if he knew anything else(other than what the story said) about Mexico. He spelled S-O-U-T-H. Mom then said "south of what?" He spelled the U-N-I-T-E-D-S-T-A-T-E-S. It was great! Then, I(Ashley) asked the question, " Hey Ryan, Today we all went sledding out in the snow, I was wondering if you liked doing that?" (It was a snow day by the way, we had to walk through all the snow the snowplow pushed up to get to the hill that we sledded down. Ryan spells S-N-O-W- W-A-S- H-I-G-H. Way to go Ryan!

Ashley Harris/ story about my brother Ryan!

Hi! I'm Ashley(Ryan's sister) I wanted to do a quick post on some memories at H.A.L.O. One time we went to Austin, TX to see Soma and do a session with her for Ryan. At this point Ryan was fairly new to RPM and this was his first attempt at the blue letterboard. He had been working with Soma for 4 days and we got to sit and watch him work every day. We did not even know he could spell or do math before coming that week. He kept on working with Soma for those 4 days, and each time we found out more and more about how smart and amazing he really is.

I remember on the last day of camp when Soma asked him to spell one word that described Me, Mom, and Dad, and even himself. I was really nervous and excited. I had no idea what he would say. Soma in her soft voice said "You can do it Ryan, focus, and tell me one thing about your sister." He spelled out the word G-O-O-D. Good. I couldn't believe it! My heart was beating really fast.... I wanted to hear his next word. Next, she said to spell one word about Dad. Ryan spelled S-M-A-R-T. Smart. She then moved on to Mom. Ryan spelled L-O-V-E. We were all holding back tears. Mom was not doing so well at that! But, what you don't know is that only Ryan would have chosen those specific words, because those are words we use in our family all the time and he knew just what to say for that question.Mom says to me" Your such a good big sister" and we always say " Dad is so smart he should go on Jeopardy" and Mom always says " I love you, I love you, I love you!" to Ryan. Finally, Soma asked him to spell a word that described himself. This was our favorite! Ryan spelled C-O-O-L. Cool!!!!!!! Dad, since Ryan was little, would say to him" Your such a cool dude!" and " You are Mr. Cool". Soma would have never guessed these words because they are special to our family. And Ryan knew every one. We got into our minivan, I just couldn't stop crying! I looked at Ryan and said "Mom, look! Look how happy he looks after telling us that! He had an ear to ear grin on his face. This was one of the most important and special days of our life.

Why did we create this site?

We as a family, decided to create a blog to help share the great news that there is a method out there to help our children have a voice. I give complete credit to Soma Mukhopadhyay, at H.A.L.O(Helping Autism through Learning and Outreach) organization. She was the one to start it all, and really helped my son Ryan and so many other children throughout the world.

After 2 years of working and practicing RPM, now,every day, my son Ryan shares with our family, on his letterboard, his knowledge and understanding of everything that goes on in our lives. We wanted to share with our friends these special moments, for Ryan can't speak to us , but with his letterboard he has a voice as clear as anyone elses. We hope you like this site and can have a better understanding of what RPM really can do. May God bless you and your family!