Swimaversary Part Three

SLEEP

The title is almost all I need. Swimming has helped us with sleep. That is almost all I have to say as sleep is such a crucial thing that not all of us get what we need and it is even hard to come by with an autistic child. For the sake of this blog post being longer and just to give more detail I will share more.

Josiah started swimming and therapy at the sometime so like all things it is hard to piece out what is the cause to the effect. We have been to a sleep Dr. and know that his sleep issues are purely behavioral or at least there is no medical thing such as sleep apnea or swollen glands or anything like that causing it.

 Well, what has helped us sort out the sleep thing is that he has not had swimming while still doing therapy and had not had therapy while doing swimming. When he has therapy and no swimming his sleep is still bad. He takes forever to fall asleep and he wakes up several times at night. We have gone almost a month without swimming and he has bad sleep whole time. Now while swimming and therapy we did start hylands sleep aid (after swimming started) in disovables for young kids. That helped increase his staying asleep, but as soon as swimming stopped we had issues. When we started swimming back up with the other two the sleep aid and therapy we were good and getting enough sleep even if it is still not the normal amount.

Then we took off of therapy for almost the whole week and instead was doing swimming with this sleep increased again. We have tried baths, staying outside for long periods of time and all kinds of other things to replace swimming and there just seems to not be a good replacement for swimming with him. Swimming is Josiah's thing, so I am happy it makes him happy and helps with so much. We have since stopped hylands sleep aid and have switched to essential oils for sleep. That is for another blog post and will have to share about that soon. Our hopes with the oils is that if we can't go swimming daily that he can still sleep. I still will plan on doing lots of swimming with him as it helps him in so many other areas other then sleep.

Here is part one which was on self control and part two which was on cognitive development encase you missed them.

Swimaverasry Part Two

Cognitive Development

It is hard to gauge cognitive development other then progress. Josiah has been making strides and bound in what he has been learning. Now Josiah did begin swimming and ABA therapy at the same time and it is hard to say what has had the most affect on his cognitive development between the two. All I know is that his ABA therapists are extremely impressed with his progress and have the hardest time keeping up with him. They are creating new programs for him all the time as he blows through most of them. He went from not talking or babbling at 20 months to shortly after expressing simple needs, to now he is fully capable of having conversations. CONVERSATIONS a little more then a year and he has not only started to talk, but in some areas he has surpassed his age. In ONE year he has gone from less then half his age to having some language above a 3 year old and he is not even three yet. I am amazed and impressed with his growth and maturity and ability to learn all the time. He is sometimes way to smart for his own good, but he IS smart and he keeps showing how smart he is all the time. I have always said that he was super smart and that we just did not know it. Like he was unable to show us how smart he is and now he can. I love and enjoyed him before he could talk, but know that he is much happier now that he can not only express his needs. We are less stressed because he is able to answer us on what he needs before it turns into a meltdown over frustration, but above all HE is happier, less stressed and more expressive then he has ever been before. There has even been a study on kids kids who swim which the results can be viewed below:

For those of you who can not view the video click here.

Another way to see that he has had cognitive development besides his ability to learn, his increase in language both receptive and expressive, is his memory. I am always impressed with his memory. He can remember great details about things not only days, weeks, but even months after the event. He sees something and it triggers a reaction in his brain and he can start talking about details of something that has happened so long ago that even I didn't quite have it in the top of my head ready to go. Three months after reviving a bag with ornaments in it from his swim instructor I set up our autism tree. The ornaments were out of the bag and there were other bags out. He picked out that specific empty bag and told he who gave it to him and what was in it. When showing his swim instructor the bag he did not even remember that it was the bag that he had given us the ornaments in. One day my dad had said he needs a clip for something and Josiah takes off and gets his gerbils car. We had no clue why he got the car until we realized their was a clip on the bottom of it where the wheel broke off. The clip was stuck on the car two months before and had only used the car maybe one other time before then. This is just two examples of his memory out of many more. He has also shown cognitive development in his learning of colors, shapes, and counting to ten. He has also learned to count actual objects which is different then counting to ten. He can sing part of the alphabet song and in most cases identify letters of the alphabet. All of this from not talk a little over a year ago! There is a  wonderful explanation that I will quote from charlotteaquatics.com: "A baby’s brain develops through bilateral cross patterning movements like swimming, crawling, and walking. The more cross patterning movements, the more nerve fibers develop in the corpus callosum - the part of the brain that facilitates communication, feedback, and modulation from one side of the brain to the other. Cross patterning movements like swimming activate both cerebral hemispheres and all four lobes of the brain simultaneously, which can result in heightened cognition and increased ease of learning." Another great quote about neurological development is "The child experiences a great deal of tactile stimulation from the water resistance over the entire body while swimming which encourages neurological development. Water has over 600 times the resistance of air. Tactile experiences and interactions in the water are important for overall neural organization."

Here is part one on self-control encase you missed it.
Here is also part three which is on sleep.

Swimaversary Part One

On April 8th, 2014 Josiah has been swimming for a year. We decided to celebrate his swimaversary with some other pages. I mentioned that it has changed his and our life/lives forever. I wanted to go in more detail with what I mean by that. I have talked about swimming and loving it in several posts. I have not gotten down and talked strictly about the benefits and how it has helped. I will share what I viewed and even share some links for things that are not so visible that I have learned through information I have learned over time. I will also share each of these in a separate blog no matter how long or short so the whole thing will not become overwhelming to read all in one blog post. :)

*ok I started this shortly after his swim aversary, but with no swimming, end of semester craziness, and a few other things that have pushed it to the sidelines I am just now getting to writing more on it*

Self Control 

I will start with the first one we noticed. Better self control. This was seen through a couple of changes. The first thing that he started began when he was 11 months old. He started climbing to high heights for his age and it was not only a daily, but multiple times a day kind of thing. He did not even start walking until he was 16 months because of course why walk when you can climb everything. His climbing started to lessen and become not as common of a occurrence in the house. The second think that became less of an issue I have already posted about in the blog post Sometimes I Forget, which goes into great detail about how his tantrums and meltdowns had lessened with swimming/had been almost no existent. The only case when they would show up is when he had an outside source that would trigger it. He used to have meltdowns/self harm due to lack of activity. This is one of the reasons we have so many toys for him to choose from. He always has to be busy doing something. If he gets board he gets into self harm. Biting himself leaving marks, pinching, throwing himself on floor, head butting the floor or walls. He will bite chairs, games, toys or other objects when he is board or angry. All of this calmed down with swimming and picks back up every time we stop swimming. We have been off for three weeks now and he has hit another kid at therapy, threw a toy towards someone there and has picked up increased anger outburst at home as well. Kroc center has started their new hours so I am extremely thankful for that. Sadly we can not start this week because of me. Without going into too much detail I will just say I do not feel well and AF is not so nice this month.

Any parent I am sure can tell you self control in a little one is hard and any ASD parent can tell you it is a huge thing. Self control over outbursts(the ones that can be controlled) is just really HUGE. I was so relieved that I was not as worried about another self harm episode being around the corner. With less self harm and him more aware of his surroundings as he was not going into constant meltdowns he began to learn/grow/mature. He was picking things up at an astounding rate and still is which brings us to another benefit that I will talk about next...

Cognitive Development

Part three is on sleep (link also available at bottom of part two if you want to go in order they were written).