Way to go Cole!

Article By: Shelley Margow
Article Date: 08/24/2010

Cole was diagnosed with PDD-NOS around age 2- 3. He has an amazing family who embraced the challenge of learning this new path that life had offered them and navigated through the information, professional opinions and programs that were being recommended for their child.

We had the pleasure of meeting Cole and Chrissie in December of 2009. They had just moved from Texas and were looking for new, exciting treatments that could help Cole (now 9), find his way through the social nuances of “9 year old boy life”. Cole still could not ride a bike, during swim team, his strokes were awkward and unco ordinated and he struggled to play board games with other kids, because he just hated losing and would tantrum; leaving his peers baffled and not quite sure how to handle the situation.
Cole couldn’t always express his feelings appropriately either.

After the comprehensive occupational, physical and speech therapy evaluations that CTW performed, we developed an intense treatment protocol, using our technology and wonderful team of therapists and off we went – on the therapy journey!

Fast forward 6 months. We have seen tiny little steps and leaps and bounds. The outcomes are? (I need a good word here). One of the first Ahas! Occurred on a Friday night at swim meet. Chrissie and her neighbor were sitting watching the kids swim when her neighbor turned to her and said something like “Chrissie, look at Cole, his stroke is even and smooth, wow what have you been doing?” This was 6 weeks after starting our programs. Each week we had mini revelations that we discussed. One week it was how much his handwriting had improved at school (we had not done any hand writing programs yet), the next time, Cole was more aware of his mom’s emotions. Then his tangential thought patterns were occurring less and less, he was staying on topic and everybody could follow his conversation without these random thoughts popping up. During the second week of his intensive program, Cole zipped his pants up for the first time in his life – he could now go and buy jeans at the store like other kids his age.

We had many tear jerking moments during this time. But the most poignant time was when Cole rode his bike independently – all his therapists cheered as if he had just one his first marathon – and he had, he could now do what other kids his age did!

We are very proud of our children and in this particular case, very proud of our parents too. With the love, support and effort that Coles’ parents have put into him, it was an honor to be able to teach Cole how to reach his milestones and then go beyond that.

Way to go Cole!