It’s been a while, I apologize for that but we’ve been busy.  Matt has come a ways since the last post.  Spencer has been physically pushing Matt and he has us on the same program and it’s working with amazing results!  Lisa and I have Matt standing in the standing frame and pulling all the supports and forcing him to balance and hold his head and upper body up on his own.  We’ve had to challenge him to the point where he has gotten pissed but when you add that bit of emotion to it, man he does all that we’re asking and more with so much strength.  It’s hard to see him get mad, we never had that kind of relationship, but when he does what he does and with the strength and intent like he does we immediately praise him, tell him we love him and tell him to look at what he’s doing.  We tell him we’re helping him to help himself.  He does calm down after we talk to him  but it does give him an edge for a while.  Spencer has been getting him to stand on his own with minimal or at times no support at all!  We do have to help him balance  but we can feel him adjusting  to pick it up on his own.  Spencer has been getting Matt to stand supporting himself with his legs and arms as he’s leaning out onto a bench about 3 feet in front of him.  He definitely has the strength and control once you help him into position.  He still hasn’t said a word but we think he’s working on that pretty hard to.  After working him like we do when we get him seated or lying down for a break sometimes he just starts complaining like he’s trying to tell us something, that was hard or it hurt or maybe stop.  Don’t know but we keep telling him if you want us to stop just say so and we will.  Tonight he was amazing when we had him sitting up, complete head control without no support or hesitation then when we stood him up I asked him to put his arm out on my shoulder and push me straight out to help support himself, this is something we had  to push him to do until he got mad a couple of nights ago, but tonight I asked him to do it and he put his arm right out and pushed back hard just asking him the first time and held it there!  It’s been a very interesting and challenging few weeks but he is getting it.  Matt is also not in the full on hospital bed now.  We finally had that taken and replaced with a much smaller twin bed without the airframe.  It’s quiet for one and we are now transfering him out of bed without the hoist to get him more invloved in pushing himself up with his legs which is also part of the process in getting him strong enough to push through to stand on his own.

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