☀️ Kenzo
These are the things that help me feel better and do more! I work really hard every week with my therapists. Mama makes sure I eat my special food. And Daddy figured out some important tests that help us understand what my body needs. We're a team!
⚠️ Important
Everything below is based on our personal experience — what we tried for one child, with his doctors. It is not medical advice, and it isn't a protocol to copy. Children differ, and some of these tests and treatments are still being studied. Always consult your child's doctor before starting any intervention, test, or dietary change.
My school: Maya Forest School
☀️ Kenzo
I just graduated Kinder from Kinder at Maya Forest School and about to start Grade 1! 🎓 My teachers understand me and know how to help me learn in ways that work for my brain. They are so so nice!
💗 Mama
Finding the right school was one of the most important decisions we made. Not every school is equipped to support a child with ASD, and the wrong environment can actually set a child back. Maya Forest School has been a genuine partner in Kenzo's development. They understand neurodivergent learners, they communicate openly with us, and their approach has complemented his therapies in a way we didn't expect.
If you're looking for a school for your child with ASD: look for one where the teachers truly see your child — not just the label. It makes all the difference.
My therapies
💗 Mama
Managing Kenzo's therapy schedule is its own full-time job, and I want other parents to know: it is worth it. The cumulative effect of consistent, specialized therapy is real. You may not see dramatic leaps every week, but you look back over six months and can barely recognize how far your child has come.
🏃 Physical Therapy
Kenzo's PT helps with balance, coordination, strength, and body awareness. We do exercises and obstacle courses — things that build the physical foundation that supports everything else.
💙 Daddy
Many children with ASD have challenges with gross motor skills, muscle tone, and proprioception. PT builds the physical scaffolding that makes fine motor and communication work more accessible. It's often undervalued relative to speech and OT, but we've found it essential.
🧩 Occupational Therapy
OT helps Kenzo with daily living skills — holding utensils, drawing, managing textures and sounds that feel overwhelming. We do a lot of sensory play, which he actually loves.
💗 Mama
OT was the first therapy where I saw Kenzo's face light up consistently. His OT has a gift for turning hard things into games. For children with ASD, especially those with sensory sensitivities, OT can be the therapy that makes everyday life feel more manageable — not just for the child, but for the whole family.
🗣️ Speech Therapy
Speech therapy helps Kenzo find his words — practicing sounds, communication games, and understanding what other people say. It's his hardest therapy, and the one we celebrate the most when breakthroughs happen.
💙 Daddy
Speech therapy is critical for children with suspected childhood apraxia of speech (CAS) or gestalt language processing — which are part of Kenzo's picture. It targets not just talking but the full picture of communication: understanding, gesture, joint attention, social interaction. Consistency is everything. We've seen the biggest gains when Kenzo attends all his sessions regularly.
Important tests we did first
💗 Mama
Before diving into biomedical testing, we made sure to rule out the basics. These two tests are important for any child with speech delay and are often overlooked once an ASD diagnosis is in the picture.
👂 Hearing Test (Audiological Evaluation)
One of the very first things we did. Speech delay and hearing loss can look identical from the outside. Our audiologist confirmed that Kenzo's hearing was within normal range — ruling out a very treatable cause. Do this early. It's quick and non-invasive.
👁️ Eye Exam (Pediatric Ophthalmologist)
We also had Kenzo's vision checked thoroughly. Poor eyesight can affect learning, coordination, and social interaction — and young children have no reference point for "normal" vision. A pediatric ophthalmologist can do a full assessment even on non-verbal children.
The biomedical tests
💙 Daddy
After two years of therapy, we were lucky to discover the possibility of biomedical evaluation. These tests helped us look past the behavioral surface and ask what might be happening at the cellular level. Two tests shaped our approach most — though I'd add one honest caveat up front: these are tools to generate good questions for your doctor, not verdicts on their own, and the field around them is still evolving. We go deeper into that on the Research page.
🧬 FRAA Test (Folate Receptor Alpha Autoantibody Test)
This blood test checks for autoantibodies that interfere with folate reaching the brain. Research suggests a large share of children with ASD — on the order of 70% across studies — test positive for at least one type of these antibodies. If a child tests positive, high-dose leucovorin (folinic acid) is the treatment discussed in the research — something to explore carefully with a doctor, as a monitored trial rather than a guaranteed fix.
In the Philippines, the test is done by Gensens Diagnostics in partnership with ReligenDX in the US. Blood is drawn locally and shipped for analysis — results take about 2–3 months. Dr. Raymond Escalona of CreateHealth was the bridge that helped us access this test.
Kenzo's own result came back positive (for the binding antibody). For what that means, how we're thinking about it, and the important 2026 updates on leucovorin, → read Chapter 3: The Discovery.
🔬 Organic Acids Test (OAT)
The OAT is a comprehensive urine-based metabolic panel that measures over 70 markers related to how the body's cells are functioning. For children with ASD it can be a useful, non-invasive window into metabolism — collected with just a urine sample at home. It's worth being clear, though, that it's a screening tool, not a diagnosis: many markers shift with diet, hydration, and timing, so results are best read by a clinician alongside symptoms and other tests, not acted on one marker at a time.
💗 Mama
I was skeptical at first. A pee test is going to tell us something specialists couldn't? When the results came back, the data gave us specific things to ask about — possible markers around mitochondrial stress and certain vitamins. Jay was careful to remind me it was a starting point for questions, not a finished answer. But for a parent who'd been grasping for direction, even good questions felt like progress.
💙 Daddy
The OAT touches on mitochondrial markers (pyruvate, Krebs-cycle metabolites, the lactate-to-pyruvate ratio), nutritional markers (B6, B12, folate, CoQ10, carnitine), neurotransmitter metabolism, and gut patterns. These can point toward things worth investigating — but they're signals to discuss, not diagnoses, and several markers have debated interpretations. In the Philippines, the OAT is accessible through functional medicine practitioners who can order it and guide interpretation. One thing we've learned: a normal result in an area is just as useful as an abnormal one, and it's worth confirming a problem really exists before adding anything to treat it.
The GFCFSF diet
💗 Mama
I'll be honest: starting the GFCFSF diet was one of the hardest things we did. No gluten, no casein (dairy), no soy — for a Filipino household, that means reimagining almost everything. Pancit with rice noodles instead of wheat. Coconut milk in sinigang. Coconut aminos instead of soy sauce. It took weeks to figure out a stable meal rotation.
But over time, it became our normal. For our family, it's felt worth it — particularly given the connection between dairy (casein) and the folate receptor that came up in Kenzo's own results.
💙 Daddy
The rationale that made sense to us: dairy proteins may cross-react with folate receptors and influence FRAA, and gluten and casein peptides have been proposed to have opioid-like effects in some susceptible children. Our functional medicine pediatrician guided us through it — it wasn't a decision we made alone.
One honest note, though, in the spirit of the rest of this site: the broader research on GFCF diets in autism is genuinely mixed. Some well-controlled studies have found no clear benefit on core symptoms, and response seems to vary a lot from child to child — often depending on whether a child has gut issues or sensitivities. So I'd offer our experience as exactly that — ours — not as something every family should expect to replicate. It's a reasonable thing to trial with a doctor, with a clear way to tell whether it's actually helping.
🇵🇭 Filipino-friendly GFCFSF
Sinigang, tinola, adobo (with coconut aminos), nilaga, and mongo soup are all naturally compatible. Rice is gluten-free. Coconut milk replaces dairy beautifully. Banana cue, kamote, and fresh fruit make great snacks. Once you have your pantry sorted, this is a very livable diet in the Philippines. (One practical tip: a sudden big diet change in a child who's already a selective eater can be stressful for everyone — going gradually, with your doctor's input on nutrition, made it far more sustainable for us.)