June through August Summary

From my observation, Will made huge progress in interpersonal interactions during the summer. It began as he got very involved with his nephew Simon and with Summer's nieces and nephews. He entered into more conversations with his siblings about the time Chris returned from Brazil and Lizzie visited from New York City (last half of July). He now initiates conversations, ask questions, comments on the responses, and keeps the conversation alive.

I discussed this with Dr. Mayer on July 29th. At that time, Will had met with Dr. Mayer 8 times but had never opened up to him. The usual patient would have become a non-stop talker by that point in therapy. Dr. Mayer offered some possible explanations: (1) An interaction with a child may be less demanding than one with an adult, so Will more readily enters into it. (2) Will may have neurological (brain circuits don't work right) difficulty in forming sentences to make a conversation. (3) Will may have psychological reasons (a motive) not to talk with people, so they wouldn't find out how broken he thought he was. At the end of July, Dr. Mayer was leaning toward the neurological explanation, but wasn't sure.

Yesterday Dr. Mayer said he thought that Will's deficit in brain executive function was definitely neurological, and that the tests showed that the whole brain was affected; there was no localization to one side or the other. He also mentioned that Will had begun to open up to him in their most recent sessions.