By Guest Blogger on November 22, 2010
I was elated the day my 10-year-old son, Oliver, came home and announced the five words that would warm any mother’s heart. No, not, “Mom, I ate my vegetables,” but “Mom, I am popular now!”
Not that I care particularly that Oliver is popular in the captain of the football team or class president sort of way, but when you have an engaging child who loves to be around other kids and his behavior ends up annoying and turning those same children away, it is heartbreaking.
If you have a child or live with someone with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), you will know what I mean when I say that every day can be a challenge and test every ounce of patience that you have! While the symptoms of ADHD vary in every individual, in my son’s case he could be distractive, impulsive, and sometimes downright provocative. Getting him up, dressed and at the table for breakfast in the morning could require military-like precision: a change of plans could set him off in a spiral of uncontrolled behavior; his sister could easily provoke him, causing endless sibling fighting; and his behavior could swing from charming and sweet to a hellion at the drop of a hat. There would be days at a time when I literally would feel like every day was Groundhog Day and collapse in exhaustion and frustration. We went through so many babysitters one year that I almost threw my hands up in the air and gave up!
So one day we all woke up and the bad dream was over, completely over! Oliver is easy to deal with now and just a pleasure to be with. He wakes up now every morning on his own and makes orange juice for the whole family. He and his sister are now the best of friends and rarely fight. And he is asked over to other children’s homes now for play dates. There are no more of the dreaded calls from school, and Oliver is just happier and has so much more self-confidence. The house is finally calm and we are all able to breathe a sigh of relief.
By now you are probably wondering how Oliver made such a 360-degree turn in his behavior. Was it behavior modification or the endless parenting classes that we went to (although I am sure all of those helped)? No! One day we decided to visit Dr. Bock in Rhinebeck, New York, the author of “Healing the New Childhood Epidemics: Autism, ADHD, Asthma, and Allergies.” For those of you who are not familiar with Dr. Bock, he has clients from all over the world and he literally heals (or at least greatly improves symptoms of) many children with ADHD, autism, asthma, and allergies through supplementation and diet change.
After a battery of blood tests, stool samples, and an in-depth interview, it was revealed that Oliver has gluten and dairy intolerances as well as iron and zinc deficiencies. While Dr. Bock put him on supplements and we saw the results of that immediately, the main thing we saw set him off was gluten!
Unfortunately gluten is in everything or at least everything a 10-year-old boy loves! Gone were the beloved morning bagels, the donuts that my husband would take him to have for “treats,” pizza, pasta, cookies, and even the garlic knots and sandwiches he would crave at school.
The good thing is that Oliver has seen the changes in his own behavior and likes the “new him.” In fact, he likes the way he feels so much that it is now him that takes staying on the diet so seriously. When he does lapse and has something with gluten, either by accident or on purpose, we all see the immediate difference.
If you are anything like I was, you completely roll your eyes when a mother explains that her child is on a gluten-free or dairy-free diet or has this or that food sensitivity. At bake sales and birthday parties I thought it was comical the lengths parents had to go to make sure everyone’s food needs are met.
Well it is embarrassing to say, but I have officially joined the food sensitivity group and have taken my son completely off gluten and dairy. It has been so worth it! Never again will I look at another parent’s choices with what I realize now was judgment.
I never thought a small change such as a change in diet could alter a child’s behavior so dramatically, but I have seen it with my own eyes. I recognize that I am lucky. Oliver only has mild ADHD and is able to function at an extremely high level in a challenging school, but the changes we have seen in Oliver are dramatic both at home and at school. For anyone who has a child with ADHD or autism, I ask them to open their minds and hearts and get their child tested or take their child off gluten and dairy for a month and see if changes happen.
These days there are so many wonderful substitutes for the “regular” foods. We have actually had fun trying them all. Both of my kids have a thumbs up and thumbs down system for letting me know how they fall in the rating and whether I should buy them again! Eating gluten-free does not have to be a life sentence and can be beneficial for everyone in the family!
Katherine Pennington is a diet and lifestyle counselor, raw chef, writer, and founder of Be in Balance. She also writes her own blog, Raw Mom Hotdog Kids, about the struggles of feeding kids healthy food in a junk food world. Katherine lives with her husband and two children in New York City.
Photo Credit: macinate
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By Guest Blogger on June 11, 2009
Karen Atkins, LMT, CBI, AdvCBP, Adv BodyTalk Instructor
One of the biggest issues with children today is that their brains are being severely compromised by the myriad of stresses that are bombarding them. Since the brain is the CEO of the body, it has to be in charge of all the activities in the body.
This bombardment of kids’ brains and their entire nervous system often starts in the womb and continues in childbirth and through early childhood.
Through my own experience of a traumatic birth, I spent a good portion of my life reacting to the emotional and psychological imbalances that I have since tracked as an imbalance in the brain.
My particular birth trauma involved the umbilical chord being wrapped around my neck, being birthed with forceps, and placed in an incubator for a day and half without contact with my mother, who was knocked out as a pain relief measure. Early in my childhood I was thought to be ADHD and was labeled, which only added to the problem, especially at school. I had to work really hard to get good grades and was always getting into trouble for misbehavior, which in hindsight I recognize was just acting out my frustration about not being understood.
As an adult, I was plagued by the residual unanswered questions about why I was the way I was and still felt different…which led me into healing, and eventually, to BodyTalk.
From the outset, BodyTalk provided me with immediate anxiety relief, which had been there from birth. It also resolved a 10-year chronic issue with debilitating back pain, and ongoing digestive issues. So I was hooked, and 7 years later, after endless positive results with children, parents and other adults using this easily accessible, non-invasive, non judging therapy, I created Nurture New York and Nurture Networks as the vehicles to expose more people to this powerful therapy and to bring education, healing tools and a sanctuary for creative expression to everyone in NYC and beyond.
After practicing BodyTalk for about a year, I went to school for massage therapy and it was there that I noticed something very interesting. I no longer had to read and re-read my books and study endlessly for exams, as I had previously done in school and I was continually getting excellent grades, even though the material was more technical than many other things I had studied. BodyTalk had balanced my brain!
One of the most effective methods for addressing psycho-physical-emotional behavioral problems in children is the simple BodyTalk technique of ‘tapping out the cortices’ (balancing the right and left hemispheres of the brain). This technique, when done regularly, helps to reset the emotional center of the brain, that tends to over-react to the stresses of life and creates a barrier to development and overall health.
The brain is intrinsically connected to every part of the body. The theory behind balancing the brain is that all disease is reflected in the brain at some level. Images of the brain show that there are ‘cold spots’ or inactive areas of the brain, which correspond to areas of the body where there is disease. We have found that balancing the brain with BodyTalk, and particularly tapping out the cortices (which is one of the best ways to balance out the brain) the cold spots either diminish or totally disappear and so does the corresponding illness.
Our nervous systems have a natural reaction to stress or danger, called the ‘fight or flight’ response. This reaction takes resources away from the systems of the body responsible for healing and growing in order to protect us. While this is a necessary response to dangerous situations, imbalances in our brain cause this behavior to be the first and sometimes the only response to daily stress. Doing BodyTalk and particularly ‘tapping out the cortices’ allows the brain to calm down and get out of the ‘fight or flight’ mode as quickly as possible, which allows us to heal and grow. For children in particular, whose brains are growing and developing so rapidly, this shift is essential.
There have been thousands of case studies reporting positive changes and progress in children with BodyTalk. An example of this is a child named Lola, who had been having difficultly focusing, concentrating and “sequencing.” The following is a testimonial from her father:
Lola (4), is a child with a tremendous amount of exuberance. We found though, that her “exuberance” would often times make it difficult for her to concentrate or remain focused for any length of time. For example, she could never sit still long enough to watch TV (not necessarily a bad thing, I know) but it seemed to be more than her inability to focus as she had difficulty in “sequencing”. Sequencing is the brain’s ability to piece together and follow along a coherent line of thought (like a story, or counting, etc.). This was a challenge for Lola and resulted in frustration that often lead to acting out. The frustration got to the point this winter that we decided to try some BodyTalk sessions.
After four sessions over three months the changes in Lola have been, dare I say, dramatic. She is still her ever exuberant self, but she can now sit still, by herself, with a book or watch a show or do some coloring for an extended period of time. More then once, I have turned to my wife and asked her (half seriously) who that little girl is sitting quietly over on the chair thumbing through a clothing catalogue or pleasantly interacting with another child or adult. Recently, Lola’s teacher had pulled my wife aside (unsolicited) and commented on how much Lola has changed over the last few months, commenting that “. . .it’s as if a light has been turned on. . .”
Lola’s case is not unique. It is my dream to awaken our planet with knowledge of these kinds of solutions for kids that don’t have to be painful or complicated.
Karen Atkins is an Advanced BodyTalk Instructor and the Director of NurtureNewYork.com, a holistic center in the heart of Manhattan supporting creative living and balanced health. Karen has also founded NurtureNetworks.com, an online portal connecting people to all things nurturing.
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