The tears are still flowing freely as I write this and I know it will take time for us to get used to the fact that he will not be bounding up to us and licking our face; he will not be waiting for us at the back door barking out a loud ‘hello’ because he heard the garage doors open as we arrived back home; he will not jump up and down in joy because we told him that it was time for his walk. Everything I do and everywhere I go in the house I miss his happy presence. The house seems so strange without him. Our little wiener dog is so sad, missing her companion too.  We are giving her tons of love to help her deal with her mourning.

We comfort ourselves by remembering how blessed we were to have this wonderful doggie spirit with us for many years -and for this we are grateful.  I know that there will come a time when I will be able to stop crying and instead smile when I think of him.  But not today.

Having a pet is a wonderful thing, not only for the unconditional love they give you but also, although we may not be aware of it, our pets can reduce our stress, improve our immune system functioning and improve learning, amongst many other amazing health benefits.

So to my very special Saatchi, I say ‘Thank you, dear special boy, for all you gave us!’

Today is Mother’s Day and I want to celebrate all the exceptional mothers that I have met in my practice and those that have been in the audiences of my talks and workshops. 

To these mothers, I want say, I salute you!  I know what kind of dedication and commitment and time and energy and passion you pour into helping your children overcome their learning and behavior challenges.  I marvel at how, each day, you look for ways to educate and empower yourselves so that you can be instrumental in helping your children feel good and enjoy life.  I want these mothers  to know how much you inspire me. 

I also want to celebrate my own special mother.  Her name is Ella but her children and grandchildren called her ‘Ma.’  I want to celebrate my mother for teaching me that family is everything.   Her children and grandchildren meant the world to her and everything she did was to keep us safe, healthy and happy.   She was always there for me loving and honoring me for who I am.  Watching how she overcame her own challenges,  I learned about how to live with courage and humility.  She is no longer with us.  Each day as I drive past the place where she lived, I yearn to be able to stop and run into the house to give her a kiss and to feel  that warm feeling I always had when she looked at me with such love in her eyes. 

On this Mother’s Day, I wish all families joy and love as you honor the person who brought you into this life.   

It would seem to me that we simply have to come to the conclusion that whatever we are doing to prevent, diagnose and treat ADHD, is absolutely not working.  The stimulants that millions of kids are taking are mostly good only for the pharmaceutical companies.  Yes, there are many families and kids that will say that the drugs  improve their lives, but at what long-term cost?  And then there are the tragic cases where the drugs have caused addiction, anxiety, psychosis and suicide. I recently watched an interview on TV with tears streaming down my face, as several moms and dads told their story of the suicide of their child. 

Every story had the same shocking themes:

• How doctors rush to medicate, sometimes even before they meet the child. One doctor said he would not see the child until he was medicated. I wonder whether this could be because the doctor suspected that the child would be hyperactive, making the visit more difficult and time consuming, thereby upsetting his schedule?!
• How they, as parents, at first resisted the idea of medication. 
• How doctors, educators and other parents made them feel as though they were hurting the child by not giving them the meds and so they eventually relented.
• How their doctors did not tell these that they there is a far better option than prescribed drugs – an option that is helping  thousands upon thousands of kids lose their diagnosis of ADHD  by identifying  and removing the real underlying cause of the problem,  rather than drugging the symptom.
• How they watched helplessly as the medication changed the child’s personality.
• How their doctors treated these personality changes by trying different or additional medications, all of which made the problems worse.

Those who know me and my approach are aware that I am not against medication per se.  I am in favor of medication but only as a last resort when the option of finding and treating the underlying cause has been tried with the right doctors and has failed.   My own clinical experience is that the percentage of this happening is extremely low.

I know that many parents reading this are very happy with the result they are getting from the ADHD medication their child is taking.  Know that I honor your right to make the decisions that feel right to you.  All I ask is that you become aware of what the latest research is showing and keep an open mind to hearing about how children and adults are changing their lives for the better without having to rely on medication.   I simply ask parents not to unintentionally collude with a medical system that devalues the option of looking for underlying root causes and instead rushes to medicate the symptoms.

I want to quote Dr Martha Herbert because she says it so beautifully when she writes: “Your child is ‘in there’.  Some people believe that autism is a hopeless incurable life sentence.  But now we know:  That some people with autism lose their diagnoses, many more improve greatly, and some break through with moments of clarity and language even when they generally don’t talk or relate much.  She goes on to say, “What you can do:  Look at autism as a state someone is in rather than as a permanent trait. Believe that your loved one with autism is ‘in there’…”

The parents who believe that their loved one is ‘in there’ will relate to the child in a different way than the parent who only sees the child as autistic.  This is because these parents are coming from a place within their spirit that is filled with hope, not with despair.   When we respond to our child’s learning, behavior and mood challenges with hope and a passionate belief that we can ‘free our child’ we are stimulating the biochemistry of hope and positive dreams within ourselves and our children.  We are ‘squirting’ serotonin, oxytocin,   endorphins, norepinephrine and other healthy chemicals into the brain, making healing possible.  When as parents we are pumping stress chemicals in our own bodies, our behavior and communication will unintentionally be stimulating bad chemicals in our children’s bodies and brains.

It all begins and ends with our chemistry. 

The ability to learn easily, behave appropriately and feel good are controlled by the chemicals being secreted.   When you decided to be a parent would you have ever thought that one of the most critical parenting skills you would need, would be to know how to manage your child’s biochemistry!   Did you ever imagine that you would need behavior and communication skills specifically designed to have a positive effect on the child’s chemistry, and, in turn, on the family environment?

I call this NeuroParenting.

Beverley’s 7-year old, Mark, is a non verbal autistic little boy with the face of an angel.  Understandably Bev felt exhausted and overwhelmed a great deal of the time.  (Only others who have been in Bev’s situation can relate to the kind of challenge this can be a parent and the kind of stress and emotional pain this can create).  Without being aware of this, Bev’s despair and  stress were being imparted to Mark and having a negative affect on his biochemistry. One of the survival mechanisms that Bev had developed, quite unconsciously, was to shut down and not be fully present with Mark.  She would go through the tasks, doing the right things and saying the right things but she was not being truly present.  After  ten days of practicing three NeuroParenting tools  -  Seeing the Mark Inside,  Feeling the Joy and Hope and Being Fully Present,  she sent me an email saying, ‘I want you to know that I am engaging with Mark in the ways you showed me and he is responding to me in ways that I would not have thought possible’.   The biochemical shift in Bev, was mirrored in Mark, triggering the chemicals that he needed to respond effectively.

Engage.  Don’t Inflame.

When Bev learnt how to adjust her own chemistry, she did something else extremely important for herself and for Mark – she reduced the high levels of inflammation in her body and brain that are always present in situations of chronic stress.   The chronic stress is having the same impact on Mark’s body and brain.  The inflammation (think of this like a smoldering fire) was causing all kinds of digestive problems for Mark,  which then upset his neurochemistry,  which then showed up as cognitive, behavior or mood problems.  And all the while that this is happening,  while wishing and praying that these problems would go away, Bev was unaware that she was  unintentionally contributing to this.  She did not know that these problems could not go away while there is chronic stress and chronic inflammation undermining Mark’s mental, physical and emotional health, day by day.   But how was she to know this – few  traditional doctors will tell their patients that this is how it works!

There is good news.

Simply being aware of inflammation is a great start.  When you see physical, behavioral, language, mood and communication symptoms in your child, think ‘inflammation.’  What goes into a child’s mouth, the air they breathe, the products they use, can for example, cause inflammation and impact on the child’s  neurochemistry.  Thankfully there is much that parents can do to Take CHARGE! and protect the health of children, in spite of the toxic world we live in. This would be only half of the formula for reducing inflammation. The other half is NeuroParenting.

Parenting  Inflammation

I would like to highlight something else that can be toxic and cause inflammation in children and that does not get enough attention – this is the way parents behave and communicate with their kids.  If your child is grappling with learning and behavior and emotional issues, it is vital that you understand how to monitor and manage not only what goes into his or her mouth but also what comes out of your mouth.

Here is a hugely important, (and rather confronting)  fact: What comes out of your mouth directly affects your child’s chemistry.  Children with learning, behavior or mood issues need to have the kind of conversations with their parents and teachers that will stimulate the healthy chemistry in their bodies and brains. So as a parent you may want to think about this:

1. Does my behavior create stress and inflammation in my child?
2. Could the way I speak to my child be creating stress and inflammation in my child’s body and brain? (Just as there are inflammatory foods, so there are inflammatory conversations and inflammatory language).
3. Do the words I choose when I speak to my child, add to my child’s problem, rather than help it?
4. Do I have more healthy conversations with my kids than unhealthy ones?

The good news for moms and dads is that you can make everyday choices that will limit the fuel for the fire of inflammation and profoundly increase the chances of your child’s body and brain having the ability to overcome, or significantly reduce, their learning, behavior and mood problems.  This involves learning non-inflammatory parenting skills such as:

• Changing the language you use with the child from pro-inflammatory to anti-inflammatory language.
• Having anti-inflammatory conversations with your children
• Identifying and changing your own inflammatory behaviors.
• Knowing how to stimulate anti-stress chemicals in your child’s body and brain during your normal daily interaction with your child.
• Identifying and removing toxic relationships in the child’s life.

Parents, I honor you!

I know how hard it is to have a happy and light spirit when your child is struggling to learn, to feel good and to enjoy life.   I am in awe of how dedicated parents are as they travel on this difficult journey, looking for a way to remove and heal the problems their children wrestle with day after day.  I want you, moms and dads, to know that you inspire me and I respect your dedication to freeing that amazing child that is behind the layers of problems they may have.

Dr. Gluckman teaches parents how to use Functional Behavior and Communication skills that are specifically designed to have a positive effect on the child’s chemistry and the family environment.

]]> http://www.parentstakecharge.com/2013/04/09/engage-their-brains-dont-inflame-thier-brains/feed/ 0 http://www.parentstakecharge.com/2013/03/28/taking-the-ds-out-of-adhd/ http://www.parentstakecharge.com/2013/03/28/taking-the-ds-out-of-adhd/#comments Thu, 28 Mar 2013 22:30:58 +0000 SandyG http://www.parentstakecharge.com/?p=3446 Do you suspect your child has ADD or ADHD? Has your child already been diagnosed with this?  Are you medicating your child or considering medication? Are you wondering if there’s an alternative?  Would you like to take your child off medication?  Are you swimming in the negative murky waters of guilt, shame, fear and confusion? Do you often think “Why my child”? How could this be?

It’s time for parents to have a new understanding of this thing being called ‘ADHD’. It’s time for healthcare practitioners to stop calling ADHD a ‘disorder’ and for everyone concerned to remove the negative hidden messages attached to this erroneous label.  So let’s begin by removing the two D’s from the ADHD diagnosis.

When you do this you get AH (like AH, a relaxing feeling…like AH part of an AHA moment, AH like ________ you may fill in the blank).  Believing in these two D’s – deficit and disorder – can be harmful for any parent because it suggests there is something wrong with your child, that she is not “normal” like all the other kids running around the neighborhood, that there is something wrong with his brain.  I am here to tell you that ADHD is not a disorder nor is it a deficit. I would like you to quiet your mind and instead of thinking about all the negative connotations of the ADHD label, know that behind the symptoms you are seeing, there is a normal, healthy, uniquely talented, happy child, capable of learning easily, relating well to others and loving life.

When did we start calling our children’s difficulty to sit still or to focus an actual disorder? Not only that but who categorized these “symptoms “as a disorder?  Sure, your child has some challenges but what you need to focus on, as the parent, is the scientifically proven knowledge that deep inside there is a perfectly happy and capable and balanced kid, who has some stress in his body and spirit that is interfering with his ability  to be everything he is capable of being.  When you find and treat the emotional and physiological stress, you will be fixing the attention and hyperactivity problems.

I get it, you’re worried, and so you take your child to the doctor hoping to find a solution.  This is where conventional medicine steps in and tells you that your child has a disorder and needs medication. Traditional doctors are not telling you that there is an underlying cause for your child’s symptoms. They are not telling you that when you find the underlying root cause and treat it, your child’s symptoms will go away. They are not telling you that this so-called ADHD could be a vitamin deficiency, a gastro-intestinal problem, a hidden food allergy, heavy metal toxicity or some other problem in the child’s body. They definitely don’t tell you that these so-called ADHD symptoms have been originally set off by stress. Instead they reach in their shiny little medicine cabinets and give you a sample of what is meant to help your child manage his disorder, and do the same to the next patient and the next patient, and the one after that. See a problem here?

Now, if you are a parent who is giving your child medication and who is happy with the positive changes this has brought to yours and the child’s lives, please do not stop reading this blog and certainly don’t feel offended.  I do not want you to think that I believe that you have made a bad or a wrong decision.  This is not the case at all.  Certainly my philosophy is that medication should be a last resort but whatever your reasons may be for choosing the medication route, I do believe that your child can still benefit enormously from the information I am sharing with you in this blog.  It does not have to be an either-or choice.  One of my favorite authors describes it as –the tyranny of the ‘or’ versus the genius of the ‘and’.  So I ask you not to get stuck by thinking of the ‘or’ but rather to read further and think about the ‘and…’ solution for your child.

My concern is that conventional medicine treats patient’s symptoms as a one-size-fits-all solution.  The truth is that every child who has been given this diagnostic label is experiencing their own personal kind of emotional and physiological stress. When have you met a person who is JUST like you, who has the same medical history, the same DNA, same physical and psychological features, has been brought up in the same environment, eats the same diet that you do etc.?  It is not possible!  Should medicine then not be geared to treat each child as an individual case?  You are YOU, and like Dr. Seuss said “Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You.”  Why are we trying to approach these symptoms with a one-size-fits-all approach? If you are YOU then shouldn’t whatever treatment be tailored to help or cure YOU and only you?

I could go on and on, but it’s time to get to the good and juicy stuff! Did you know that this disorder that everyone is talking about has actually some pretty special, unique benefits? A “disorder” with benefits? You may laugh at this but remember we took the D’s out of ADHD? Sink into the AH again…go along with me and follow the light in this tunnel that so many parents may think is so long and so dark.  Did you know that there was a statistic reported on Psychology Today that says that people with ADHD are 300% more likely to start their own business…300%!  What are your thoughts on ADHD now? Are you scared for your child’s future now? Hopefully not as much! A person with ADHD is 4 times more likely to be a successful entrepreneur than a non-ADHD counterpart, not to mention they have great artistic abilities and some have even near genius IQ scores!

You would be surprised at the amount of famous people that have been diagnosed with ADHD, whether it was as a child or later in life. Here is a quick rundown of people who have won gold medals, started up Fortune 500 companies, starred in TV shows or movies, won Super Bowls, etc. — and they all have ADD or ADHD.

Sir Richard Branson (English business magnate, best known as the founder and chairman of Virgin Group of more than 400 companies), Justin Timberlake (the super-talented Grammy-winning singer), Will Smith (the charming actor), Michael Phelps ( 14 Gold medal Olympic swimmer), Jim Carrey (The hilarious actor who used to be the class clown), Ty Pennington (the host of Extreme Makeover who is a great carpenter), Paul Orfalea (Founder of Kinko’s).  A lot of these people, if you read about them, had difficulties as children and even later on as adults. Some dropped out of college; some couldn’t focus in school, many were told by teachers that they wouldn’t be able to amount to anything.  They were once where your child is today. (For more famous people who made it with ADHD go to www.parenting.com)

I’m not saying that because your child has ADHD he/she is bound to be successful if left untreated. I am saying that if your child has ADHD-like symptoms, this does not mean their brain is not functioning correctly. It means that you need to find the root of this problem in your child and treat that, after which you will find that the child’s symptoms will be reversed or significantly reduced.

If you are a parent of a child that finds it difficult to focus, pay attention and is hyperactive and disruptive, here’s what you need to immediately think- ‘These symptoms are telling me that there is some form of stress in my child’s spirit, body and brain that is impeding his/her ability to learn and behave appropriately.  I must find and treat this stress so that my child can stop grappling with these problems’.

There are ways to determine if the child’s body is in stress. His/her body might be screaming for a change in his/her diet. This child’s spirit might be calling for some peace and understanding or a certain need to be met that is currently not being met. The child’s spirit, body and brain could be looking for the right amount of hormones that will help remove the stress.

So clear the murky waters of unnecessary shame, fear and guilt and replace this with hope and lots of AH’s.  Learn how to identify the underlying root cause/s of your child’s symptoms.  Stop using the term ADHD as something negative and start practicing the kind of parenting behaviors that will free that unique wonderful child buried by problematic symptoms.  Besides your children being go getters and likely to start their own business and pay for your retirement later on (big plus), they will also bring you great joy in knowing that you intervened in the right ways at the right time so that they could be everything they were intended to be. Unique!

Almost every time, after such a terrible event, we hear that as a child, or as a teenager or an adult, the perpetrator was ‘strange.’  The Newtown shooter was also described as ‘strange.’

There is good news and bad news.
The bad news is that traditional medicine views being ‘strange,’ (in whatever form it takes), as some form of mental disease and so it falls in the realm of psychiatry, psychology or neurology.   And often, as was the case with the Newtown shooter, the child is given a diagnostic label such as possibly  ADHD, ADD, OCD Aspergers, Autistic – the list of possible labels is long.   This is what happens with compartmentalized medicine –where healthcare practitioners look at symptoms ONLY through the lenses of their specific specialization.

The good news is that something truly exciting is happening  in the treatment of behavior and mood problems in children.  For the first time in many years healthcare practitioners are now able to prevent, reduce or reverse all kinds of learning, behavior and mood symptoms.  They are doing this by challenging compartmentalized medicine and replacing it with an approach that treats the body, brain and spirit, as ONE system.  No more seeing people as a collection of separate parts, each of which functions separately.  Instead we are treated as one whole system where every part of us is inter-related and interdependent.

The good news is that these practitioners ask: “Why is this happening in this child?”    In other words they are looking for the underlying root causes and not for a traditional diagnoses.  To find these causes, they will look at the WHOLE child – the spirit, body and brain.

The bad news about traditional mental health care is that it is not concerned with the “Why”.  These practitioners ask the question: “What is the child’s diagnosis?”  By doing this they see only the part of the problem that they are trained to see.   When they have a diagnosis, they then treat the symptoms with medication.  They do not explore the reason for the problem.

Spirit-Body-Brain medicine treats the Whole child.

Research based information now supports the fact that ongoing emotional stress will trigger ongoing physiological stress and that this will, in turn, stress the brain.  So instead of psychiatrists only looking for the DSM diagnostic label, or neurologists looking for a brain disorder, they need to also be looking for what is happening in the child’s body.

It has now been shown that many physiological conditions can cause behaviors that  mental healthcare providers are diagnosing as being mood or behavior disorders.

Imagine this ‘what if” scenario

It is highly possible that emotional distress, in combination with unidentified associated physiological conditions could have triggered the shooters behaviors.  The problem is that the psychiatrists, psychologists and neurologists were compartmentalizing this as a mental illness and labeling and medicating him.

What if the Newtown shooter hadbeen treated by a practitioner who is skilled in treating the WHOLE child – who knows how to treat the spirit-body-brain as one?   The scenario would then have possibly played out this way:

• The healthcare practitioner would have treated him for emotional stress, in order to heal and restore his spirit

• At the same time, this practitioner would have investigated whether the emotional stress had triggered any physiological malfunctions in the shooter’s body.    This practitioner may have found, for example, that the shooter had unidentified intestinal fungus and/or vitamin deficiencies and/or or heavy metal toxicity or food sensitivity to the very foods he craved and loved the most.  Or a host of other possibilities. Remember:  these conditions can create symptoms that mimic so-called behavior and mood disorders.
  

It is entirely possible that by finding and treating the underlying root causes in this way, the signs of “strangeness’ the Newtown shooter reportedly displayed may have been cured.  It is entirely possible that he would no longer have displayed the behaviors that were labeled as Aspergers or Autistic.

It is entirely possible that today he may have been a productive young man and a benefit to society.

What are the implications of this for all parents?
Let me be clear. I am most certainly not saying that all children with behavior and mood problems have the potential to commit terrible acts of violence.  Most definitely not!   I am saying that if you are a parent of a child struggling with learning, behavior or mood symptoms  please do not fall into the trap of traditional compartmentalized medicine when treating your child.

Parents I urge you to ‘Take Charge’!
1.    Stop focusing on diagnostic labels and treating symptoms.  Instead start looking for the underlying root causes and treat these.  You will be amazed at the positive changes you will see in your child.

2.   Find a healthcare practitioner who knows how to do this.  The majority of mainstream healthcare professionals do not.

Be your child’s best advocate.  Become informed about the critical difference between treating the symptoms versus finding and treating the  underlying root causes.  Then let me know about how choosing this approach has changed your child’s life!

Dr Gluckman is a health coach and behavior specialist.  She works with parents that have children with learning, behavior and mood challenges.

I too lost a child.  One moment she was there and then she was gone, taken by a virulent and terrible form of meningitis, known as meningococcyl septicaemia.   She was 21 years old.  The last time I saw her she was wearing white shorts and a white shirt. With her dark, long hair, and beautiful dark eyes, she looked stunning.   She kissed me on her way out to meet her boyfriend.  I never saw her alive again. Yesterday – December 16^th was the anniversary of her death and each year on the date, I still struggle to believe that she is really gone.

I cannot stop thinking about the shock and horror that these parents are experiencing.  I know from my own experience that when you lose a child in a totally unexpected way, processing the loss is incredibly difficult to deal with.   A parent is never ever prepared to lose a child, even when they know it is inevitable due to a prolonged illness. How can you prepare yourself for something so devastating?   But when it happens in the most unpredictable, split second way, the shock for the parent is indescribable.

I do have some thoughts I would like to share with you about what could have happened that caused the shooter to behave in this way.  And how this could have possibly been prevented.  But not today.  Perhaps in my next blog.

Today is about sending strength to the bereaved.

That’s not fun.

Parents are motivated by the very best intentions, searching for, and trying anything and everything that may help their child overcome the learning, behavior or mood issues that hold them back from being the happy, healthy, motivated and talented child they want to be.  A huge amount of time, money and energy is spent to help the kids overcome their problems.   And too often, the problems persist, sometimes to a lesser degree, but most often they do not go away.

I believe that parents and healthcare providers are asking the wrong questions.  They are asking, ‘WHAT condition does this child have?’ instead of,  ‘WHY is this happening in this particular child?’

To find the answer to the question ‘why?’  we need to stop focusing on all the outward signs and symptoms,  like looking only at the outer layers of the onion, instead of going to the center of the onion where we will discover what the real essence of these issues are.  The list below represents the outer layers of the onion.  When we focus on treating these outer symptoms, the central underlying root cause remains unidentified and untreated and kids continue to struggle.  Dealing with symptoms instead of going to the core of the problem is a vicious cycle that has a negative effect on the entire family, emotionally socially, financially and physically because it does not make the problem go away.

While parents and teachers are focusing on these outward symptoms, labeling and diagnosing the kids, seeking help from all kinds of healthcare practitioners, talking about this, feeling stressed and overwhelmed, what they are not doing is dealing with why this is happening.  What is the root cause?

You will know that you are focusing on the outer layers of the onion and not the real cause when you spend time, money and emotion on trying different ways to remove the child’s following symptoms:

• Cannot focus and pay attention.
• Have a number of learning deficits.
• Are underachieving.
• Are continuously unhappy, anxious or angry.
• Have health issues – overweight, eczema, asthma, amongst many other possibilities.
• Behave in ways that elicit negative feedback.
• Are bullying or being bullied.
• Have low self-esteem and self-confidence.
• Are obsessive compulsive.
• And the list goes on and on.

What is at the core of these problems?

1. Emotional Stress.  Of course there can be many reasons for this.  One of the major reasons is that we focus on superficial values, such as achieving high grades, excelling in sport, and being the popular kid.  The message this sends the child is:  Who you are is not as important as the grades that you get, the friends that you have and being a winner on the sports field.

1. Physiological Stress created, amongst other things, by unhealthy eating and by the lack of physical exercise.

So what can parents do differently?

1. Take a long deep breath. Let yourself know that your child has unique talents that can be uncovered and released by identifying and removing the true root causes that are preventing the child from tapping into his/her true gifts.
2. Stop dealing with the outward layers of the onion and start looking at the root cause/s.
3. Find a healthcare professional who knows how to do this.  The majority of mainstream healthcare professionals do not.  To find the right healthcare professional you need to ask whether they practice a combination of functional behavior and functional or systemic medicine. 

To learn more about functional behavior and functional medicine and how this is helping children overcome learning, behavior and mood challenges and tap into their true potential go to  www.parentstakecharge.com or www.teacherstakecharge.com

1.       What goes into the child’s mouth?

2.       What comes out of your mouth?

Okay what do I mean by this.

What goes into the child’s mouth?

The vast majority of children who are struggling to learn, feel happy and behave in positive ways, are unknowingly eating certain foods that either trigger these problems or aggravate them.  If they continue to eat foods that are putting stress on the way their body and brain functions, it will be extremely difficult to reduce or remove their learning and behavior challenges.  Keep in mind that every child’s body is unique and will respond uniquely to different foods.  So as a parent you want to know the following four things about what goes into your child’s mouth:

1. Is this particular food my child is eating causing stress and inflammation in his/her body and brain?
2. Has my child got any hidden food sensitivities that I have been unaware of?  In other words, is this a food that my child is sensitive to?
3. Is my child craving and eating the very foods that are upsetting the way his body functions?
4. Am I unknowingly feeding my child foods that are switching his brain off?

There are many easy ways to discover the answers to the above questions and it is certainly worth doing.   Imagine the joy of being able to remove something from your child’s diet and within days or weeks seeing significant positive changes in the child.

What comes out of your mouth?

Here is a hugely important fact:  What comes out of your mouth directly affects your child’s chemistry.  Children with learning, behavior or mood issues need to have the kind of conversations with their parents and teachers that will stimulate the healthy chemistry in their bodies and brains.   If parents and teachers speak to kids in a way that has a negative impact on the chemistry of their brain and body, it will be extremely difficult to reduce or remove their learning and behavior challenges. So as a parent you may want to think about this:

1. Could the way I speak to my child be creating stress and inflammation in my child’s body and brain?  (Just as there are inflammatory foods, so there are inflammatory conversations and inflammatory language).
2. Do the words I choose when I speak to my child, add to my child’s problem, rather than help it?
3. Do I have more healthy conversations with my kids than unhealthy ones?
4. Am I unknowingly saying things that switch the child’s brain off?

If your child is grappling with learning and behavior and emotional issues,  it is vital that you understand how to monitor and manage what goes into his or her mouth and what comes out of your mouth.  The trick is to know how to do this is a way that deals directly with the unique functioning needs of your child’s body and brain.

Dr. Sandy Gluckman teaches parents and educators how the behavior and the language they use in their conversations with children can increase or decrease learning, mood and behavior problems.

Here’s the truth

Children who struggle to learn, feel good or enjoy life are totally normal, wonderful, talented, intelligent and creative beings – except that there is something that is happening in their biological systems which has thrown their chemistry off balance.  In a vast majority of cases the problem lies in their digestive systems not their brains. When we find and treat that hidden biological cause of the problem, these children will learn easily, be happy and feel good about themselves and life.

The epidemic of learning and behavior issues in children and teens today is made worse by parents, teachers and the uninformed public thinking and believing that there is something seriously wrong with the brains of kids who cannot learn or who display negative behaviors.  The only thing that is wrong is that they are being treated by the wrong healthcare practitioner.  They need a healthcare practitioner that knows how to look for, and treat, the real underlying biological root causes that create the symptoms they are showing.  In a vast majority of cases the problem lies in their digestive systems not their brains.

It is time for us all as parents to Take Charge!  Let’s speak out loudly against the untruths and misconceptions about  why children cannot learn or why they behave badly or feel depressed.  It is time to:

1. Speak out against doctors that continue to mask these symptoms with drugs.
2. Speak to each other about things we have tried that have made a positive difference. 
3. Speak to the schools and the teachers about the best way to handle these kids.

Above all let’s be sure to remember to speak out and tell our children, many times a day, how great they are!