I can understand that most parents would not want to volunteer their children for these drug trials.  So where does this leave us as parents when it comes to the vitally important decision:  do we medicate or don’t we?

We have one of three choices:

1. To be in denial about the fact that many of the medications we give our children have not been adequately tested.
2. To know this but shrug our shoulders and ignore it.  Perhaps use a rationalization like, ‘the doctor knows what he is doing’ to make ourselves feel better.
3. To know that there is inadequate pediatric drug research and say, ‘no drugs for us!’  First show me how to help my child’s body use its natural ability to heal itself.  Show me how to help my child find health and wellness naturally.  What about what I am currently doing needs to change?

If you decide to go with option 3 above then you would want to start by learning the answer to 7 questions:

What changes must I make to:

1. What I feed my child.
2. The daily supplements I give the child.
3. Remove toxins in my home.
4. How I speak to my child.
5. My relationship with the child.
6. Our family interactions.
7. The layout of our home environment.

Children cannot find the right words to tell you what they are feeling and what they need to be different.  So when the child has a health, learning, mood or behavior problem, think of it as the child’s way of  ‘telling’ you: “ mom, dad, teacher, something is not working, something needs changing.  And I need you to find out what it is that is causing me to feel and behave in this way.  I do not need you to drug me because by doing that you are not ‘listening’ to what my body, brain and spirit are trying to tell you.”

Have you been listening to your child’s symptoms?

Dr. Sandy Gluckman’s, Parents, Take Charge! program , teaches parents how to help children overcome learning, mood and behavior problems without using prescribed medication

1. Stress in children is currently a largely unrecognized and untreated problem and is reaching epidemic  proportions.
2. This high level of stress is the trigger for all kinds of learning, behavior, mood and health symptoms.
3. Leading healthcare practitioners are now turning the treatment model on its head by treating the stress as the disorder and ADHD, ADD, depression, defiance, and all other learning and behavior problems as the symptoms of stress.

There are two Sources of Stress

Children (and adults) experience stress from two sources- their inside world and their outside world. 

-           The inside world refers to biologically unhealthy and toxic conditions in the child’s body that have remained undetected and untreated.
-           The outside world refers to emotionally unhealthy and toxic conditions in the child’s life that remain unresolved and are causing distress to the child.

Biological and emotional stress always goes hand-in-hand – a hurting body creates a hurting spirit and vice versa.  Therefore treatment must address the body as well as the spirit of the child.  When we do this true healing happens.

The Story of Josh

Take for example, nine year old Josh, who woke up feeling tired, had a low attention span,  was underachieving, had low energy, craved carbohydrates, hated to exercise, didn’t seem to hear instructions and had regular meltdowns.  As you can imagine this caused problems with his teachers, parents and peers.  The result was Josh’s self-esteem had been battered. He felt like he was a disappointment to his parents and teachers and that he wasn’t like the other kids.  He saw himself as ‘a kid with a problem.’

Josh is lucky because his parents did not want to give him prescription medication.  They wanted to get to the underlying cause and with the right healthcare practitioner they did.  They discovered high indicators of bacteria and yeast in his gut and several food sensitivities.  When the bacteria and yeast were treated and Josh was on the right diet, his symptoms were significantly reduced.  But this did not help him with his self-esteem issues.  After teaching his parents how they could strengthen his self-confidence, Josh now feels very good about who he is and is thriving at school and socially.

If Josh’s parents had not understood that there is a relationship between Josh’s hurting spirit and something happening in his body, the bacteria and yeast would have continued to have a negative effect on his health and his behavior.  He would still be constantly dealing with negative responses from parents and teachers and feeling really bad about himself.  Josh would not have been able to become everything he is capable of being.   Josh’s story is an example of stress that begins with a physical issue that then becomes emotional and behavioral.  It can happen that the stress begins with an emotional issue which creates physical symptoms.

Parents, if your child is struggling with learning, behavior or mood challenges treat both the physical and emotional causes.   Watch your child thrive when you find practitioners that understand the body-brain-spirit relationship, and when you learn and practice body-brain-spirit parenting tools.

I have a question and I hope you will offer a comment for me to think about.
Have you noticed how your child’s body and spirit work together?   Have you seen how their spirit hurts when their body hurts and conversely how they get all kinds of physical ailments when their spirit is hurting?  Please share with us how you have seen this happen.

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What this means is that the higher your stress levels are, the lower the amount of joy you are able to feel for yourself or to give to others.  If you think about this statement, it is pretty scary, considering the amount of stress and pressure that seems to be so much a part of our way of life today. 

But here’s  the most confronting aspect of this relationship between stress and joy and it is the fact that the more stressed you are as a parent or a teacher,  the less joy your children or students  will experience when they are with you.    In other words, the amount of joy your children experience around you is directly linked to the amount of stress you exude – the higher your stress, the lower their joy.   Wow! 

So, as a parent or teacher, take a few moments to ask yourself:

Do I exude more stress than joy or more joy than stress?  
What are my kids absorbing from me – stress or joy?

There is Good Stress and Bad Stress.

We need to remember that not all stress is bad.  Good stress gives us the drive and energy and motivation to make good things happen and to live a responsible life.  This kind of healthy stress is always short-term.  Here’s what happens.  We are concerned about something – our stress level rises – this pushes us to deal with the issue – and the stress level returns again to normal levels. 

In the case of bad stress, our stress levels never go back down to normal.  Instead we continue to build more and more stress.  So chronic stress is bad stress and this is dangerous because it hurts the way our bodies our brains function.  I love the way Dr. Brazelton describes this …“Stress in small amounts is like sunshine – a little bit is fine.  But just like too much sunshine damages the skin, too much stress damages the brain.”

It is up to us as parents or teachers to Take Charge! of our own stress so that we do not steal the joy of the children around us.  I have a 5-step process for minimizing stress, but today let’s look at the first step, because this will determine whether you actually have the ability to deal with your stress or not.   This step is about Taking Ownership.   The goal of this step is to be brutally honest with ourselves by identifying whether the level of stress we feel is good stress or bad stress,  healthy stress or chronic stress.   By knowing this, we can avoid the trap of being in denial or ignoring something that is hurting us and our children.  (Feel free to email me if you would like a quick and easy assessment tool that will tell you whether your have chronic or healthy stress.)

What do you think?  Do you have the level of stress that is stealing your joy and your children’s joy?  It’s a tough question, I know, but one that we do really need to be courageous enough to think about.

In her blogs and her videos – Monday Morning Coaching Tips – Dr Gluckman shares the 5-Step Process to Recognize, Reduce and Remove Stress.  

Here’s the problem.  Children can only develop this kind of inner strength, resilience and courage when they have a healthy body, brain and spirit. Unfortunately the numbers of children today with learning, mood and behavior problems are reaching staggering, epidemic proportions.  How can this next generation be expected to go boldly forward and courageously take on the challenges of the 21^st century when so many of them are dealing with emotional, learning and behavior challenges that are holding them back?  This means that the most critical skill that parents need today is the ability to help their children build healthy bodies, sharp brains and strong spirits.  By doing this, parents will be giving their children a robust and resilient foundation; freeing them up to focus on building up the inner strength they will need for happiness and success. Parents have amazing healing powers but for too long now parents have given their healing power away to others.

It is time for parents to reclaim this power!

Parents with the right healing skills and knowledge can:

• Help their children’s bodies, brains and spirits function in the best way.
• Prevent ADD, ADHD, OCD, Autism, depression, behavior problems and many other symptoms that so many children grapple with today.
• Play a huge role in restoring the child to optimal health, (preferably without prescription drugs), if such issues have already occurred.

If you are a parent that is ready to Take Charge there are some requirements:

1. You have a passionate desire to play an active role in your child’s health and healing.
2. You are prepared to devote time to learning about the most amazing things happening in the fields of body, brain and spirit health today.
3. You are prepared to learn new skills.
4. You have lots of courage, persistence and resilience to stay on track knowing that you are giving your child the greatest gift of their lifetime.

If you meet these criteria (and I am sure you do because you are reading this article), then may you be blessed as you travel on this incredible journey to giving your child a healthy body, brain and spirit.

I call these inflammatory conversations.

The other day I was at a children’s birthday party.  I became aware of a mom roughly pulling her son by his arm to a corner of the room.  She bent down over him and although I could not hear what she was saying, I guessed that she was having a really negative conversation with him.  Her whole body was taut, her face was tight, her eyes glared and she was wagging her finger close to his face. The boy was looking down, his body was hunched and he was clearly feeling embarrassed.

I know that, as parents, we all have times when we have negative interactions with our kids.  The occasional negative conversation is not a problem.   However, parents can be so stressed and pressurized that they may not realize how often they are engaging with the child in a way that is stressful for both the parent and the child.  The more often a parent interacts with a child using words and body language and tone of voice that is discouraging, angry, unconstructive, off-putting or negating, the higher the chances are that the child will experience consistently high levels of stress.  Chronic stress stimulates high levels of an hormone called Cortisol which can then create inflammation in the body and brain.

Are you having inflammatory conversations with your child?

Inflamed brains cannot pay attention and learn.  Here are just some examples of inflammatory language.

“I don’t believe this. Did you not hear a single thing I said?”
“What about ‘don’t do that!’ did you NOT understand?”
“No! No! No!” You never ever do that to your sister!”
“Are you listening?  Do you hear me?!”
“How many times have I told you not to …”
“You’re impossible!  You drive me crazy.”
“Hurry up!  You’re late for a change!”
“Why can’t you ever …”
“Why do you always…”

Think about how often you use this kind of inflammatory language.  If it is too often, then it is important that you change the way you communicate because it might not have occurred to you that this could be literally causing inflammation and aggravating ADHD-like symptoms, as well as many others.

Replace inflammatory conversations with healing conversations.   How you say something can have a dramatic effect on the symptoms your child is struggling with.  Start by becoming aware of what and how you communicate with your child and replace the inflammatory conversations with healing conversations.  In the next article I will discuss healing conversations.

Do you have stories or examples of how healing conversations sound?  Please let me know so that I can include these in my next blog.

As I listened to her, I heard three beliefs that are completely out of date.  They are that …

1. Three year olds shouldn’t be stressed, especially those that come from happy, safe environments. 
2.  If the child is stressed this means the child has an emotional problem.
3. Model parents wouldn’t have pre-schoolers that feel stressed.   

Wrong on all counts!  Here is what the up-to-date facts are.    

1. There are no age limits for stress.  Even babies can feel stress. Stress used to be seen as being a problem that mostly affected adults.   This is, unfortunately, no longer true.  In fact, stress is the most dangerous and most ignored condition affecting children today.   
2. tress is not purely an emotional issue.  Stress is emotional as well as physical.  It could be that something is hurting the child’s body which will then also cause emotional stress.  Or something is hurting the child’s spirit, which then upsets the child’s body.  It doesn’t matter which one comes first.  It is important to understand that stress will always be felt both in the body as well as in the spirit. 
3. Parenting today is no longer the same as it used to be.  Today parents are required to be knowledgeable and up-to-date about the latest research in health and wellness, stress in kids and the body-brain-spirit connection. 

This means that 21^st century parents have new and different responsibilities.

What parents need to know about the body-brain-spirit connection.

Stress in the body

As I mentioned above, stress can start in the body and affect the spirit or start in the spirit and affect the body.  But they will always be interconnected.  Let’s start with stress in the body.   What could cause the child’s body to be distressed? 

Here is just a short list:

1.   Hidden food allergies.
2.  Toxins and chemicals in your home and the child’s environment that the child is sensitive to.
3.   Problems in your child’s digestive system that you are unaware of.
4.   Parasites, bacteria, fungus, worms in the intestine that could be creating stress.
5.  Vitamin deficiencies that you are unaware of.

Too often doctors treat the outward symptoms, such as tummy aches, meltdowns, temper tantrums, clinging, sleeplessness,  constant crying,  always hungry, never hungry,  rashes, constipation, diarrhea… without asking some very important body- spirit stress questions, such as, ‘what do you wash the child’s clothes with; does your child’s body have enough vitamin D3, Omega 3, Magnesium, Zinc and other important vitamins; does the child sleep with a dog ; what food does your child crave;  is the child’s body  absorbing, digesting and eliminating food correctly; what are mom or dad’s stress levels like?

Digestive Stress

A very high percentage of children who have stress in the body, have digestive problems.  The latest research shows an amazing connection between the gut and the brain as well as the gut and the spirit.  When something is not working in your child’s gut it will create body-brain-spirit stress.   Read ‘The 5 Questions to ask your healthcare practitioner’  

Stress in the spirit.

What is spirit?

It is important to understand my definition of spirit.  It is the self-confidence, identity, energy, identity  and personality of the child.  A child with strong spirit is one who feels:  ‘I am me and I feel great being me!’   When a child feels scared, insecure, or anxious, their spirit hurts. There are a myriad of reasons why a pre-schooler (or a child of any age) could feel such negative feelings.  One of these is having parents who are stressed.  

Let’s face it.  It’s a stressful world.  Moms and dads are under increasing pressure to do it all – hold down pressurizing jobs, create the perfect home, and raise the very best children they can.   Parents are used to juggling multiple deadlines for themselves, as well as their children, and this can be pretty stressful.  Moms and dads very often are not in excellent health themselves because their stress has started to take a toll on them. 

Stress is catchy.

When we’re stressed our kids know it, through our faces, our voices, and the tense way we interact with them.  Young children, especially pre-schoolers, are quick to sense our moods.  They know when we’re unhappy or angry.   They are immensely intuitive and perceptive.  You cannot fake it.  They will know. 

Many clients tell me, ‘I hide my stress. I smile and pretend that I am okay.’  Pre-schoolers ‘know’ so much more than we give them credit for.  This is why, as parents we need to be aware that if we are stressed, so will our kids be.   When your kids feel your stress, this can cause them to feel emotionally distressed.  

 7 steps of action you can take now to reduce the possibility of your child feeling stress.

1.  Take the decision to reduce your stress.  Seek help with this if you need to.  Though sometimes it feels like there is nothing we can do to change our lifestyles, the truth is we do have a choice.  We don’t have to live with constant negative pressure, and then have to deal with the effects on our kids. The wellbeing of your child’s body, brain and spirit starts with you.
2.   Make sure that your child has a healthy gut because this is directly linked to a healthy brain and a healthy spirit.
3.  We are all exposed to many toxins, particularly from food, water and air, from preservatives, antibiotics, hormones, fertilisers and cleaning products, to mention just a few.  Be sure that your child is not having a negative reaction to any of these.
4.  Reduce and remove emotional toxins in your family relationships.  Do not expose your child to bad vibes.
5. Ensure that when you are with your child, your body language is calm and tranquil.
6. Use a calm, centered, quiet tone of voice.
7. Build lots creativity, laughter, and fun into each day.

So if they are hurting emotionally why do their tummies hurt? 

Here is a fascinating piece of information about which so much is currently being written.  The brain and the gut work together.  When one is hurting, the other is too.  When one feels good, the other does too. This is because the neurotransmitters found in the brain, such as  serotonin, dopamine, glutamate, norepinephrine and others,  that are  responsible for everything we think and feel,  are also found in the gut.

This means that as a parent it is important to ensure that the child has a healthy gut because this is directly linked to a healthy brain and a healthy spirit. We need to be sure that the child does not have any toxins in their gut because these toxins disturb the child’s ability to function normally, in every way.  We are all exposed to many toxins, particularly from food, water and air; from preservatives, antibiotics, hormones, fertilizers and cleaning products, to mention just a few.  Today, though, I want to speak about a different kind of toxin – emotional toxins.

Toxic thoughts.

Children with stomach aches often have toxic thoughts stemming from negative beliefs about themselves. I’m not smart enough, I’m not pretty enough, I’m too fat, others don’t like being with me, I am going to flunk this test…  Low self-esteem and low self-confidence cause a lot of, ‘I’m Not OK’  thinking, which causes high levels of anxiety, which then upsets the balance of chemicals in the stomach and the brain.  The neurotransmitters that the child needs to learn feel good and relate well to others no longer function as they should because of the toxic thoughts and the anxiety.  This imbalance in the neurochemicals can:

•   Trigger learning disabilities
•   Contribute to autism
•   Contribute to depression, anxiety, behavioral, and memory problems
•   Contribute to immune problems
•   Cause allergies, asthma, fatigue, headache, irritability, ear infections, sneezing, runny nose, coughing, hives, eczema, and itching

Toxic Relationships

Toxic relationships will have the same negative effects on a child as toxic thoughts.  Last week, following a presentation I had just given to a group of parents, one mom approached me and shared how her child had started to have severe stomach pain several months ago.  She wondered whether it could be because the child’s new teacher was particularly nasty to her, calling her names and saying hurtful things to her This kind of toxic relationship can be extremely damaging to the functioning of the child’s body, brain and spirit.  I encouraged the mom to have her son moved into a class with a different teacher as soon as possible.

Even just watching toxic relationships being played out in the family or the school environment is a toxic experience for the child, with negative health and well-being consequences.   What about our own relationships with our kids?  It is always easy to see when a relationship that our child has with someone else is toxic to their health and well-being.  Sometimes though we need to stop and ask ourselves, ‘Is there something I am doing, with all the best and loving intentions, that could actually be toxic for my child?’

It’s all about Chemistry

Relationships and thoughts can change a child’s chemistry for better or worse. If you hear these words quite often,  ‘mommy my tummy hurts,’ please stop and think about this:  ‘Is there something toxic going on in my child’s life?’  Find it and remove it.  Because treating the stomach ache, without identifying and treating the emotional toxins, will cause continued harm to the child’s body, brain and spirit.

Dr. Sandy Gluckman teaches parents and educators about the 7 toxic behaviors to avoid with their children and the 7 healing behaviors that build healthy bodies, brains and spirits.

Kids are competing for friends.  Kids all want to be friends with the most popular kids in school.  Being rejected by others is a child’s worst nightmare. Every Child wants others to want them as a friend.  They want to be able to bring their trophy friends home so mom and dad can be so proud of them.  They sense how important this is to their parents. 

What about the intense competition that happens on sports fields?  Children who have a natural athletic ability are glorified in most schools.  They are looked up to, admired and even hero worshipped by other kids, and by the adults around them.  Non athletic kids wish they could be just like them.  Knowing that they can’t, hurts.  Knowing that their parents wish they could be a budding sportsman also hurts.

Then there is the sibling rivalry that happens in most homes.  No matter how hard parents try not to let this happen, inevitably one child will feel less valued than another – whether rightly so or wrongly so. But perception is reality and if the child believes that mom and dad always see him as being the ‘problem’, this feels real to him.

As if all this isn’t tough enough, there is also the ‘beauty competition’. So much emphasis is placed on being good looking, having a great body and being perceived by others as being attractive.  Kids are not interested in being beautiful on the inside – they want to be beautiful on the outside.  And when they are not, it hurts.

And of course, there is the issue of materialistic competition.  Kids are aware of what cars their parents drive, what brand of sneakers and clothes they are wearing, what cell phones they are carrying, what laptop they are using … unfortunately, the list is long. Not being the smartest, most admired, sought-after, sporty, good-looking, cool kid, that wears the most desirable brands and has an iPhone, can cause children a great deal of stress.  (see my blog, If You want To know about Stress, ask the Kids.)

These Values are causing Stress-related Conditions.

Many parents say to me that this competition and pressure is the way their world is and the kids need to learn to cope.  A part of me agrees but the other part knows what harm this kind of competitive life is doing to children’s bodies, brains and spirits.

Those readers who follow me know that I believe that a hurting spirit always goes hand-in-hand with a hurting body.  It is not possible to have low self-esteem without this having a negative effect on the way the body and brain function. The opposite is also true.  The result is that millions of children have all kinds of behavior, mood and learning symptoms, which have been triggered by the stress of living in this highly competitive world.  This stress is one of the reasons why the numbers of children with ADD, ADHD, OCD, ODD, depression, bullying, meltdowns, underachievement, low motivation …are reaching such epidemic proportions.

What can you as a parent do?

Check on your own value system.  (Contact me and I will send you my Family Values Check List).  Are you falling into the trap of being grades-focused, materialistic, trying to make your child attractive and popular, dreaming about them being athletes, and feeling secretly disappointed when all this does not happen?  If you are focusing on competitive and superficial values, you are missing an amazing opportunity to teach your children that the only person they ever need to compete against is themselves.   Kids need to learn that all they need to do is to strive to be the very best they can be – because who they are, is just wonderful!

Dr. Sandy Gluckman’s , Parents, Take Charge  program , teaches parents how to help children overcome learning, mood and behavior problems without using prescribed medication.

First and foremost parents and teachers need to Take Charge of the stressful, high-pressure world our children are expected to cope with.  Some kids are able to cope with stress but there are thousands upon thousands who are not so resilient when it comes to stress and pressure.  It eats away at their spirit, their body and their brain.  And yet, what do most of us do about this?  We act like there is nothing we can do about the stress our children face.  In fact, we pile the stress on even thicker and faster.  We rush them to all kinds of after-school activities, thinking that we are doing them a disfavor if we don’t let them do this.  We rush home so they can do their homework.  We push them to get good grades.  We expect them to behave and socialize in ways that will make them shine amongst their peers.  We buy them all kinds of material ‘toys’ so that they can feel  like one of the gang.  As parents we so desperately want the very best for our children in every way.  So we stretch ourselves in terms of our time and our budget.  Then we become stressed.  And when we are stressed the kids know it.  They know it because our bodies, our behaviors, the expression on our faces, the tone of our voice, they tense way in which we interact with them all screams the message that ‘mommy /daddy is stressed!’

What does a little boy or girl or a teenage son or daughter do when their parent is stressed?  They absorb the stress and become stressed themselves.  One 7-year old told me:  ‘When my mommy is stressed, I feel sick.  I want to take the stress away and help her but I don’t know how.  So I get stressed too.’  He is seven years old and he is talking about stress!  Another told me that ‘when our teacher starts the class and if we feel she is stressed, we all behave badly until she goes kaboom!’

So, parents and teachers, the message of today’s blog is this:  Take Charge of your children’s stress by Taking Charge of your own stress.

The wellbeing of your child’s body, brain and spirit starts with you! Children absorb your stress. You cannot hide it. You cannot deny it. You cannot role-play or pretend you are not stressed.

Every single sign of every single learning, behavior and mood symptom that children display is triggered by stress.   Too often when we, or the children, show all kinds of symptoms of stress, we treat the symptoms but we often don’t do anything about removing the stress that caused it.

Your behavior as a parent plays a major role in increasing or reducing your child’s stress.  Here are the 7 parent behaviors that reduce stress:

• Be sure you body language is calm and tranquil.
• Use a warm, quiet tone of voice.
• Behave like you and your child are on the same team shooting for the same goal posts.
• Provide structure.
• Teach personal responsibility.
• Build creativity/laughter/fun into each task/day.
• Live by, and speak about, your family values.

Dr. Sandy Gluckman is the founder and developer of the Parents, Take Charge!  Program.  This is an education- skills-based program for parents and teachers designed to teach them the tools to support the natural healing abilities of the child’s body preferably without the use of prescription drugs.