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There are many diet approaches which have been distributed many times for babies with developmental difficulties such as Non Organic Failure To Thrive Syndrome. The GFCF and Feingold Diets are among the favorites for this area.

Breaking The Paradigm

I want to praise the developers of these diets for shifting the paradigm about what might be causing the world-wide increase in the occurrence of developmental issues for babies. For decades our modern doctors could not understand that what a person consumed could affect that person’s developmental health. These diets are understandably popular in the groups involved with Autism Spectrum Disorder, as well as other developmental issues and these diets are demonstrating that they are dramatically affecting the futures of these children.

These diets succeed for some children with immediate improvements in a range of measurable symptoms. For other children there are some minor improvements. And, for others there is no improvement at all from these diets. One of the ongoing questions about these diets is why are some dramatically helped by these diets and others are not helped at all?

Isabel and I have been working with children with developmental problems for decades. We are now concentrating in this area of re-engaging the developmental process. One of our discoverys has been an realization of the relationship between intolerances and developmental issues.

Sensitivities and Intolerances

We all have some elements in our environment to which we are sensitive, or of which we have an intolerance. This is not like an allergy where we have a forceful and fast immunological response to some thing. This is much more like a subtle defensive reaction we have to some environmental factors over time.

If a person is allergic to bee stings, they have an forceful and quick response to being stung by a bee. They can have swelling or even enter life-threatening anaphylactic shock. But, consider the possibility that someone has a sensitivity to, or an intolerance of, a deodorant soap bar. They may not have a response to it until after they use it for many days, and then they might develop a minor skin rash as the reaction because of that sensitivity or intolerance. If you determine that this rash is a response to the deodorant soap bar, you can stop using it and the rash will fade away.

Developmental Problems

We recognized that babies with developmental issues, such as Non Organic Failure To Thrive Syndrome, have collections environmental factors to which they have these defensive responses. And, it is the collections of these multiple responses which seems to be at the root of these developmental problems. The compounding of these defensive responses results in the body shutting down functions which are not needed for survival today.

This defensive response process evolved in a less contaminated time and the body only needed this defensive response to sustain itself for a few minutes or hours while the person walked or was carried away from the environmental factors to which the body was reacting. A few minutes of a conservative, defensive reaction was usually enough for offending thing to be avoided. So, if the body shuts down some functions not needed while getting away from the offending environmental factor, it would not have an impact on the long-term survival of the person.

Shutting Down The Developmental Process

The difficulty is that our world is much more contaminated and children with developmental diagnoses are much more sensitive to contaminants than when we evolved these response processes. If the babies have these kinds of stacking defensive reactions to something which is eaten at every meal, the defensive responses can never end. If the child has these compounding defensive responses to the laundry detergent or fabric softener used by the family, the child always has residue of those chemicals against the skin, so the responses will never end. Imagine if the child has an ongoing series of these kinds of intolerances and reactions and the child’s body never gets to stop having these reactions.

One of the functions commonly shut down in these piled up defensive responses is the developmental process. If a child’s defensive response includes shutting down the developmental process, and the defensive reaction never stops, the developmental process never gets to move the child forward toward maturation. In this case, the child does not get to develop.

Gluten Free And Feingold Diet Lists

Here is where the Feingold and GFCF Diets come in to play. These diets provide a list of restrictions of environmental factors to which numerous children with developmental problems are reacting defensively. So, the children with developmental diagnoses who have an intolerance of the items restricted by the diet will show some amazing results. The children who have an individual menu of intolerances which is aligned with the diet will benefit from it. For those children who try the diet, but whose set of sensitivities are not aligned well with the restrictions of the diet, there will be little help.

For this reason we recognize the significant contributions the GFCF and Feingold Diets have made in our understanding of developmental problems. They help us all understand that the children with developmental issues are reacting to some list of things in the environment and we can help these children get back on track, if we eliminate those things from the child’s environment on their list.

These diets are on the right track, but there is an assumption that some particular things in the environment are causing the developmental problems. The problem with this assumption is that the defensive reactions these children have is about their own personal list of offending factors (not a generic list). Their own list probably will not include all the restricted items of the generic diet. Each child must be using a program which is tailored to their own individual list of intolerances.

Intolerance Evaluations Is The Key

What we have developed is an approach for testing each of our client children for their own specific menu of sensitivities. This gives the parents a precise menu of factors to eliminate from the child’s environment. So, instead of a generic diet program which may (or may not) have the items a specific child needs to restrict, we give each parent a precise list of things their child needs to avoid.

Much More Than A Diet Program

Our testing approach involves anything that the child eats, breathes, and touches. This includes more than what the child eats and drinks. It involves testing the child’s responses to medications, household chemicals, and everything else in the child’s environment. Our thorough testing approach will help you design an appropriate list to clear all of the offending environmental factors from your child’s environment.

What Happens When Your Child Stops These Defensive Reactions?

There are many different types of developmental issues in children. Each has their own set of signals which are identified as the set of signals of that particular diagnosis. Many children have so many of these symptoms that they have multiple diagnoses, because their own set of symptoms cross the boundaries from one diagnostic category to another.

Because of this symptomatic and diagnostic complexity, we cannot predict which symptoms a child will develop out of first as a result of living in an environment where their offending factors have been eliminated. But, our experience is clear that when children enter and stay in an environment free of their offending environmental factors, their developmental process restarts and their developmental process begins to move them through t
heir missed or next developmental steps. You know this approach is being successful when you see your child start moving through developmental stages.

We encourage our clients to establish a developmental baseline with our free Developmental Checklist before they start working with us. We encourage them to use this same checklist, monthly, to track their child’s developmental progress as they continue.

By tracking the child’s developmental forward progress, parents can see that their child has re-engaged the developmental process. This movement means that the child is growing past the symptoms which were used as the basis of the child’s diagnosis in the first place.

Sensitivity and Intolerance Re-Testing For The Long Term

After some months of developmental progress using our program, we encourage parents to re-evaluate their child. Many of the offending things will have stopped producing defensive responses, and the child can slowly bring those things back into the environment. Many other things will still cause the defensive reactions and will need to stay on the list for this child. Which items can be brought back and which items need to stay restricted is individual for each child.

Is It Time For Your Child To Get Back On Track?

If your child has developmental diagnoses such as Non Organic Failure To Thrive Syndrome, come by our free, private social network for parents. Talk with us and each other about your child’s situation.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 25th, 2009 at 11:39 pm and is filed under Parenting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.