Follow Jeremy’s Progress: Healing Autism and ADHD symptoms

Our son Jeremy was always more active than other kids his age.  Even before he was three months old, more experienced moms would tell me, “Oh!  You’ve got an active one!!” and they were right.  He was so active and into everything as soon as he could crawl that for the first three years of his life I couldn’t socialize.   I spent all my time chasing him and making sure he didn’t get into trouble.  It was lonely.

At age three, it was obvious to me that our son was different than the other kids at his preschool.  He was constantly moving, and rarely settled into an activity.  Sometimes, however, he would spend an hour on something he was really taken with, like a drum.  He seemed to need to touch everything he saw.  If something was breakable, he would break it.  He wasn’t playing with other kids on the playground, and while he would have short exchanges with other kids in the classroom, he didn’t engage as much as the other boys and girls.  Certain clothing bothered him tremendously, he hated sticky things like pudding and mashed potatoes, didn’t much like playing with playdough (but he loved eating it), and he became pickier about the foods he would eat.  He sucked on his shirt collar until there was a bit wet circle on his shirt.  He chewed on whatever was in his hand.  (I shudder to think about all the chemicals he has absorbed from all that leaching plastic he chewed on.)  He hated certain things, like having his hair dried.  He had to be held down to trim his fingernails.  He was terrified of the sound of flushing toilets, and refused to enter any public restrooms.  He was fascinated with merry-g0-rounds and would stand still and watch them for at least 20 minutes until I pulled him away, but he was too afraid to ride them.

He had physical symptoms too.  When he was very young, I wanted to be as environmentally responsible as possible, so I tried cloth diapers, but I couldn’t use them because he would cry 5 minutes after I put them on–like clockwork. He also had trouble sleeping because of reflux, which we treated with Zantac.  He had chronic ear infections.  As he got older, I noticed he had dark circles under his eyes.  His digestion was very sensitive.  Although his bowel movements were very regular, he would often have a red or even purple irritated ring around his anus.  He would get red bumps on his bottom.  His skin was extremely sensitive, chapping very easily in cold weather.  He also didn’t seem to hear me, even though his hearing seemed to be fine.  I would have to repeat myself several times before it registered to him that I was talking to him.

Getting him to behave was difficult too–often he was incredibly stubborn.  Discipline techniques that were successful for other parents just didn’t work for Jeremy.  Regardless of consequences, Jeremy would do what he was driven to do.  My parents decided I was failing to discipline him.  After giving us the Jack-in-the-Box routine 100 times in one night, we realized “broken record” technique of silently putting him back in his room and putting him to bed just wasn’t going to work.  Getting him to stay in his bed to go to sleep would have been comical, had it not been such a relentless and exhausting experience.

I am not one to “wait and see what happens.”  It seems to me that for many important reasons, if a child needs help the best time to help is now, not when they are older.  So as soon as I realized our son needed help, I took action.  I was concerned about autism, and also about ADHD, and I scheduled a psychological evaluation.  The psychologist told me the evaluation would be at least six months away, and I didn’t want to wait that long to get help.  So I decided, regardless of the future diagnosis, to proceed as though our son was diagnosed with autism.

I soon learned that a lot of children with autism have been helped by taking away wheat and dairy, so I put Jeremy on a gluten-free, dairy-free diet.  By replacing his favorite foods with gluten-free, dairy-free substitutes it wasn’t has hard as I thought it would be.  I also began sensory integration therapy in order to help him make more sense of his sensory world.

After being on this diet for a full three months, Jeremy was a different child.  He was calmer.  He didn’t chew on anything anymore, not even his shirt.  He interacted with the kids in his classroom much more.   His sensory OT was amazed at the changes.  He wasn’t so distractible during treatment.  She could “reach” him more easily.  Although he still could be difficult at times, he no longer responded to his environment as though it was assaulting him.

After consulting the book The Mislabeled Child I realized it was possible that Jeremy might be suffering from auditory sensitivities.  I took him to the best audiologist in our area for the diagnosis of auditory problems such as sensitivity and central processing disorder, Judith Paton.  She found that he was sensitive to two particular frequencies of sound and that he would likely be helped by Berard AIT.  She set up the filters on her equipment to filter out the frequencies to which he was most sensitive, and did the therapy for two weeks straight, twice a day.  The next Monday at preschool, Jeremy started playing with the other kids in the yard without hesitation.  Once again, he was a different kid.  It was marvelous.

But Jeremy was still different from other kids his age.  We felt we needed to do more to help him be calm and to settle into his body so he would be available for learning.  We also hoped to be able to resolve his digestive problems so that he could eat wheat and dairy again.

We had heard cranial-sacral work can help clear the eustatian tubes of children with chronic ear infections. We decided to try it.  Our first cranial-sacral practitioner was wonderful, and the work made Jeremy feel great.  Then we heard about a very talented osteopath, Dr. Mark Rosen, and wanted to try him too.  We ended up using his wife, Inessa, who he trained.  She was able to feel the pumping in the cranial sacral system and quantify it.  “He is at a four now, you want him to be at an 8 or 9.  Right now his head feels like a bowling ball.”  She worked on Jeremy and got his system flowing well again.  After three or four visits, we were able to spread out the frequency of our visits, seeing her only once a month, then once every three months.  Inessa told us she did not expect him to get any more ear infections.

We decided to try homeopathy, as it has greatly helped children with his symptoms.  Our first homeopath used dry dosing methods and put him on a remedy which seemed to strengthen his sytem so that he no longer got colds all the time.  Between homeopathy and cranial-sacral work, Jeremy almost completely stopped getting ear infections.  Our homeopath was helping us resolve long-standing health issues too.  But eventually, we began to feel that our homeopath was “guessing” at what remedies would be helpful.  He was not approaching homeopathy with confidence, but seemed to be experimenting with the remedies–on us.  We became deeply skeptical and dissatisfied with his approach.  Eventually, I realized I was chronically tired, my husband got pneumonia badly enough his doctor almost hospitalized him, and Jeremy was in pain all night, crying every 20 minutes because he had gotten the wrong remedy.  Needless to say, we dropped our homeopath and went searching for a new one.

A mom who had tried 5 local homeopaths and failed to find one she had confidence in recommended Dr. Luc de Schepper in Pacific Palisades, California.  Dr. Luc is wonderful, and we were very happy to have gotten this referral to a homeopath who is experienced and confident in what he does.  (Dr. Luc is now retired and referring patients to his wonderful protegee, Farah Gron).

With Dr. Luc’s help, and then with the help of Farah Gron, our son became much calmer.  His many fears were addressed with a watery dose of a remedy that treats fears in hyperactive children, Cal. carb.  Dietary infractions  such as the accidental ingestion of wheat bread or a wheat and dye-containing “Nutri-Grain” bar (I hate the fact that they market those things as “a healthy snack”) at his after school kids club, which normally causes angry behavioral outbursts like hitting and verbally abusing Mom could be managed by giving him a remedy.  Eventually, the Cal. carb. didn’t seem like the most on-target remedy, and Farah recommended another one.  Of course, each remedy was carefully selected for my child; the remedy that was successful for my child may cause adverse symptoms in yours.  Slowly, little by little, day by day, we were moving towards wellness.

At the same time that we started work with Dr. Luc, we also started The Tomatis Method.  This method is recommended highly by Dorinne Davis in her book Sound Bodies Through Sound Therapy.  Ms. Davis is an audiologist with 30 years of experience working in New Jersey.  She has a specialty in children with ear infections.  She recommends treatment with Berard AIT followed 2-6 weeks later with The Tomatis Method.  This is the protocol we decided to follow.

The Tomatis Method goes beyond Berard AIT in that music is filtered to emphasize higher frequencies and resonances.  It is proported to be highly stimulating to brain development.  The Tomatis Method seeks to “train” the right “ear” to be the lead ear, as this is deemed to be helpful to development.  Most of the music in this method is played into the right ear.

We did The Tomatis Method at The Listening Center in San Jose.  The staff was generous enough to let me listen free of charge to my son’s program.  I was quite happy about this, as I felt I shared many of the add-associated symptoms that my son had.

It is a little difficult to say how effective The Tomatis Method was in our case, since we did homeopathy at the same time.  Certainly, Jeremy had great gains in drawing and writing around that time.   He also seemed to hear me more consistently–a great gift for Mom!  With the Tomatis Method and ongoing homeopathy with our gifted homeopath, Jeremy was definitely on the right track.

It wasn’t until I had my retinal hemorrhage that I considered another therapy for Jeremy.  I was so impressed with the calming, centering effect of Paul Tom’s work, that I decided it would be great for Jeremy as well.  After the second visit to Paul Tom, Jeremy, once again was a different kid.  Where he normally would have angry outbursts (he had had yet another wheat infraction a week before he saw Paul), he was completely calm and collected.  The dark circles under his eyes which appeared with the wheat infraction began to fade away.  He started doing things for himself.  He started getting up in the morning, putting his underwear and his pants on, and getting breakfast for himself (!!).  He got all ready for school without any prompting from Mom.  He played quietly while I got dressed and packed his lunch (his next task to take on himself).  He went willingly with Dad to go brush his teeth.  After school, he sat down and worked on his homework assignment, completely engaged, for 20 minutes.  After that, he got to up practice violin–without prompting.  He was easy to talk to, no longer defensive or argumentative or stubborn.  He was completely available for learning.  My husband and I looked at each other with dropped jaws.  Our son was completely healed.

I discovered a week or so later that homeopathy hinders Paul Tom’s work.  A couple of weeks ago, Jeremy got a bit angry and I felt he needed his remedy, so I gave it to him.  It seemed to have a bad effect on him until he saw Paul Tom again.  Paul told me that the homeopathics were making his treatment work more slowly.  This is how I learned that homepathy and BEM are not compatible.  I believe that with BEM, Jeremy suddenly began “proving” his remedy when I gave it to him.  He no longer seemed to benefit from it.  He no longer seemed to need it at all.  At Jeremy’s last session with Paul, his third, Paul told us Jeremy no longer needed to see him.  And he is back to that kid who got up this very morning and put his underwear and his pants on, got himself breakfast, and played quietly until I was ready to take him to school.  He gave Dad a little guff over teeth-brushing this morning.  I guess he’s still a kid!  But do I have to tell you how wonderful it is to see him taking responsibility for himself in that way?  The angels are singing anthems in Heaven.

It has been some time since Jeremy has seen Paul, and I am sorry to say that this treatment has not held as I had hoped. Our son has had some accidental wheat infractions at a restaurant in the last month, and these have probably bothered him quite a bit. We are continuing to do homeopathy, with watery dosing, under the care of Kari Kindem (www.homeopathyforwomen.com), and believe that by using homeopathic facial analysis, we have found Jeremy’s simillimum. What a blessing! On this remedy, Jeremy goes from hyperactive, oppositional, and attention-diffused to, according to his teacher, “Very focused and mature (for a 3rd grader ” What a report! At this point, I cannot attest to total healing of our son–yet. But for our money, I’ll take homeopathy over psychotropic drugs any day. And homeopathy holds the promise of total healing. Time will tell.