Behavior charts from his teacher at school have been nearly perfect
Our son, Nick who is now 7 ½ has been extremely active since he’s been a toddler. He started having issues with not being able to sit still as early as preschool. The teachers would give him a fidget item to keep him from disrupting the other children during carpet time. Nick had the same teacher for kindergarten & 1st grade when he started elementary school. We didn’t hear about any significant issues in kindergarten but by 1st grade his teacher was concerned about his behavior and recommended seeing his pediatrician. She was very concerned with his behaviors affecting his relationships with his peers and his academics. She said he had difficulty focusing and attending to a task. Other behaviors she noted were: mouth contortions, humming & other mouth sounds, bouncing, flapping arms, licking hands, rocking back & forth, frequent bathroom breaks (up to 8 times per school day) and shouting out at times. She said he was a very sweet boy & never oppositional or defiant. We noticed similar behaviors she described at home also. Trying to get him to do homework in the evening was a nightmare. He’s been a picky eater and the only vegetables and fruit we could get him to eat were pureed baby vegetables, bananas and applesauce. He seemed to have a big problem with the textures of food, and I had often wondered if he had food allergies.
After taking Nick to his pediatrician, we were given a questionnaire for both my husband and I to fill out along with Nick’s teacher. After she looked at the completed questionnaires, she said Nick had ADHD. It is amazing this is all it takes to be diagnosed: a written questionnaire without even taking any blood work for analysis. His pediatrician recommended putting him on one of the drugs for ADHD. My husband and I believe that instead of masking the negative behavior with drugs (& dealing with very strong & scary side effects), we wanted to find out why he is not able to focus and control his body in the first place. We just knew there was something going on inside that was causing him to react these ways.
About 9 years before this time, I had gone to Dr. Francis for NAET treatments (allergy elimination) in my healing process from numerous chronic pain issues: endometriosis, interstitial cystitis, IBS, migraines. During this time, we discovered I was sensitive to many different foods and discovered I was dealing with parasites. Each week I would work on clearing a new allergen. The treatments were very quick and not painful at all. All I had to do was hold a vial of a food or environmental item while pressing different fingers of my other hand together and Dr. Francis would use something that felt like a massager on my back. It just seemed too simple to work but I had read about other people with similar symptoms as myself using NAET to eliminate allergies which might be playing a part in the cause of their symptoms. I wanted to try it since it seemed so safe. The NAET treatments were an integral part of the healing process I went through 9 years ago and after a year or so of praying & trying alternative & natural ways to heal, I have not suffered pain from endometriosis, Interstitial Cystitis, IBS or migraines since then. I was able to conceive both my children in my 30’s without a problem (I was diagnosed with endometriosis at 19 after suffering from heavy & painful periods for years). I know going after the cause of the symptoms & not taking drugs to mask the pain is why I enjoy the good health I do now, and I truly hope that more women will explore the many amazing & natural healing processes available before considering any of the drastic procedures that are usually recommended by their physicians. Many years ago I led an endometriosis support group and would be horrified to hear what so many of the women had to endure through the drugs they took which put them into a temporary menopause which many of them said didn’t solve the problem and ended up causing short-term memory issues that they still dealt with years later.
Since I’ve read plenty of times that food allergies may be a big part of ADHD behaviors, I took Nick to Dr. Francis last winter (end of December 2010 through April 2011) to see what his food or environmental allergies might be. He had also developed very bad spring allergies when he was 5, and being stuffed up would keep him up for hours after he went to bed. Since none of the allergy medications did anything for him, we wanted to see if NAET might be able to clear environmental allergies like plants/trees too.
He showed sensitivity to many foods (many of which he ate frequently), lead, mercury, fluoride, trees, and 3 vaccine viruses that he was immunized for when he was younger. He had to stay away from a lot of different foods for 3 or 4 months, but it was all worth it as he would clear each allergen and we would see his behavior change. Dr. Francis also recommended Nick take Omega 3 Fish Oil capsules & acidophilus. We saw improvement in his behavior at home first. We could tell he was becoming calmer and there was less fighting between his sister and himself. He was a lot better in getting his homework done without a big struggle. It took a couple months to see the improvements at school but his teacher started seeing the same improvements and said he was doing much better. Another miraculous change that occurred was that Nick did not suffer from spring allergies at all. The previous spring, he probably spent 5 or 6 weeks stuffed up in the evening but the spring after the NAET treatments (which included being desensitized to trees) he did not suffer from any symptoms at all.
That summer at home with both kids was easier on me than the summer before. Nick was still doing well and able to eat pretty much anything. The first couple of months of 2nd grade were fine & his teacher said during our parent/teacher conference he wasn’t having any behavior issues & he was still doing well. However, that started to change in November when he started receiving very frequent bad behavior marks from his teacher. The behaviors weren’t the same as his kindergarten/1st grade teacher described. They were more in the defiant category of not listening, putting his hands/feet on other classmates, being very social, standing when he was told to sit down, and he was having a great deal of difficulty attending to his work again. His 2nd grade teacher started an Individual Behavior Plan for him. He did marginal at first and then started to have some major issues later on. I suspected that some food sensitivities were coming back, and he seemed behave the worst on the days I fed him eggs for breakfast and gave him yogurt with honey for a snack. He would also have the school milk with lunch.
We decided to return to Dr. Francis, and during the first visit, she was confident we would find something by the way he was acting in her office. We discovered he was sensitive to egg yolk, milk, yogurt, sugar and artificial sweeteners. To our surprise, he was much less food sensitive than we found the year before even though his behavior problems were more pronounced at school. After the first treatment with Dr. Francis for the dairy products, it was like a switch was flipped. Literally, the next day and for several weeks since, his behavior charts from his teacher at school have been nearly perfect – completely opposite of the previous several months, and we have witnessed the same changes at home! We now get remarks on his charts like “Fantastic Day” or “Another wonderful day” in the few weeks since returning to Dr. Francis. You can see a visible difference in his body. He doesn’t have the funny shutter or shaking that he would do with his hands and feet anymore, and mannerisms like this can easily be labeled “ADHD” or “autism” while putting the burden to prove otherwise on the parents. Nick is now so much more calm and able to focus. It’s almost like he has instantly matured in a matter of days and is helpful and considerate. He and his sister are playing much better together.
Dr. Francis recommended L-Glutamine to heal his gut since we discovered his gut didn’t completely heal last year since the dairy & sugar issue reoccurred. He’s been clearing the allergens quickly and is a great trooper on his temporary dairy & sugar-free diet. He loves going to Dr. Francis’ office and actually was disappointed that we didn’t get to stay longer at the last appointment. He giggles when she’s desensitizing him for an allergen. She’s excellent with kids, and we are very thankful for what she has done for my entire family.
~ Sue S.
