Online
publication only
Read Part Two of this column
Portions of this article are excerpted
from our book (co-authored with Ian Luepker, ND) A-Drug
Free Approach to Asperger Syndrome and
Autism: Homeopathic Care for Exceptional Kids. Picnic Point Press;
2005.
The Dynamics of the Family System
Within a family, each individual plays a part in creating the family system.
And like all living systems, families establish a balance called homeostasis,
whereby the other family members, as a whole, balance the qualities and characteristics
of each individual family member. If one person changes his or her role within
a family, the rest of the system must also change to re-establish balance.
Think of a mobile hanging from the ceiling: If one portion of the mobile
shifts position, the rest of the mobile must shift to regain equilibrium.
The family system, as one entity, can move toward a state of health and adjustment.
This is what can occur when a child with Asperger Syndrome (AS), or any other
imbalance, is successfully treated with homeopathy.
For example, if the mother of a family is over-functioning in terms of parenting
responsibilities, it makes sense that her spouse might under-function within
that role. If both over-functioned at the same time, the system would be out
of balance. In another example, if a child with AS has special dietary needs,
such as a gluten-free/casein-free (GH/CF) diet, this shift in a family eating
pattern may demand extra energy on the part of the family cook. All the effort
and focus on that one child in the family will affect the other siblings and
spouse, simply because of how time and attention are being allocated. The rest
of the family will respond and attempt to find balance. As a result, while
responding to one member of the family who needs increased attention, the spouse
and siblings may feel angry, jealous, or unloved. This state can be unhealthy
and disruptive.
Within family systems, we all develop established patterns and roles, especially
when caring for a struggling family member. So, when a child with AS responds
favorably to homeopathy or other interventions, that individual improvement
can move the whole system toward a state of overall health and well-being.
Parents' roles will shift, responsibilities will change, and the relationships
within the family will begin seeking a new balance.
The following cases of a mom and her two sons, both diagnosed with the autism
spectrum disorders (ASD), as well as the case of a third son suffering from
a gastrointestinal complaint, illustrate how treating several members of a
family can produce a transformative and positive result even greater than the
sum of the parts. The father of the family profiled in these cases engaged
actively in homeopathic care for six months, then discontinued homeopathic
care. The mom and the three boys have done extremely well, and perhaps the
father will seek care again in the future. It is interesting to observe the
order in which the family members came for homeopathic treatment: first, the
younger of the children diagnosed with autism; five weeks later, the second
child on the autism spectrum; and three months later, the mom. The dad came
fourteen months after we saw the first child and then, one month later, the
third son with the mild digestive complaint arrived for treatment.
Drew: Autism, ADDH, and Tourette Syndrome
Diagnosed at a pediatric hospital with autism at the age of four, and later
with ADHD, Drew's problems had eluded his parents because he was able
to blend in so well. A passive infant, it wasn't until a medical profession
pointed out what she called the "soft signs" of autism that it
dawned on Drew's parents that something was amiss. Drew talked when
he was moved to do so. Otherwise, he rarely uttered a word. The youngster
was placed in a kindergarten class for developmentally delayed children.
The child had two other siblings, the oldest of whom has since been diagnosed
with AS. Shortly before we first saw Drew, his diagnosis was changed from
autism to AS. Maggie, Drew's mom, shared with us openly:
My goal was healing and recovery. The diagnosis of autism is not something
I shared with his peers. I was very reluctant to have Drew assessed
cognitively, because if he weren't typical, I didn't think
I could bear having a second child who had developmental and learning
problems. Drew's testing came back as superior cognitively in
all areas. In fact, though he was only in the third grade, he was reading
at a ninth-grade level. Drew's grades were mostly As and some
Bs. He has always been quite serious academically. I'm a special-ed
teacher myself, so I'm aware of the delineations. Drew tests
one level below gifted. My hopes are that he can become a scientist
or an engineer. He performs fine in a structured setting. Drew has
been on Concerta for the past two years for ADHD. We stopped giving
it to him because it kept him up at night. He also takes a morning
dose of Ritalin. Without the stimulants, Drew acts as if he has Tourette's.
He sticks out his tongue, cocks his head, and makes faces. The Concerta
kind of reined him in. But Drew just isn't a child that parents
feel like inviting over to play with their kids. The parents don't
like him because he's so different. "Goofy" is the
word they usually use. Drew decided yesterday it would be funny to
pretend to spray the congregation with artillery fire, while singing
a song and making faces at people. He misses the fact that there are
a hundred people looking at him.
Maggie offered a classic example of Drew's behavior: The family
had gone to the movies the previous Friday evening. Drew spotted a
girl that he knew and immediately put his head right next to hers while
making babyish facial expressions and "preverbal gee, gaw, goo
sounds." He found the incident entertaining, and he was oblivious
to the girl's discomfort.
Drew did not speak by the age of four, prompting his parents to enroll
him in an extensive speech therapy program. When the youngster started
kindergarten, he showed no interest in connecting with his classmates.
Now he did, but they had no desire to be around him. In fact, they
made fun of Drew, smashed his projects, and rarely invited him to their
birthday parties. The other kids pushed Drew while they were in line
to get fitted for ice skates and kicked him when the teacher wasn't
looking. Drew responded by withdrawing, "making weird faces,'' and
talking to himself. Like many other children with ASD, Drew was clumsy,
fell easily and often, and hated sports, except for ice skating.
He Reads the Encyclopedia for Fun
Whenever Drew read a book, he first carefully
pored over the index to determine exactly what interested him. He spent
a good three to four hours a day perusing
the encyclopedia and devouring facts about dinosaurs, Greek myths, and whatever
other subject caught his fancy at the moment. In conversation with his parents,
he politely informed or corrected them – for example, by providing the
historical and biographical information regarding Bacchus and Philomena. If
a question came up to which no one knew the answer, you could be sure that
Drew would thoroughly research the question, then come back and supply the
correct data. His parents were quite pleased with his intellectual prowess,
though he would sometimes lecture them in a rather condescending manner. Adults
generally found Drew to be fascinating and highly instructive. Yet other parents
talked to or about him as if he were mentally retarded, and his pedantic nature
only served to further alienate his classmates, who already considered him
strange. It is not surprising that, academically, Drew "blew the other
kids out of the water." Yet taking Drew out in public presented a challenge
for his parents:
You're always afraid of what he's going to do.
Once he hit another child with a shovel at a Cub Scout meeting. Another
time
his brother pulled down Drew's pants while they were on the playground
during recess and the youngster hadn't a clue that he should
pull them back up. Then there was pajama day at school when Drew forgot
to wear his underwear underneath his pajamas. His dad's stomach
is in knots when he takes him to a scout meeting because he never knows
what to expect. We live in a rather snotty neighborhood and prefer
to say nothing about our son having autism. We walk on eggshells because
everyone else on our block who has been different has ended up moving
away.
Drew had a fascination with guns, and was beginning to exhibit aggressive
tendencies. Once when Maggie told him she didn't have enough
change for a doughnut, he raised his arm to strike her. Drew had recently
kicked in the door of his Sunday school classroom. He had also become
increasingly reactive towards a bully who was habitually victimizing
him at school.
Dreams of Explosions, Spaceships, Murders, and Fires
What first impressed us were Drew's beautiful facial features and his
habit of fidgeting restlessly throughout the interview. The child told us that
he had a hard time going to sleep at night because of his fear of nightmares.
And that his brother "was egging him on to act goofy and to make stupid
faces and sounds." He proceeded, spontaneously, to launch into a detailed
description of his vivid dreams. They often involved a spaceship or some other
vehicle or object blowing up or catching fire. Somehow the driver or pilot
remained unharmed, despite extraordinary flight paths directly through mountains
or pyramids. Some of his dreams made references to "growling, showing
your claws, biting, squeezing, beating out the stuffing and intestines, and
being captured." These powerful dreams had such an impact on Drew that
he thought them to be real, even after waking up. This type of dream had special
significance in light of the homeopathic medicine we ended up prescribing for
Drew. Over and over, he referred to being hunted down, and of the fear that
someone or something was trying to eat him or do something bad to him.
Drew could have easily spent an hour or more expounding elaborately on his
dreams. When the subject turned to school, Drew painted a rosy picture. He
denied being bullied by others and could not remember a time during recess
when the other children mistreated him. The youngster even insisted that he
had
plenty
of friends, which was clearly not the case. We surmised that it was just too
embarrassing for him to tell us the painful truth about his social ostracism.
Drew also
told us that he was very fond of cats.
Exceptional Features
Drew was remarkably bright, articulate, and imaginative, and he exhibited the
typical AS pedantic, professorial tendency. His habits of putting himself right
in the faces of his peers and of making odd grimaces, gestures, and noises
was not at all unusual among the ASD population. Although Drew was the only
child we have met so far to devour the encyclopedia for several hours at a
time, his passion for knowledge, though extreme, was not something new to our
ears. What seemed most curious was the recurrent, vivid, violent dreams, which
were so intense that he was afraid to go to sleep at night. The first medicine
that we prescribed was Stramonium (thorn apple), one of the most common homeopathic
medicines for intense, fearful, violent children. The fears of a child needing
this medicine often include wild animals, the dark, and water. Though there
was a definite benefit from the medicine, we were not completely satisfied
and gave three other medicines a trial before settling on the final one, which
has helped Drew the most dramatically over the past nine months. We will first
describe the child's positive response to Stramonium, before illustrating
the benefit he derived from his most recent prescription.
Better Speech and Eye Contact, Then a Relapse
Within an hour of taking Stramonium, Drew's speech was noticeably different.
(It usually takes days to weeks before the effects of homeopathy are obvious,
but some patients report a definite shift within minutes or hours.) That evening,
his eye contact improved. Drew blushed for the first time in his life. His
behavior and conversation was more appropriate, and his tendency to fixate
dramatically lessened. In place of the childish jokes he had told before, now
he talked to his mother in a much more mature fashion. Drew told his mom that
he was very happy she had taken him for homeopathic treatment. The all-around
improvement lasted for a little over a month. Maggie noticed a regression shortly
after he drank some of his dad's coffee. (It is common knowledge among
homeopaths that, in some patients, coffee can interrupt the positive effect
of a homeopathic medicine.) After six weeks, Maggie reported the following:
You would not believe what we've seen. It has
been so thrilling. His father was totally amazed, too. He was a different
Drew. The kids
who shunned him are now playing basketball with him. Right after taking
the medicine, he was more aggressive for a day or two. Then, there
was this wonderful
period for a month. The kid who was always inside that we never saw
came out. His last report card showed improvement in twenty different
areas. He got seventeen As. Before drinking the coffee, he was actually
hanging out with the other kids at church. The Tourette symptoms were
gone. Now they've begun again. He is again saying repetitive,
goofy things. In the past week, he's been crawling around on
the floor howling, and he chased a neighbor boy with a bat. The disconnectedness
with others is back, and his speech is more choppy again. The babyish
quality is back.
We asked Drew how he had felt since the homeopathic treatment. He
replied that he felt more in control instead of being a "goofball
and out of whack." H acknowledged that he was able to play with
more kids and that his self-esteem was better. The Stramonium was repeated.
Over the following nine months, Drew continued to progress, but not
to the extent that we knew was possible. The child continued to have
disturbing, violent dreams, including more dreams of being hunted down,
which prevented him from going to sleep easily. We tried three other
medicines without a significant further improvement.
The Puzzle Pieces Come Together
By mid-December, 2003, Drew was having some
good days and some bad days at school. The original dramatic improvements
had lasted only
partially. Although much about Drew was undeniably better than before
beginning homeopathy, we were not satisfied. He told us about his urges
to throw cups at people's heads, steal food, and "concoct huge messes."
The habit of stealing food caught our attention. We also explored in
depth the feeling of being chased. Drew explained
that he didn't like using up all his muscles and fuel. It felt
to him as if a little, magnetic tracking device allowed others to get
him. He used, as he had before, a number of animal images, which made
us wonder if he might, in fact, need a homeopathic medicine made from
an animal source. This was confirmed when he repeated words such as
the pursuer, sneak up on you, stalk, hide, and pounce. When we explored
this subject line further, Drew spoke clearly of someone getting him
while his back was turned, of his being surrounded, grabbed, and stealthily
overpowered. "They sneak up and kill you. You're hunched
down, below eye level. Then everybody shoots. You jump up on the person
and attack him. You claw him. Like my cat." At this point, Drew
made a ferocious big-cat-like gesture. "Then they kill you." Drew
provided steadily more clues to identify the vicious animal that he
was describing — big claws, sharp teeth, and a pitch-black color
(in order to be camouflaged in the dark).
It was clear that he was using the same words again and again, and
that the images had come to life. We prescribed homeopathic Panther.
(Rest assured that homeopathic mammal medicines are made from a drop
of blood or milk so that no harm is done to the animal providing the
sample.) Although no formal homeopathic proving of Panther has been
performed, information can be gleaned from zoological literature as
well as from the few existing cases of homeopathic colleagues. The
main traits of panthers, which are actually a type of leopard, is their
adaptability. The primary conflict in those patients needing this medicine,
according to Dr. Divya Chhabra of Mumbai, India, is the desire, on
one hand, of being alone, elusive, and free versus the need to adapt.
We did observe that tendency in Drew's reaction to being bullied
by his peers—he did not fight back as some children might have
done.
We first prescribed the Panther fifteen months ago, and Drew has continued
to respond very favorably. Within two months of the original dose,
Drew was getting along much better with his peers—no fighting,
kicking, or shoving. He shared that there just wasn't much that
annoyed him anymore because his tolerance was better. The chasing theme
in the child's dreams had been replaced by the occasional UFO
or spaceship. Dads are generally harder sells than moms when it comes
to acknowledging improvement in their kids, but Drew's dad affirmed
that his son was much more easy-going since the Panther. His attentiveness
was significantly improved. He had even invited his "mortal enemy"
to his house to play a few weeks earlier, and they got along famously.
Maggie shared that Drew seemed much more peaceful and happy. His behavior
was noticeably more flexible when things didn't go according
to his plan. Drew needed one more dose of the Panther six months after
the first dose when some of his symptoms began to return. That dose
set him back on course. Since that time, the youngster is much more
able to assess relationships with others and to sort out friendships
for himself. Happier, more interactive, and just plain fun to be around,
Drew's lost the goofy, alienating behaviors he once displayed.
He was "just one of the guys" at vacation Bible school
and fit right in at a church camp-out. He has become much more interested
in going out and being with people. He actually asks to accompany Maggie
when she goes out to do errands. Drew is much more willing to experiment
with different foods, and he has learned to keep his mouth closed when
he eats. Although his eye contact still has room for improvement and
Maggie describes his speech as "still jagged, not linear," the
youngster has made tremendous strides with homeopathic treatment.
The next patient in the family to come in for our care was Jimmy, who had requested
treatment because his brother seemed to have responded so well.
Jimmy:
Asperger Syndrome, Semantic-Pragmatic Disorder
Our child is a savant
in math. Jimmy's eleven, and he can tell you how many seconds there
are in a month. But ask him what an ironing
board is, and he doesn't have a clue. The things he's interested
in capture his awareness, but he's oblivious to the world around
him. Jimmy was diagnosed with AS about two years ago. The only medication
he takes is Concerta. His brother is also on the spectrum.
Since Maggie, Jimmy's mom, was a special-ed teacher, she was
overjoyed to tell us anything about her son that might provide a clue
for us to help him. She had educated herself about homeopathy beforehand
by devouring a couple of our books, and she knew that anything unusual
about pregnancy and labor might interest us.
All Jimmy Wants to Do is Draw Aircraft and Aliens
When
Jimmy discovered a book of aircraft pictures, he simply couldn't put
it down. We took him to an air show when he was two years old.
Jimmy had gone down the rows and classified the planes: F-14, F-16,
F-18, Stealth. He even corrected one of the pilots there. We thought
it was adorable. This child was a walking encyclopedia of the artillery.
He could recite all the specs. It never occurred to Jimmy that other
kids couldn't care less about ammunition. He could easily entertain
adults but couldn't talk to kids.
When we told Jimmy it was time to go to preschool, he replied that
he'd rather go back to bed. He hadn't the least interest
in coloring or cutting out shapes. The teachers warned us at the time
that he wasn't going to do well. They were dead on right. Jimmy's
dad and I thought we had one smart little boy, but by October, the
school called us to say he wasn't making it at all. The special-ed
teacher would tell him to do an assignment and, half an hour later,
the kid wouldn't even have lifted a pen to begin. What they asked
of him just didn't interest him, so he wouldn't buy into
it. Jimmy is very polite, very nice, so he's never rude or disrespectful
like the other boys. He just doesn't do what they expect of the
other children. They pressured us to have Jimmy repeat kindergarten.
He was the youngest boy in the class. Even when he repeated the year,
he had difficulty. Here was the class all in a circle. And there was
Jimmy. It's not that he lacks social skills. Jimmy has no problem
finding someone to talk to, because he's just a really nice kid.
He wants so badly to do well in school. Though he's only in fifth
grade, Jimmy has tested at an eleventh-grade level in reading. He's
gifted in math and his verbal ability is excellent. They actually put
him on a TV show because listening to him is so entertaining.
It's an ordeal to get Jimmy up in the morning.
Brushing his teeth, washing his face, putting on clean clothes—these are irrelevant
to him. Drawing, reading, and playing computer games are how he would
prefer to spend his day. Our boys have never had the opportunity to
watch commercial TV, and they don't have Game Boys or X-Boxes.
So, Jimmy just draws – even in his brother's books. Pictures
of military gear, guns, aircraft, soldiers, aliens. As much as
he loves to draw, he hates to write. The complaint from his teacher
is that
he doesn't do his work, but just draws.
A Polite, Sensitive, and Kind Child
One of the only three "polite" boys in his
class, Jimmy would not consider acting rudely or disrespectfully. Popular
with adults,
Jimmy was an active participant in soccer, Cub Scouts, Math Olympiad,
and a tech club. If he didn't want to do what was asked of him, he
exercised a kind of passive resistance.
Jimmy's parents were particularly concerned about a period of
sadness two months earlier that had "almost crippled him emotionally."
They took it quite seriously, especially due to a history of depression
on both sides of the family – maternal grandparents and a paternal
uncle who eventually committed suicide. The pediatrician agreed that
Jimmy manifested all the classic signs of depression: nothing mattered
to him, even food; he complained of feeling sad all the time; things
he previously enjoyed no longer appealed to
him; and he showed no interest in being around other kids. The school
psychologist had warned Jimmy's parents that two years after
children began taking Concerta or the other stimulants, they often
experienced depression. The school nurse told them the same thing.
Maggie reported the following:
Out in your waiting room, Jimmy took it upon
himself to read to the younger children. This is a kid who's tremendously
sensitive
and kind. Jimmy absorbs things. It affected him deeply when he saw
the children drowning in Titanic. I just feel the real Jimmy hasn't
been
able to come
out in a way that fits with his kindness and intelligence. Everybody
likes Jimmy, but there's such a gap between who he really is and what
he can
do. They recruited him for the math team, but when there was an elite
competition, they didn't invite him because of his lack of follow-through.
Jimmy's a low-energy kid. His younger brother bounds into the day,
but no matter how much energy
Jimmy expends, he can't keep up. We were quite surprised he wanted
to play soccer. He's a fast runner, but he never scores goals. Jimmy's
just not pushed to do that. With the clarinet, it's deadly to get him
to practice. All of our son's activities are limited by his energy.
Jimmy was prone to develop sores on his body, which he would inevitably
make bigger by scratching. When he was younger, abnormally enlarged
tonsils had been a problem for him. From ages one to five, Jimmy was
in and out of the emergency room every couple of months for ear infections
and bad colds. An abnormally large, hairy mole appeared and kept growing
larger and larger until it had finally been removed the previous fall.
During the last year, Jimmy had become very furtive, stealing candy,
cookies, and food. Jimmy's dad even bought a lock box for the
sweets to discourage the habit, but Jimmy's parents still found
the sandwiches he was sent for lunch hidden in his backpack. He would
rather skip the main course and cut straight to the sugar.
A Whiz at Cube Roots of Pi and Armed Weapons
To speak with Jimmy personally was fascinating:
I heard you gave my brother a very good medicine that helped him become
more focused with his schoolwork, and I wanted to see if you could
give me some, too. Something to help me be able to use my brain to
its full potential. To figure out math problems in class more easily.
I can get the problem done. I know what the answer is but I get a little
off-subject and then I completely forget the answer. I don't
like that. Say I was talking to you about a math problem, then suddenly
I went [the diplomas on the consulting room wall caught Jimmy's
attention],"Wow, those are interesting medical degrees."
I hate to play my clarinet. Getting my reed
to work is hard. Say there's a note I have to make, but I hear no
sound coming out of the instrument.
The problem is the idea of concentration. Or say I want to find
what a word means in the dictionary, but I can't seem to find it
until
the topic is already over. I need to be more direct and on the
spot. I like to do math in my head. Square roots, cube roots, fractions,
pi. I know quite a few roots of pi [Jimmy recited them aloud.] The
cube root of 27 is 3. The cube root of 2,197 is 13.
I can get the problem in my brain in seconds, but I may not know
how to explain it. 19,683 is the answer to 27 cubed. [We quickly
checked
Jimmy's answer and it was right on.] I would like to do other
things like the clarinet but I'm not really motivated.
When we inquired about Jimmy's fascination with military gear
and weapons, he explained:
I don't like violence or hurting anyone. That's the subject
I've studied the most. My dad used to be a military pilot, so
we can talk about these things. You can ask me about any military weapon
[here Jimmy rattled off a number of names that went right over our
heads]. What's the most heavily armed tank in the world? I like
to shoot a gun at targets but not at any animals. I would try to find
the least violent alternative to stop violence.
We asked Jimmy to tell us what it felt like to be depressed. He answered
that nothing really seemed fun. That he would just sort of lie around
and not do anything:
When I feel sad, I like rain. It's kind of
like explaining rain. Or like trying to explain how to talk to a
dumb person who can't
speak. Or like trying to explain to somebody who's eight years
old and about to die how to speak English. If it's rainy and gray
outside,
I just like
it.
I have a large and expanded vocabulary. Once I wrote a page of over
one hundred words and their Latin roots. I can also read with almost
complete fluency, including words that most of my peers would get stuck
on.
To prove his point, Jimmy picked up a homeopathic
reference book from the desk and read from it quite accurately. Though
an exceptional public
speaker, Jimmy had a distinct fear of standing out. In second grade,
presenting math facts in front of the class made him very nervous.
When the family went to
a movie and his parents stayed to read the credits, Jimmy was mortified. "We
have to get out of here," he would insist.
Exceptional Features
Jimmy's knowledge of weaponry was phenomenal.
It is not uncommon for children with AS to develop a tremendous fund
of knowledge, even
a photographic memory, about a specific, often rather obscure subject,
but a few other aspects of Jimmy stood out for us – first, his
sincerity and motivation to get help, paired with his seeming disinterest
in schoolwork. It was evident that he very much wanted help with concentration
in order to accomplish his tasks with greater ease. Remember, he was
the one who had asked his mother to bring him in for homeopathic treatment.
This is not something we hear often. Secondly, Jimmy was an unusually
polite child, particularly compared to some of the ruffians in his
class. His was a politeness not merely born out of rigidity, but a
sincere courteousness. Jimmy was exceptionally kind and considerate,
and he had a real desire to please.
This nature, combined with the recurrent ear infections, limited stamina, and
mathematical genius, led us to give Jimmy Silica. Silica is a mineral medicine
for children and adults who are conscientious about doing well, but lack the
grit and strength to carry out their intentions. They tend to be polite and
to try very hard to please and to live up to the expectations of those they
respect. We had used the same medicine successfully with a couple of other
math savants. Our previous experience led us to suggest to Jimmy's parents
a possible secondary diagnosis of Segmantic-Pragmatic Disorder.
Better and Better
Silica is known among homeopaths to be a medicine
that can be slow to act, so we were willing to wait several months before drawing
a conclusion as to
whether it was the best medicine for him. At six weeks, his dad reported no
dramatic change. Jimmy had developed a new interest in fabrics used for camping
gear, his mission
being to make the perfect jacket from a combination of Mylar and polypropylene.
At the three-month follow-up visit, Jimmy's parents were happy to report
that he was getting straight Bs and was definitely more communicative and involved
with people. A lady came up to Jimmy's mom and commented, "Your son
is so engaged." When another boy fell into the lake at summer camp, Jimmy
demonstrated the presence of mind to plunge in with all his clothes on and
save him. Afterwards, when the counselor came up to thank him, Jimmy brushed
it
off, wanting no credit.
Another step forward, literally, was Jimmy's and his dad's plan
for a fifty-mile hike, a task that would have been far beyond Jimmy's
previous level of physical capacity. Jimmy expounded on the pros and cons of
internal versus external frame backpacks. He mentioned casually that he used
to be afraid of other kids laughing at him, but wasn't anymore. We knew this
was a good sign and a likely benefit of the Silica.
Jimmy needed a second dose of the medicine seven months later, after having
eaten a Ricola cough drop, a menthol-containing product that can interrupt
the action of homeopathic medicines. He did not relapse to anywhere near to
the level he had presented at the first interview, but did become really tired
after
playing soccer, and he felt like sleeping the second half of the school day.
Jimmy explained why he believed that he needed a repetition of the medicine:
Grades are pretty important. They determine how your life will go.
I want to get good grades, not bad grades, so I can feel good about
myself. Now is the time to prepare for college. I'm feeling demoralized
and much more tired. I want to get in the habit of getting better grades,
not be left behind. Being held back would be the thing I definitely
would not want to happen. I would feel really bad. I was held back
in kindergarten. I didn't really care then, but I sure would
now.
Return visits are opportunities for us to get
to know our patients more deeply. Once a child is doing well, we can
relax and spend more
time letting him say whatever comes into his mind. What he chooses
to talk about and how he expresses himself confirm for us whether the
medicine is correct and whether
he is progressing steadily. It's delightful for us to hear straight
from the child himself that he is doing better. Jimmy obliged us.
I really don't like to stand out. It's one of those things
you can't put a face to, you know. Maybe if you said something
really crazy or dumb. Say you fell over in your chair. They wouldn't
exactly be laughing at you, but they would think you were a strange,
weird person.
Self-consciousness is a prominent issue of Silica, which reassured
us we had made a good choice. Jimmy went on:
I'd like more of that homeopathic stuff again. About seven or
eight weeks ago, after I had that Ricola cough drop, I got more tired
and it was harder to concentrate. Your medicine makes me more focused
and less tired. It makes it easier to do school work. It makes everything
a lot easier.
The Concerta doesn't really seem to work. Explaining how it's supposed
to work is like describing how a bird flies or how you walk. You just
can't.
Eighteen months into treatment, his mother proudly announced that
the child's IQ had gone up 20 points from the last time he had been
tested and that he had been accepted recently into the gifted program
at school. Jimmy's teacher told his parents that, in his 25-plus
years of classroom experience, he had never seen a child make so much
progress in one year. It has now been two-and-a-half years since we
first met Jimmy. He is almost six feet tall, plays cross country and
soccer, won five Boy Scout badges, is in all honors classes, and was
rewarded for his rescuing his fellow scout by being invited to throw
the first pitch at a major league baseball game. He sits with other
kids at lunch, which is a real leap for any child with AS, is witty,
and, in the words of his mom, has "made a world for himself."
Two Down and Three to Go
Once Maggie had received help for her two ASD spectrum sons, she was
the next in line to come for homeopathic care. But, that's another
story, one we will discuss in our next column.
Judyth Reichenberg-Ullman and Robert Ullman are licensed naturopathic
physicians board-certified in homeopathy. Their books include Ritalin-Free
Kids, Rage-Free Kids, Prozac Free; Homeopathic
Self-Care: The Quick and Easy Guide for the Whole Family; Whole
Woman Homeopathy, The Patient's Guide to Homeopathic Medicine; and Mystics,
Masters, Saints and Sages-Stories of Enlightenment. They teach and lecture internationally and practice
at The Northwest Center for Homeopathic Medicine in Edmonds, WA and
Langley, WA. Their latest book, co-authored with Ian Luepker, ND.,
is A Drug-Free Approach to Asperger Syndrome
and Autism: Homeopathic Medicine for Exceptional Kids. They treat patients by phone as well
as in person, and now by videoconferencing. They can be reached by
telephone at (425) 774-5599, or you can visit their website at www.healthyhomeopathy.com.
|
