There are many diet approaches which have been promoted often for a baby with developmental problems such as Non Organic Failure To Thrive Syndrome. The GFCF and Feingold Diets are among the most admired for this context.

Breaking The Paradigm

I want to applaud the developers of these diets for shifting the paradigm about what might be causing the world-wide explosion in the occurrence of developmental difficulties for babies. For decades our modern doctors could not recognize that what a person consumed could modify that person’s developmental health. These diets are quite popular in the communities concerned about ASD, as well as other developmental issues and these diets are displaying that they are dramatically improving the futures of these children.

These diets succeed for some children with important improvements in a variety of measurable symptoms. For other children there is less improvements. And, for others there is no improvement at all. One of the unanswered questions is why are some dramatically helped by these diets and others are not?

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

Sensitivities and Intolerances

Each of us has some factors around us to which we are sensitive, or of which we have an intolerance. This is not like an allergy where we have a strong and immediate immunological response to some thing. This is much more like a subtle defensive reaction we have to something in our environment over time.

If someone is allergic to bee stings, they have an strong and immediate response to being stung by a bee. They can have swelling or even start to have a 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 unless 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 skin rash is related to the deodorant soap bar, you can eliminate the use of it and the rash will go away.

Developmental Problems

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

This defensive response process was developed in a less contaminated environment and the body only needed this defensive reaction 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 responding. A few minutes of a conservative, defensive reaction was usually enough for offending environmental factor to be over the hill. So, if the body shuts down some functions not needed for the process to get away from the offending environmental factor, it would not affect the long-term survival of the person.

Shutting Down The Developmental Process

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

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

Feingold and GFCF Diet Lists

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

For this reason we applaud the significant contributions the Casein Free and Feingold Diets have made in our understanding of developmental problems. They help us all understand that the children with developmental problems are reacting to some list of things in the environment and we can help these children get back on track, if we eliminate their access to those things 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 diagnoses. The problem with this assumption is that the defensive responses these children have is about their own personal list of offending factors (not a generic list). Their own list might not include the restricted items of the generic diet. Each child needs to be using a diet program which is tailored to their own individual menu of sensitivities.

Sensitivity and Intolerance Evaluations Is The Key To Success

We have developed an approach for testing each of our client children for their own specific menu of sensitivities and intolerances. This gives the parents a precise menu of factors to eliminate from the child’s environment. So, instead of a generic diet plan 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 eliminate.

This Is Much More Than A Diet Program

Our testing approach involves everything that the child eats, breathes, and touches. This includes more than the child’s foods and drinks. It involves testing the child’s reactions to meds, household chemicals, and everything in the child’s environment. Our thorough testing technique will help you design an appropriate plan to clean all of the offending things from your child’s environment.

What Happens When The Child Stops Having These Defensive Responses?

There are many different types of developmental problems in children. Each has their own set of symptoms 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 boundaries from one diagnostic category to another.

Because of this diagnostic complexity, we would not be able to identify which symptoms a child will develop out of first as a result of being in an environment free of their offending factors. But, our experience is clear that when children enter and stay in an environment free of their offending environmental factors, their developmental process kicks in and their developmental process begins to move them through their missed or next developmental stages. You know this approach is being successful when you see your child start progressing through developmental stages.

We encourage all 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 progress as they continue.

By keeping track of the child’s developmental movement, parents can see that their child has restarted the developmental process. This forward 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 Re-Testing For The Long Term

After some time of developmental progress using our process, we encourage parents to re-test 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 produce the defensive reactions and they will need to stay on the restricted 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 problems 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.