Failure To Thrive Syndrome is a diagnosis given to infants who are consistently less than the normal weight for their age or who do not show weight gain. There are many reasons for this. Many reasons for this involve environmental and social factors that work together to keep the child from having access to the nutrition the child needs. Sometimes, medical disorders prevent a baby from growing normally. Another important cause is the infant’s own sensitivities.

If There Are Environmental And Social Issues For The Failure To Thrive

Many environmental and social elements can be responsible for Failure To Thrive. Parental neglect or abuse, parental emotional health issues, and disordered family conditions in which regular, nutritious meals are not provided, may all block a child’s appetite and food intake. The amount of money a family makes to spend on food and the nutritional value of the food they provide also affects development. Inadequate intake of food may be a symptom of poor parenting and environmental stimulation.

When the problems are not based in medical issues, this condition is called Non Organic Failure To Thrive Syndrome. In the recent past, Non Organic Failure To Thrive Syndrome was thought to be caused by abusive parenting. But there are recent studies which have indicated a growing recognition that poor parenting may be an uncommon root of the condition.

If The Causes Of The Failure To Thrive Are Medical Problems

Sometimes Failure To Thrive Syndrome is caused by a medical problem in the baby. This is sometimes called Organic Failure to Thrive. The difficulty can be as simple as difficulty drinking, chewing, or swallowing (as a child might have with a cleft lip or cleft palate). Other medical disorders, such as acid reflux, narrowing of the esophagus, or poor intestinal absorption, may also affect a child’s ability to obtain nutrition from food. Infections, tumors, hormonal or metabolic disorders (such as cystic fibrosis or diabetes), cardiac problems, kidney disease, genetic disorders, and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection are other physical reasons for Failure To Thrive.

If The Causes Are Based In Reactions To Sensitivities and Intolerances

Often an infant’s or a baby’s Non Organic Failure To Thrive is caused by the infant’s body responding to normal things in the environment as if those normal things were toxic. This is a sensitivity to some environmental factors which the child’s body thinks are toxic.

This response to this “toxic attack” could involve shutting down the baby’s normal developmental process as a temporary conservation tactic until the “attack” stops. But, because these things in the environment are not toxic to others, the family and the medical professionals do not know to eliminate these “toxic” things from the child’s environment. In this case this temporary protective defensive reaction continues indefinitely. This means that the infant’s own defenses blocks the baby’s normal developmental process indefinitely, because of the child’s intolerances.

Diagnosis For The Roots In Medical Problems And Environmental And Social Issues

Doctors diagnose Failure To Thrive when a child’s weight or rate of growth is well below what it should be when compared with former measurements or standard height-weight charts. If the physical development is adequate, the infant may be small but still growing appropriately.

To find out why a infant may be failing to thrive , medical practitioners ask parents specific questions about feeding, bowel habits, social, emotional, and financial stability of the family, which might affect the baby’s access to food, and illnesses that the child has had or that run in the family. The medical practitioner examines the baby, looking for signals that may explain the infant’s delay in development. The medical practitioner makes decisions about blood and urine tests and x-rays based on this initial evaluation. Additional testing is performed only if the doctor believes there is an underlying disease.

Finding The Child’s Sensitivities and Intolerances

There are some available diets ( for instance: Gluten Free and Feingold diets) which attempt to address these intolerance and sensitivity issues. These diets function well for those children who are intolerant of the things which are specifically restricted by these programs. But, for the majority of Non Orhanic Failure To Thrive children whose intolerances and sensitivities are affecting their growth and development, these diets are incomplete and not specifically designed for them.

It is best to have a specialist, who knows how to perform this specific test for sensitivity and intolerance, work with your Non Organic Failure To Thrive child to determine your child’s precise list of intolerances. Those who perform this kind of testing can include chiropractors, some nutritionists, and other wellness practitioners trained for this type of evaluation.

Treatment and Prognosis For The Causes In Medical Disorders And Environmental And Social Causes

The medical difficulties and socio-environmental roots approach assumes there is something wrong with the child’s body or the child’s social environment. These treatments are focused on a problem in the infant’s nutritional processing or access.

Treatment depends on the root of the problem. If a medical problem is found, specific interventions are performed. Otherwise, treatment depends on how far below normal the infant’s weight is. Mild to moderate Failure To Thrive is treated with nutritious high-calorie feedings provided on a regular schedule. Parents may be counseled about family interactions that are dangerous for the child and about social and financial resources available to them. More severe Failure To Thrive Syndrome is treated in the hospital where nutritionists, social workers, feeding specialists, psychiatrists, and other specialists work together to determine the most likely causes of the child’s Failure To Thrive and the best approach to recovery.

Treatment For When The Issues Of The Failure To Thrive Syndrome Are In Sensitivities

The interventions for the sensitivities and intolerances approach is to determine which environmental factors the baby is responding to and eliminates those factors from the infant’s environment. When the baby is no longer reacting to those, the normal developmental process kicks in and growth can proceed normally. With this approach, nourishment is absorbed appropriately and development and growth gets back on track. There are specialists in Non Organic Failure To Thrive syndrome who can determine your child’s intolerances and sensitivities and coach you in getting your child back on track.

Summary

The socio-environmental approach assumes that something is wrong in the infant’s social environment in such a way that nourishment is not available or is not accepted by the infant.

The medical difficulties approach for Organic Failure To Thrive infants and children assumes that nourishment is not being processed and absorbed by the baby because of some medical problem.

The sensitivities and intolerances approach for Non Organic Failure To Thrive Syndrome assumes that the baby is having responses to environmental factors and these defensive responses are shutting down the normal development and growth process.

If you want to read more about Failure To Thrive or you would like to talk with other parents about Non Organic Failure To Thrive Syndrome, you will like participating in our free, private Non Organic Failure To Thrive Social Network

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• Influence Of The Feingold Diet List On An Infant Who Has Non Organic Failure To Thrive Syndrome (0)

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.

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