Ok so remember when I said sometimes we found it really, really hard not to laugh while we were doing these therapies? Well just in the general scheme of things I am a go with the flow kinda gal! I am up to try most things at least once (ok I said MOST things!) but this was kind of out of my ‘really this is going to work’ zone!? Anyway, it all seemed harmless enough, no real touching or pressure of any kind. The practitioner was really nice, great guy with a real sense that he knew what he was doing and that this was really going to be the ‘silver bullet.’ So we decided to just go with it…
I don’t know how many times we have heard the “this is the thing that will help” conversation, but I do know that by the end, or when we finally quit a therapy and move on, the practitioner is astounded to find that they were unable to help our son. We have been told over and over he is such a complex child, that he is unique, that he is a dichotomy. I agree, he is an amazing kid. Even though he didn’t speak until age 2 it was obvious that he was a character unto himself. He is incredibly funny and smart, and an amazing problem solver, he is super independent (when he wants to be) and could take care of what he needed himself by around 18 months old. He figured out how to get a drink, how to get into the food, just generally his own little man. There was more to it than that of course but he certainly always was different to other kids his age that we knew.
Anyway, I called and spoke to this therapist and managed to get an appointment fairly fast. We were to go Fri and Sat one week and then we scheduled a further Saturday the following week. This BIT session required no real interaction from us or our son. The BIT therapist asked him some questions and ran through some applied kinesiology It all sounded exactly what we needed. The basic idea is that: (from Crossinolgy BIT it is important to stress that we did not do our BIT with this practitioner but our BIT therapist is trained in the Crossinology method.)
BIT optimizes brain function in children and adults
BIT is an alternative, drug-free therapy for the correction of ADD, ADHD, Dyslexia, and other learning difficulties
BIT is a permanent, self-maintaining solution that does not require exercises or medication.
The process usually takes 8-12 hours and I think we ended up doing 12 hours. I can’t honestly remember how much it cost in the end but we had to travel 2 hours from home so we also ended up with a hotel stay twice during the course of the treatment. I wished so hard that this would have made some positive difference with our son. The practitioner certainly worked really hard at what he was doing and I really enjoyed talking with him during the course of the treatment.
We completed the 12 hours and returned home. About a month later was when the terrible slide into the end of summer rage-fest began. So I am going to say that for us, this was a bust. He still obviously has some kind of hyperactivity disorder, high anxiety and some significant depression. He also fits so classically into a right-brain kind of diagnosis that I have to conclude his ADD is still quite evident. Although I am actually beginning to change my thought process and see his right-brained-ness as an asset not a deficit. Yes he can be hyperactive, but is it just because I am not a 6 year old boy? He is struggling to understand his place in the world and emotionally he is probably more akin to a 4 year old boy than the almost 7 yr old he actually is, his IQ however is more in line with a 10 or 11 year old child. Is it this disconnect that causes the turmoil inside him? Maybe there is no a brain “disorder or deficit” – honestly I know I am not the only parent in this situation and this is one of the reasons I decided to get our experiences out there.
My son has been struggling for years, we first suspected he was having difficulties when he turned 1 yr old. We had already noticed the differences in his social skills and desires to the other kids his age that we played with. He lost some skills such as clapping and waving – they arrived briefly around 11 months and were gone by 13 months. As he aged month by month we noticed little things that raised red flags to both us and his pediatrician. Such as his desire to line up toys, or to simply run his cars or marbles along the lines of the tiles, or the tracks in the carpet. We noticed his sleep terrors and his lack of sleep requirements. He was also the quietest 1-2 year old I had ever met, no babbling, there was no desire to communicate verbally nor did it seem remotely evident; however, his sigh language was beginning to take shape by 18 months and he used our hands to get things for himself or to wind a toy – a simple non-verbal action that satisfied his need at the time. He was (and still is) very aggressive, as soon as he got teeth he bit me, all the time and he bit hard. He would bite and hold on with his teeth. The doctors also suspected that he was deaf as he never reacted to loud noises or even his name. At 18 months old after an evaluation by a developmental pediatrician, and an ABR(BAER) test that showed he was not deaf, he received an At-Risk for PDD-NOS diagnosis.
Anyway, about the time at the end of the summer (in August 2010) where he was at his worst I received an email review form from the BIT practitioner with a request for how much he had progressed after his treatment. I sent a very nice email back explaining that due to the circumstances I thought – as I couldn’t say anything nice – I had best not say anything at all. This is the email that I sent back on 7/29/10:
Lol Hi —, not sure you want me to fill this out 😀
He isn’t doing very well at all, his mood swings have become extreme, to the point of distraction. His tantrums are lasting hours and he is very sad a lot of the time. He is preoccupied with death and, we had to find a psychologist, who now thinks we are still working within the Autism parameters (PDD) but also with possible extreme ADHD or (controversial) maybe early onset bipolar (which I am not down with because of some behaviors I know don’t exist) but I can get on board with some kind of serious mood thing… not sure – right now we are staring into the face of medications, which I don’t want to concede too, but almost looking like he will not be fit to start school on Aug 18, he is just too volatile, aggressive, and oppositional.
He broke the window out my car yesterday in anger, this was after throwing a DVD at my head and a leapster game system into the front of the car – WHILE I was driving! He has torn his room apart, including in one fit of rage, taking his queen mattress off his bed and wedging it in the door.
So yes, not much joy here. We are all pretty tired and – yep fed up. We are working the neurotransmitter route, but that’s not going anywhere, the homeopath and I are trying to work within this protocol
http://www.alternativementalhealth.com/articles/walshMP.htm, today is the 1st day so I won’t know. I am waiting for a neuropsych eval on Aug 12. But we are doing a QEEG on Wednesday and he will start back at neurofeedback, just to try to give him some relief from the bizarre thoughts, rages and paranoia. Today he is having a good day, we managed to complete all our errands without incident, which lately is a triumph! 😀
So yep, so far – little worse than when we saw you. Hoping for better days, and am hopeful we will get his brain chemistry in order somehow… read that article for sure, **** is definitely an under methelayter… so we are working within that criteria.
Hope you are doing well.
Kind regards
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Needless to say I haven’t heard anything since!
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