Developmental Delay

We start off the month with a story. This is not my client, rather he is a client of Carol Brown from Equipping Minds. The following was written by the mom:

     "Woo! Hoo! I wish you could see Tim now that we have completed thirty          days of the reflex exercises (using the Maintaining Brains Everyday                DVD). We completed them mid-December but I am just now making the        time to write to you.

     He is now asking how and why questions (has never done that before),          he is making decisions (never done before), he is making jokes (never            done before), he is smiling and appears to be happy, he is becoming              socially aware, his anxiety seems to be gone! It is UNBELIEVABLE. If I          had not witnessed it myself, I would not believe it.

     Family, friends, neighbors and the psychiatrist have all asked "what's              going on with Tim, he's different?" They have all noticed. We did not tell        anyone (except you) that we were going to do the reflex exercises. He            says he doesn't notice any difference but it is hard to judge yourself.

     I see him going through all the stages of childhood that he did not go              through cognitively. This is good and bad. Right now his brain is like a            pinball being bounced around. He is taking information in but has nothing      to compare it with to help him understand or problem solve. It is                      somewhat like a deaf person who can all of a sudden hear. They cannot        make sense of the sounds they hear.

     As best we can tell and he can communicate, he is now aware that he is        lonely and doesn't know what to do about it. 

     I tried to encourage him that the problem was a good thing, it shows              growth/progress. A month ago he would have had no idea he didn't have        any friends. So he is in a precarious position as I see it. He has access to      his brain now, but there isn't much for him to access and we need to fill it        and develop it.

     His psychiatrist is greatly intrigued by all of this. He also wants to do more      research on this. I gave him your web address and he fully admits this is        working better than 'talk' therapy. He kept pushing talk therapy and I              finally told him that wasn't going to work especially when one has a                pervasive language disorder, and missing logic and reasoning skills.

     All in all we are encouraged by everything.  I hope you are encouraged          too by the progress (something actually worked even though we didn't            quite do it the right way)!"

     -Mom of a developmentally delayed 18 year old young man who was              adopted as an infant from an Eastern Europe country

When the mom says that she didn't do the exercises correctly, it was because she had been told to do the exercises from Maintaining Brains Everyday DVD one at a time for 30 days each. They heard that they should do them for 30 days, which they did - so Tim made all this progress in only 30 days!! We now suggest that everyone complete at least 30 days in a row of the DVD, all at once. I had originally been told 12 years ago that working on all of the primitive reflexes at once could cause sensory overload - and I sure did not want that! Tim changed all that, so now what used to take 5 months, takes 1 to 3.

For July and August, we will be exploring in-depth all about where learning struggles start - during the first year of life. It will be very important information!!

Next week we will look at the causes of developmental delay. Until then, let's all enjoy our independence, no matter where we are located.