A Different Way of Looking at Developmental Problems

What if the conventional neurological, physical, and pharmaceutical approaches to developmental problems are all irrelevant? What if there was a cultural patch to these problems that you could do as a parent and all the symptoms would be gone naturally, in a short while?

The accepted understanding for these developmental concerns is that:

a) there is no cure,
b) you might grow out of some of the symptoms over the years,
c) you might need to take some drugs that are prescribed,
d) and you may need to take those drugs for the rest of your life.

Developmental concerns show up as some combination of these behaviors:

* A lack of attention and concentration
* Poor coordination
* Inability to do some task for longer than a few seconds
* Inability to sit and wait
* Inability for understand directions
* Inability to connect with the context
* Inability to control impulses
* Extreme sensitivity to some forms of light, sound, or touch
* Poor self management
* Poor self esteem
* Poor athletic skills
* Poor musical ability
* Poor academic development
* Poor speech skills
* Poor emotional development
* Poor social skill ability

The current diagnostic process for developmental concerns involves recognizing which of these behaviors a child displays. But, what if none of these specific behaviors is really important with respect to a solution for the child? What if the fix is something really elementary and no one has even thought about paying attention to it?

In the last few years, I have worked with more than three hundred children who have developmental concerns. My experience is that over 70% lose all of their developmental problem 'symptoms' by following a precise exercise program and cleaning up their environment.

Advancements in other fields

Discoveries brought forward by research in the last few years are leading to new approaches in many disciplines. In many instances, a multidisciplinary approach is leading to new insights because of the distinct frames-of-reference from those multiple disciplines. Many people working together from different fields are sharing concepts and learning from each other. These shared concepts are leading to dramatic improvements in understanding for all involved.

However, in the areas of developmental concerns, many disciplines are looking at the problem, but few are sharing what they are discovering in a multidisciplinary approach. Because they are holding onto their own paradigms, little advancement is being made. There does not seem to be any major advancement because it appears that everyone is sticking within their own paradigms and rejecting all other paradigms. Advancements all seem to be in how to provide more detailed labels. No one appears to be bringing out anything significant in the areas of treatment or prevention.

What are universities doing?

I recently visited a university and talked with the director of the psychology department. This department of this university was focusing on Autism and Asperger's (a high functioning form of PDD). Their educational and their research efforts were focused on recognizing the minute and precise symptom differences between High Functioning Autism and Asperger's. The official paradigm for these disorders is that there is no cure (and there never will be). They are not looking for a cure. They are only focusing on how to get better at the diagnosis of these conditions.

When I told this university psychology department director of my own personal experiences of working with hundreds of children with these conditions who lost their symptoms, he explained that there is no way to achieve symptom reduction and elimination. My experience did not fit his approaches, so it was not something he could hear. I visited this university in search of graduate students who need research projects for their graduate studies. Their approaches are so strong, that no one from that university wanted to explore my techniques, even though I have consistent results with developmental problems.

It is the same for medical doctors, developmental psychologists, and special ed teachers. They think there is no way to fix these conditions and so they concentrate on precisely identifying these conditions. Most efforts for treatment are designed to help children, moms & dads, and teachers deal with the other children who have these developmental problems.

A new paradigm

What will happen when we talk about a program you can do in your community for a few minutes per day, and the developmental issue symptoms will be gone in 6 - 12 months? This does not fit the current approaches, so the 'professionals' will not review it or prescribe it. For them, this does not fit their current approaches, so it cannot exist.

Well, there is hope and the solutions are not coming out of the conventional neurological, physical, or and pharmaceutical approaches to developmental problems. The solutions are coming out of common sense and concepts that were common before the Industrial Revolution. The solutions are not neurological, physical, or pharmaceutical. They are cultural.

Tracking Developmental Progress

As part of our consulting business specializing in the movement through the developmental milestones, we needed a method for demonstrating movement through the developmental milestones over time. The result is our free Developmental Checklist. Our clients use it to track the movement through the developmental milestones of their children. It is useful for parents of children with developmental difficulties to see and understand the status of their children’s movement through the developmental milestones. It is also appropriate for all parents to understand and to track the movement through the developmental milestones of their children, whatever the developmental situation.

Developing this checklist

When we began consulting with parents about their children’s movement through the developmental milestones, we found out that many parents do not understand much about the movement through the developmental milestones. Families would tell us stories about what their child did new this week, but they had little understanding that their child was providing data about the developmental step on which the child was working.

Helping parents understand the movement through the developmental milestones

We needed something that helped parents understand the movement through the developmental milestones. We needed something that guided parents to watch for important developmental signals. And, we needed something that would quantify a child’s movement through the developmental milestones. We tried several different forms, looking for something that was appropriate for parents and caregivers, ourselves, and to other service providers who worked with the children.

We did not want to develop a diagnostic tool. We wanted something to help parents understand and to track movement through the developmental milestones of their children.

One of the objectives we had for the format was to have a better way of describing the overview of the status of the child’s movement through the developmental milestones. The standard method is to describe the child’s developmental age as a single number of months or years.

What about this developmental age?

There are numerous difficulties in this way of doing things. For example, what are the developmental steps used to decide the ‘age’ of the child? Do we use walking or talking? Do we use gross motor, fine motor, social/emotional, sensory (, etc. . .) steps? Which of these steps is better at showing the child's age?

Even more of a problem is that for each milestones (commonly established at 12, 18, 24, 36, 48, and 60 months), a child with developmental difficulties will have completed some tasks and not completed others. These children have begun some tasks and not completed them. They have begun some other tasks and completed them. And, they have not even started some tasks.

Broad-based developmental improvement

In our program the clients close the empty places in their movement through the developmental milestones. When we reported to the parents the status of the child’s movement through the developmental milestones we wanted to give a visual representation of that broad spectrum developmental improvement.

If we are only using some narrow, limited set of developmental steps to define the developmental ‘age’ of a child, in one month’s progress we might miss movement through the developmental milestones in areas not used to calculate that ‘age.’ In one month a child might not make progress in the steps used to define the ‘age’ and make a lot of progress in other developmental steps. We decided our task was to show the broad spectrum developmental improvement that children were making, so we wanted something to describe that.

What about developmental warning-signs?

In the 12-month and 24-month milestones, there are some items which are not developmental tasks. There is also an additional group of items, shown in our Developmental Checklist as “6+ years.” These sections are developmental warning-signs.

These items are thought to be warning-signs of likely developmental difficulties. By themselves, when a child is demonstrating behaviors shown in these items, this does not mean that there is a developmental problem. If a parent sees multiple of these items, the parents might think about testing and diagnosis. Our Developmental Checklist is no used for diagnosis, only a professional can do that kind of testing and diagnosis.

Visual Overview

We wanted to give parents the big picture of the broad spectrum developmental improvement. Our Visual Overview page provides a method for seeing that. It shows the current state of the child’s movement through the developmental milestones across each of the milestones. It also shows any of the developmental warning-signs the parents has identified.

Line-items details

Our free Developmental Checklist report also shows how the parent responded to each of the items, from each of the milestones. If parents want to use the checklist on a monthly basis, or to use it at the end of each milestones, these items specifics makes it easy to keep track of the answers marked the last time they used it.

Other service providers

We designed the checklist report to be appropriate for medical, psychological, and educational service providers. They will find the information appropriate for tracking children's movement through the developmental milestones.

What about Developmental Disability/Delay?

Developmental Disability includes Autism, Asperger's, Pervasive Developmental Disorder and other diagnoses. Developmental Delay includes Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, LD, Dyslexia, and more. Then there is GDD and Auditory Processing Disorder, and I don't know where they fit in the official structure of diagnostic categories, but I know they are a developmental problem.

I have been working with children with developmental difficulties for a few years. I use the terms developmental difficulties to encompass everything from Developmental Disability to Developmental Delay, and even more. In our consulting program we consider them all fundamentally the same. They differ only by degrees. We have developed protocols which succeed with all of the developmental difficulties. Our approach assists the client’s inherent proficiency for developing.

What is the magnitude of this problem?

All of these developmental difficulties add up to an estimated 28 million children in America. The Census Bureau tells us there a total of 85 million children in America. The APA (American Pediatric Association) calculates that one in every six children have a diagnosis for some developmental problem (16.7%). The different associations for all of the individual diagnostic categories of developmental difficulties all agree when they tell us that about 50% of the children with these problems obtain a diagnosis for their problem (for a total of 33%). And, 33% of 85 million is 28 million children.

That means that 33% of all the children in every classroom have some degree of developmental problem. Maybe it shows up as a lack of capacity to focus or control impulses. Maybe it shows up as a lack of capacity to learn arithmetic. Maybe it shows up as an inability to kick a ball. Maybe it is so severe, the children never learn to walk. Maybe it is mild and only an inconvenience to the child and the parents.

In whatever form, developmental difficulties seem to be growing in sheer volume. We are certainly getting better with our diagnoses. And, we are certainly advanced as a country so that we offer those testing services to more people who otherwise could not afford it. But, I am not sure this is the reason we have a third of our children with developmental difficulties.

When I was a child in school, many years ago, I do not remember a third of the children having these types of difficulties in my classrooms. I remember that maybe 5% to 10% could have had these kinds of difficulties, but I do not think it amounted to a third.

What is a developmental problem?

Quite simply, it is some blockage in the developmental process. All living things move through a life cycle. Much of the early phases of that life cycle are spent in maturing. From conception to maturity, all living entities progress through a series of stages. For us humans, we call them our developmental stages.
For those with developmental difficulties, they do not progress through their stages appropriately. They get stuck at some of the stages. They skip some stages. So, many of the basic learning processes needed for appropriate maturity, are missed. And, in some cases a child is held in a step and does not pass out of it on to the next developmental step.

In my opinion, all of the different diagnostic categories are related to some simple factors. In which developmental stages did the child get stuck or which stages did the child lose? How intense is the ‘stuckness?’ And, how many stages did the child lose?

What can be done about it?

All of the different diagnostic label associations in the field of developmental difficulties are clearly speaking on one voice when they say that the 1) developmental process is stuck and that 2) there is no cure.

Researchers in this field do not know what to do to fix developmental difficulties. Nothing that they attempt involves the developmental process. For decades clinicians have tried everything they can think of to do and nothing works.
After all these frustrating years, they have finally reached an accord that there is no cure. And, now it is officially agreed. All of the diagnostic associations and all of the committees creating the diagnostic specifications agree that there is no cure. Now, they invest all of their research dollars on finding causes instead of searching for fixes for 28 million children with these developmental difficulties.

They have attempted many things, but they have not attempted everything.
With our method children fill-in the holes in their developmental progress. Our approach assists the client’s inherent proficiency for developing.

The developmental process is stuck.

Child development professionals agree. Many children are suffering from developmental problems. They also agree that all the problems that parents and teachers see in these children are related to the instinctual movement through the developmental stages being out-of-gas.

That is what the diagnoses of Developmental Disability and Developmental Delay really means. It is what Pervasive Developmental Disorder and Global Developmental Disorder means. This is the basis for Autism (HFA & LFA), Asperger's, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Dyslexia, Learning Disability, CAPD, and many other diagnoses that we talk about as developmental problems. All of these problems are based in the instinctual movement through the developmental stages being blocked.

The Mystery

One of the great present-day mysteries is that many children are not growing up appropriately. They are not following the instinctual developmental process appropriately. They are not following the normal developmental milestones. Not all children are having developmental problems, but the percentage of those with problems is significant.

Professionals estimate that as many as 25%-30% of children (in the USA) are suffering from some developmental problem. Maybe not all of them have enough symptoms to obtain a diagnosis. The American Pediatric Association (APA) tells us that one of every six children in the USA receives a diagnosis for some developmental problem.

The associations for each of the different developmental diagnostic groups publish estimates of the percentage of children that should have a diagnosis for their diagnostic group. They tell us there is a lot of overlap between one diagnostic category and another (for instance, many APD children also have LD and/or Dyslexia). Even assuming there is a lot of overlap, there are still an estimated 17% of children who have enough symptoms that they receive a diagnosis. This matches the APA estimate.

Those associations estimate that only about 50% of those who qualify for a diagnosis actually go and get that diagnosis. If these estimates hold up, this means that (in the USA) there are an estimated 28 million children who are not growing up appropriately.

Diagnosis

Humans are good at studying and creating structures. Professionals have studied and categorized all of the different ways that children are not moving through their normal developmental process. From this, they have developed long lists of symptoms which are organized into diagnostic groups. You know these groups as those diagnostic labels listed before.

Professionals are putting their focus on getting more accurate in the diagnostic methods. They are getting better and better at knowing precisely which diagnosis to apply for a specific set of symptoms. All of these diagnostic groups are used to organize different sets of symptoms. All of these symptom sets have two things in common:

1) There is no cure and
2) The instinctual movement through the developmental stages is out-of-gas


What is the treatment?

Parents are usually left on their own to create a treatment approach. They usually have to start a trial-and-error process of examining various training options to find what works for their child. Because of the slow processes of the unique services, it may take years to discover if a program is working for their child.

In some cases, doctors might offer medications. This is also a trial-and-error process until they find some medication which helps in some way. Most of this 'help' from the medications is for the parents and teachers to moderate the behavior of the child to a acceptable level. In some cases, the medications help the child attend, but they do not get the clients to close the discontinuities in their developmental process. Many children say that when taking their medications they become "zombies" or they stop eating or have some other unpleasant side-effect.

Other treatments include psychologists, occupational therapists, physical therapists, special education teachers, and the list goes on. These treatments are designed to deal with the child's symptoms. None of these professionals are trained to get the clients to close the discontinuities in their developmental process.

"There is no cure."

This statement is the most difficult concept to understand and it is an important concept in each of the definitions of all the unique developmental difficulty diagnoses. Professionals in the field know that there is no cure. People in the field are resolved to provide the best services possible, but this knowledge is a weight being carried by everyone. People try to put on a happy face. People want these children to have the most fulfilled life possible. But, because there is no cure, there is little that can be done, and that is a heavy burden everyone carries when teaching children with developmental problems.

The statement is that there is no cure. This is a present-tense statement that at the current time, there is no (known) answer. It is not a statement about the future or the past. It is simply a statement that no one has developed a answer, researched that answer to prove that it works, and published that answer to the world so that others can deliver that answer for their students.

Over many decades, with hundreds of clinicians, academics, and researchers working with many different modalities, no one has found the answer. No one has found the answer for these developmental problems. The field has become so compartmentalized that researchers are rarely searching for something to get the clients to close the discontinuities in their developmental process. They are only working on the symptoms of learning disability or whatever is their speciality. Because of this compartmentalization, they cannot see that all the different diagnoses are all based on the same problem: the instinctual movement through the developmental stages is out-of-gas and something needs to be done to get the clients to close the discontinuities in their developmental process.

People in the field have confused the present-tense phrase, there is no cure, to mean that there never was a cure (past), there is no cure now (present), and there never will be a cure (future). This paradigm, that a cure does not exist and is not possible, is crippling any search into the cure for these developmental problems. There is little funding for finding, developing, or delivering a answer for these developmental problems. One of the problems of any paradigm is that it defines the limits of possibility. In this case, if the prevailing paradigm is that there is no cure, a possible answer will never be found because it is not possible in the minds of the professionals in the field. As a paradigm in this field of developmental problems, there is no cure, is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Teach as much as possible to an un-teachable child

There is little or no program delivered to solve your children's developmental problems. Almost all services are designed to teach as much as possible to an un-teachable child. Because there is no cure, there is little work being done in research to find the answer.

Floor Time is the most promising concept in the field. This is an attempt to reach the child at their developmentally out-of-gas place and work with the developmental tasks that are out-of-gas. It is a good idea, because it tries to go beyond the symptoms and get to the processes at that developmentally out-of-gas place. It falls short because it is not addressing what caused the developmental blockage and it is not working on the brain circuits needed for a smooth, instinctual movement through the developmental stages (after the blockage is removed).

ABA therapy is one of the more popular therapy services available. Many children make some behavioral improvements using ABA. This is one of those approaches which is deeply seated in the paradigm that there is no cure. ABA Therapy has no concept of a person using ABA to become age-appropriate; their patients will continue being developmentally disabled after working with them. ABA does nothing to get the clients to close the discontinuities in their developmental process.

Summary

Normally, when we have medical or psychological problems we get a diagnosis and then some treatment. For developmental problems there is strong emphasis in the diagnosis, and little to provide for treatment.

The basic problem for all developmental problems is that the developmental process is out-of-gas. None of the services commonly in use in this field are focused on, or are successful at, getting the clients to close the discontinuities in their developmental process. The normal services for children with developmental problems are designed to teach the children how to become an adult with developmental problems.

The paradigm of there is no cure, is so strong that you are not encouraged to have hope for your child to have a normal life. The future for your child, based on the common paradigm, is to learn as many behaviors as possible to survive as an adult with developmental problems. Special education and ABA and most other programs are designed to prepare your child for transition into adulthood with these problems, but not for transition away from developmental problems.

These services need to become something which prepares their students for a normal life. That is what we offer with our consulting program. We get the clients to close the discontinuities in their developmental process; we offer the opportunity for these children to transition to a normal life.

What can you expect?

None of the therapy programs generally available for children with developmental difficulties have success at pluging the chinks in their movement through the developmental milestones. Most therapy programs focus on teaching as many skills as possible to someone who will be an adult with those developmental difficulties.

Teaching the un-teachable child

Most therapy programs assume that children with developmental difficulties will always have those developmental difficulties. So, they have stopped hoping that the movement through the developmental stages can be fixed. They have stopped searching for ways to round out the chinks in their movement through the developmental milestones.

Instead, they have settled for teaching the un-teachable child as their frame-of-reference. They select a series of skills that they think a grownup with developmental difficulties will need. They struggle for weeks or months or years to teach those skills to their un-teachable students. Of course, the workers in these therapy programs are very respectful of the special children with whom they work. They just assume these children will never be able to lose their symptoms.

It is in the diagnosis

There is an attitude that there is no cure built into the diagnostic process and even in the definitions of all of the individual problem diagnoses. Everyone involved thinks that this present-tense statement also includes the future as well. There is no cure is thought to also mean that there will never be a cure.

This presents an interesting problem. If someone found a cure, it could not be proved. The definition (for example) of PDD includes an item that there is no cure (with the un-written understanding that there will never be a cure). If researchers try to use a pre and post diagnosis testing in their research, the post-test (diagnosis) would indicate that the test subject continues with that developmental problem, because the subject obtained that diagnosis in the pre-test. Depending on the treatment, the research could certainly show that the symptoms have changed (maybe even gone away), but the diagnosic process does not include the possibility of cure.

If your child has one of these developmental difficulties, and receives a diagnosis for that problem, the child will continue with that diagnosis even if the child loses all of the symptoms of that diagnosis. Even when a child stops having that problem, the diagnosis continues. That is an interesting problem. Research to prove that the cure has been found, cannot prove it, because the definition does not permit that possibility.

So, what can you expect?

Even if the cure was discovered today, it would be many years before there is enough research to overcome the definitions, diagnostic specifications, and the diagnostic prejudice in existence today. This frame-of-reference that there is no cure is so broad-based that little effort is being spent on searching for that cure or expecting a cure to be forthcoming. Parents should not expect the cure to be announced before their own child has children with developmental difficulties (don't expect it for decades).

No medical, psychological, or educational program provider has available, or will send you to, a program that offers a cure. And, the therapy programs they send you to will have the frame-of-reference that they are teaching an un-teachable child. Parents should not expect the mainstream medical, psychological, or educational programs to provide a cure. They have no understanding of that possiblility.

If parents want to find anything close to a cure for their children with developmental difficulties, they should not look for that in the mainstream therapy programs. It is simply not there. They have to look at alternative programs.

If parents want their child to surpass their developmental difficulties, they should search for programs which work with the movement through the developmental stages. Our Developmental Discovery System™ inspires the innate predisposition for maturity. And, we get your children to round out the chinks in their movement through the developmental milestones.

Behavior is a symptom

The behavior of children with developmental problems is not the core problem for the child. It is often a very important problem for families, caregivers, and schools. For instance, the hyperactive and impulsive behaviors of some of these children are quite difficult to manage.

Just think of what needs to be managed in a classroom with a hyperactive child.

• The child's behavior,
• The physical impact that behavior has on the other children, the space, and all the things in that space,
• The behavioral reactions of the other children in the classroom,
• The emotional reactions of the other children, the teachers, and caregivers,
• And, at the same time, the teacher still has to manage all the children in the class learning some specific educational content or process.

It is easy to understand why schools often demand that hyperactive children be tested and then put on medication. In many cases, parents of hyperactive children are required by the school (as a condition for continued attendance in the school) to medicate their child.

Behavior is a symptom of the problem.

In these conditions, it is hard to think of the hyperactivity as a symptom of the problem. Hyperactivity is certainly a problem that has to be managed in this situation. But, the core problem is not the hyperactivity. The core problem is the stuck developmental process. The really sad thing is that none of the normal treatment programs (including the medications) do anything that fixes the stuck developmental process.

A blocked developmental process is the problem.

Getting the developmental process back on track should be the main focus of all treatment plans for children with developmental problems. If these children were able to get their developmental process working correctly, they would work through all of the developmental steps they are stuck in or they have missed. They would grow up. They would not display any of the symptoms which characterize their developmental problems.

If their developmental process was re-started and the children were nurtured through their formerly blocked or missed developmental steps, they would not have their 'inappropriate' behaviors which are the reason for their diagnoses. For those hyperactive children in the classroom, they would stop being hyperactive. If they stopped being hyperactive, the parent’s and teacher’s problems are greatly reduced.

Professionals have clearly demonstrated that when the developmental process is unblocked, it starts to operate again. After their developmental process gets re-started, these children start moving through their stuck or missed developmental stages. They catch up with their peers. They eventually become age-appropriate. They mature in a normal process. Depending on the severity of the developmental problem, they may take anywhere from 4 months to 18 months to become age-appropriate. In this process, they lose the behaviors that were used to award these children their diagnoses. They stop having developmental problems, because they develop appropriately.

The problem for parents is that no one seems to know how to unblock and re-start the developmental process. The professionals they consult do not know that the developmental process can be unblocked and re-started; they continue with their belief that there is no cure for developmental problems. So, parents do not get information about this possibility. They do not learn that it is possible.

Where is the research?

There is no published, peer-reviewed research about this. You will probably have to wait for at least 20 years before the research cycle has been completed for this. The reason it takes so long for this cycle, is that those who will review (in the peer-review process) do not believe it will ever be possible to unblock and re-start the developmental process. They will be pre-disposed to reject the research, instead of approving it for publication.

What should parents do?

Many parents have been told that there is no cure so they have stopped searching. Those who continue searching are aware that all of the currently accepted programs and treatments simply attempt to reduce symptoms and do nothing to resolve the problem in the developmental process. They are also aware that any solution for their child will be found in alternative programs.

The behavior is only a symptom. But, most programs and treatment plans are directed toward the symptoms. Managing, controlling, and stopping the symptoms is the 'normal' goal of these programs and plans. They do nothing to work on the core issue of the stuck developmental process.

The only appropriate solution for developmental problems is to re-start the developmental process. This will not happen with any known psychological, behavioral, or medical program or treatment. It can only happen with a program that is outside the norm. Parents need to try solutions that are outside-the-box.

Our consulting program un-blocks and re-starts the developmental process. It is the only program we know of which does this.