Your Child Isn’t Just Having a Bad Day

One of the things I’ve gotten really good at over the years is listening when a parent says, “He’s just been off lately.”

That can mean a hundred different things. Maybe he’s suddenly more hyper and silly. Maybe an old stim is back. Maybe he’s waking up in the middle of the night again, melting down over everything, asking for food constantly, or just seems uncomfortable in his own skin.

Parents notice these changes, but we don’t always give ourselves enough credit for what we’re noticing. We tend to explain them away. He’s tired. He’s growing. School has been stressful. It’s probably just autism.

Maybe. But I want to know what changed.

This is really the whole idea behind Treat What You See. Before you order another test or start looking for another diagnosis, pay attention to what is actually happening right in front of you.

When Umar was little, I didn’t know how to do that yet. He had night terrors, terrible transitions, hyperactivity, sensory issues, poor sleep, almost no functional language, and a whole collection of behaviors that were easy to chalk up to autism.

Eventually I learned that “autism” wasn't a particularly useful answer when I was trying to figure out how to help him.

I needed to get more specific.

What does the hyperactivity look like? When did it start? What happened to his sleep at the same time? Did his poop change? Is he suddenly craving carbs? Did I add something new? Did we stop something that had been helping? Does it happen at a certain time of day? Is it worse on chelation days?

Those details matter.

For example, when a parent tells me their child has suddenly become really silly and spacey, is stimming more, and is digging through the kitchen looking for carbs, yeast is going to cross my mind. If they're falling apart when they haven't eaten, waking during the night and suddenly seem unable to handle even minor stress, I'm going to think about adrenal support.

If a child who was doing pretty well suddenly has constipation, low energy, poor concentration and cold hands and feet, I don't want to overlook thyroid. And if the behavior change came right along with bloating, diarrhea, constipation, stomachaches or some truly impressive poop, I'm probably going to start with the gut.

None of those symptoms by themselves prove what is going on. That's not the point.

The point is that symptoms give us somewhere to start looking.

This is also why I don't like changing twelve things at once. If you add a probiotic, increase magnesium, start an antifungal, remove three foods and introduce four new supplements over the weekend, you may have created a beautiful protocol, but you've made it nearly impossible to learn anything from your child.

When possible, I want to change one thing and watch. That's something Jan and I emphasized in Fight Autism and Win too: add supplements individually, give yourself time to see what happens, and keep track of the response.

I think this skill has become even more important now because we have SO MUCH testing available to us.

You can test the gut, urine, blood, hair, stool, organic acids, nutrients, toxins, mycotoxins and probably your child's astrological relationship with their mitochondria if you're willing to spend enough money. 😂

I'm not anti-testing. Obviously. I use testing.

But somewhere along the way, I think a lot of parents have been taught to trust a piece of paper more than they trust what they're seeing in their own child.

And I don't love that.

A lab result is one piece of information. Your child is giving you information all day long.

Learning how to put those pieces together is one of the most valuable skills you can develop, especially when you've reached that awful place where you're doing ALL THE THINGS and your child still isn't moving forward.

Instead of immediately asking, “What else should I add?” I want you to start asking, “What am I seeing?”

That question is going to be important around here for the next few weeks because I'm working on something new that I'm pretty excited about. I want to help parents take the symptoms they're already seeing and use them to start figuring out where their child may be getting stuck.

In the meantime, hit reply and tell me this:

What's one symptom or behavior your child has that you can't quite figure out?

Not their diagnosis. Not their entire medical history. Just the one thing that keeps making you think, What the heck is causing THAT?

I want to hear it.

Best In Health,

Tressie