Understanding ADHD from the Child's Perspective: At Home

By Peter Mangiola RN MSN

A child with ADHD goes through all of the normal struggles that any other child goes through;
with certain key additional issues that, from an outside perspective, are (to put it quite mildly)
very frustrating. Unfortunately, because most parents don't have ADHD, it can be almost
impossible to empathize with a child that seems to simply not care about the basics like doing
chores and cleaning up after yourself.
Let's try to fix that by looking at some of the core experiences of an ADHD child's life from their
perspective. This time, we'll look at home life.
The Problem(s)
ADHD triggers two seemingly-opposing forces within the brain: high distractibility and hyperfocus. The second element almost exclusively happens when the ADHD brain is getting
stimulation from an activity; which means it almost never happens when they're doing something
they don't enjoy. This means they're at their most distractible when they've been told to do
something necessary, and at their least distractible when they're doing something of their choice.
As a parent-annoying adjunct, the hyperactivity component of ADHD means that quite often, the
stimulation that you're enjoying involves some sort of high-speed, full-body movement. Jumping
off of the arm of the couch, sprinting down the hall and crashing into the bed -- whatever it is, it's
all-consuming.
A Long String of Failures
From the perspective of the child, this means repeated frustration as your parent reminds you that
you haven't finished taking the garbage out. You've just gotten into your groove, thinking about
your latest Minecraft building project, and then you have to stop and refocus on the tedium in
front of you. It's mostly done; why does it matter if the lid is on the floor next to the garbage?
Shouldn't you get credit for remembering to but the garbage bag in this time? Nope; if it's not
completely done, it's not done. Well, who made up that rule?
Over a long enough time, the constant need to be reminded puts a parent in the position of 'the
nagger,' and the child starts to see themselves as the victim -- and their parent(s) as being
unreasonable.
"Just a Second!"
The flipside of the coin, the hyper-focus, can also be a source of conflict. Imagine that, just as
you were getting into the flow of whatever you were doing, someone interrupted you, then again,
then again. You get frustrated and want to make it stop, because you want to get into that flow.
As it happens, a child with ADHD has a disrupted sense of time and a malfunctioning rewardfeedback system, and they work together to make it seem as though any interruption of their
hyper-focus is happening just as they were getting 'into the groove.' As such, every intrusion of

banalities like chores or homework is resented just as powerfully as the third time in fifteen
minutes your boss calls with some new wrinkle to add to your assignment.
What can a parent do?
Ultimately, the best thing a parent can do is not take it personally. Your child isn't neglecting
chores in favor of the Thundercats because he hates you; he actually has a legitimate problem
that keeps him from staying on task until the task is done and from breaking away from his tasks
until he decides they're done. Learn to recognize it and call it what it is, get your child into
treatment, and don't let it get under your skin.

Understanding ADHD from The Child's Perspective: At School

By Peter Mangiola RN MSN
An ADHD child can find school to be a powerfully destructive force. Yes, destructive. ADHD
children generally have weaker self-esteem than their peers, and at school the expectations to sit
still, pay attention, and learn lessons the first time they're given can devastate them. They're often
mocked and insulted by people who learn easily -- their peers and sometimes even the staff.
Being Different
Many kids with severe ADHD are placed into special education classrooms; even if they're
brilliant and kind, they simply require too much constant supervision to survive in a normal
classroom. Being in special ed while also being extremely self-aware is possibly one of the most
ego-destructive coincidences of circumstances that can occur at school. After all, we all know
that 'special ed' is just a code-word for 'retarded,' right?
Even a child who takes medicine for their ADHD and is thus able to make it into a mainstream
classroom can be singled out for needing the medicine. Having any sort of disorder makes you
fair game for whisper campaigns and outright bullying -- even one as relatively common as
ADHD. Because many
Missing Out
In terms of academics, school seems specifically designed to run contrary to the way an ADHD
mind works. ADHD minds do have their strengths -- creativity, curiosity, spontaneity, and the
ability to draw connections others don't see are chief among them -- but modern schooling
doesn't even attempt to take advantage of them. Because of that misalignment between brain
function and school, ADHD students tend to spend a large part of their school day focusing on
something that is interesting rather than something that is happening.
Lecture time becomes an opportunity to write poetry while appearing to take notes. Science labs
are more about watching the fronds of a down feather as it drifts than about calculating how fast
that feather would fall in a vacuum. Then they look up and realize that the entire class has moved
on to a new activity, and they have to struggle to catch up. "I missed that," they say to the teacher
or a neighbor, "What just happened?"
The end result, as you might imagine, is that at the end of the day, an ADHD student couldn't tell
you what exactly they learned, but they tend to feel pretty good about their day. Then when their
report card comes in dotted with grades that everyone agrees "don't live up to their potential," the
student is confused.
Learning to Cope
Even with pharmaceutical treatment, the effects never disappear entirely for most students with
ADHD. Those that cannot take or are not positively affected by the drugs have a long, hard road
ahead of them. Still, there are tools that can help. The most effective, as you might expect, is a
comprehensive program designed to teach them about themselves and help them craft a set of
strategies and tactics that they can use to maintain focus and retain lessons.

As a parent of an ADHD student, helping them to remember and utilize these tools is the best
way to improve their school life.

Elements of an ADHD Diet

By Peter Mangiola RN MSN
ADHD is not caused by diet, and is not affected by diet in a direct sense. But ADHD is a
condition of brain chemistry, and brain chemistry is indirectly affected by diet. What follows is
not a completely comprehensive breakdown -- that would take a small book -- but it does present
a basic 'action plan' for using diet to 'turn down' the effects of the disease.
More Protein, Less Carbs
The neurotransmitters that are affected by ADHD are stimulated by the consumption of protein,
specifically tryptophan. Thus, high-protein, low-carb meals (especially for breakfast) are ideal
for ADHD sufferers. Nuts, seeds, cheese, red meat, poultry, and fish are all decent sources of
tryptophan. Consuming at least a few grams of these at each meal is highly recommended.
At the same time, the hyperactivity side of ADHD is exacerbated by carbohydrates, which cause
a 'sugar high' (even when the carb isn't actually sugar per se) and then a low which, ironically,
causes ADHD sufferers to become even more focused on constant activity and motion than they
were when they were 'high.' As such, a diet designed to reduce the high-low-high cycle inherent
to eating a high-carb diet is a good idea.
There are two basic schools of thought to the low-carbs-for-ADHD concept. The first is that
espoused by Atkins and similar diets: they point out that while there are 'essential fatty acids' and
'essential amino acids' (proteins), there is no such thing as an 'essential carbohydrate.' The body
can manufacture all of the carbs it needs from other ingredients, so there's no purpose to eating
carbs in the first place unless you have a specific need for immediate access to burnable calories.
The second school of thought contends that the amount of effort the body has to put into
manufacturing burnable calories out of fat and protein is an unnecessary strain, so some carbs are
desirable. This school contends that the focus should be on the Glycemic Index of the food you
eat -- essentially a measure of how much the food spikes your blood sugar (which corresponds
directly to the size of the subsequent 'low.' By eating carbs along with fats and proteins, and
avoiding fast-digesting carbs like white sugar and flour, you can dramatically mitigate the highlow cycle without giving up carbs altogether.
The Additive Debate
Medical science has raged for decades about the effects of food additives, particularly artificial
food coloring, on our bodies and brains. Numerous studies on both sides of the argument back up
each one. Our response is simple: try an additive-free diet for a couple of weeks and see how it
affects you. One recent meta-study showed that there is a definite subgroup of ADHD sufferers
(somewhere between 5% and 18%) who benefit from this change, but couldn't pin down the
precise number.
Because additives are a normal part of all modern prepackaged foods, going additive-free isn't
extremely easy, especially if you're a busy modern family. But there's been a strong enough
pushback against the extremes of food science (immortal Twinkies, anyone?) that there are

generally enough organic, all-natural options that even a time-crunched family should be able to
fill their plates without breaking the bank.

The ADHD Brain: A Matter of Imbalance

By Peter Mangiola RN MSN
A child with ADHD has a brain that operates differently from others. As a whole, we tend to
think that it works 'worse,' but that's largely because we measure the ADHD brain against a set of
parameters built specifically to measure 'normal' brains. So what's the difference?
Left vs. Right
You've probably heard about the left brain vs. right brain -- it's a fact of our biological existence
that has permeated our culture. The left brain is the logical, linear, concrete, analytical,
mathematical, language-based, strategic, organized part of the brain. The right brain is the
intuitive, symbolic, creative, chaotic, emotional, and innovative -- pretty much everything our
work and school environments are designed to train right out of you.
In normal people, a balance between these two halves is struck -- we're almost all left-brain
dominant, but we have easy access to our right brain's processes when we need them. As it so
happens, the ADHD brain is highly right-dominant and not very able to access the left brain's
toolset -- it's imbalanced in the direction of the right brain.
Retraining vs. Adapting
There are two basic schools of thought about how to address the imbalance. The first is that we
should teach ADHD people how to adapt to their right-brained-ness. The popular concept of
neurodiversity encourages us to look at how a particular ADHD person responds to stimulus and
build an environment that exploits, rather than punishes, his or her unique mental state.
The second school of thought says, in short, that we should find any route possible to get an
ADHD brain to re-balance and have access to the tools that we most commonly look for in an
individual. There are several options available, a few of which have been studied and proven
effective.
One Example: Brain Wave Training
One example of an effective retraining exercise focuses on the fact that the act of concentrating
elicits a different kind of brainwave in an ADHD brain than in a normal brain. For most people,
concentrating evokes a kind of brainwave called a 'beta wave' -- the same type we all experience
when alert, awake, and active. If you have ADHD, chances are extremely good that when you
concentrate, your brain instead produces 'theta waves' -- known as the waves most often used in
deep meditation, light sleep, and highly inwardly-focused, complex tasks such as doing advanced
math in your head.

In short, the ADHD brain literally becomes unfocused in response to an attempt to concentrate.
But there's a clever biofeedback exercise that retrains this effect. By attaching an EEG to a video
game (one of the most ADHD-stimulating inventions of the past few decades), it's possible to
create a 'game' in which success happens only when the brain produces beta waves. By having an
ADHD sufferer play this 'game,' they can use their own malfunctioning reward centers to create
the desired result: they get the feeling of 'winning' the game whenever their brain correctly uses
beta waves instead of theta waves to concentrate.
In short, hope exists -- and as mentioned, that's just one example. Retraining the ADHD brain
isn't a pipe dream, it just involves a bit of outside-the-box thinking. Ironically, this is the same
kind of thinking that the ADHD brain itself is best at.

The Major Kinds of Learning Disorders

By Peter Mangiola RN MSN
The term 'Learning Disorder' might at first seem like far too broad of an umbrella to be able to
meaningfully utilize. Hearing that a child has a Learning Disorder doesn't tell you anything
except that the child probably isn't performing up to standardized levels on scholastic
assessmentsright?
The Five Kinds of Learning
Actually, upon hearing the term 'learning disorder,' at least as used by a professional, you can be
confident that the child in question is dealing with one of four distinct phenomena:

Dyslexia, or a problem reading and comprehending language

Dysgraphia, a problem with writing and related fine-motor skills such as shoe-tying
Dyscalculia, a problem with fundamental mathematical skills and spatial relationships.
Dyspraxia, a problem with balance and coordination of muscles. A subset, Verbal
Dyspraxia, is specific to the ability to produce speech sounds.
Auditory Processing Disorder, a problem with the brain's ability to correctly interpret
audial signals. A subset, Language Processing Disorder, is specifically an inability to
correctly interpret language.

In short, we divide learning into five essential types -- visual, audial, kinesthetic, spatial, and
book-learning, much like we've been taught for most of our lives -- and each type has a specific
form of learning disorder attached to it.
Addressing the Kinds of Learning Disorder
As you might imagine, this means that in order to be able to improve upon any given child's
ability to learn, we must first ascertain what kind of learning disorder the child has. In almost all
cases, the specific disorder has its roots in an inability of the brain to communicate effectively
between its parts.
This means that while each kind of learning disorder has different effects on learning, most can
be effectively addressed by a program designed to bring the entire brain into balance. By
addressing both left-brain and right-brain development, assessing which is lagging and by how
much, and developing a system of exercises designed to strengthen the weakest links, the best
chance to overcome learning disorders can be maximized.
An Example: Approaching Dyscalculia
Let's create a fictional child, Cynthia. Cynthia has been diagnosed with learning disability; she
has problems with puzzles like jigsaw puzzles as well as with construction toys such as Legos.
Furthermore, she isn't doing well learning her addition and subtraction facts. Running her
through our comprehensive assessment, the initial hunch of 'dyscalculia' is borne out.
Our experts craft a nutritional regime designed to ensure that her brain is receiving all of the
nutritional support it needs, and that begins immediately. Over the coming weeks, we sit down

with Cynthia and we develop a set of sensory-motor exercises based on her physical attributes,
such as her gait, coordination, and favorite activities. Alongside those, we work with her on the
relevant academic and cognitive skills. Together the three-pronged approach deals with both
body and mind to accelerate the skills that have fallen behind and allow Cynthia to function at
the level of her peers.

Recognizing and Aiding a Twice-Exceptional Child

By Peter Mangiola RN MSN
Intelligence is not a single attribute, which is to say a child does not 'have intelligence' that then
filters down into everything they do. It's more accurate to say that intelligence is an overall
assessment of a set of specific skills a child has. Those skills include reading, writing,
mathematical ability, physical coordination, spatial sense, artistic ability, memory, executive
function, and more.
To say a child is 'exceptional' is to say that they have one or more skills within that skillset that
are so far ahead of -- or behind! -- their peers that they require special treatment at home and at
school in order to accommodate that exceptional skill. A child that is 'twice-exceptional' is
exceptional in both ways at once: exceptionally ahead in some skills and exceptionally behind in
others.
Twice-Exceptional Children at School
Twice-exceptional children are among the most challenging for the school system to deal with. A
significant part of that is the fact that we tend to think of kids that are 'bright' as being good in
school rather than good at certain things. So when a child impresses you by engaging in highlevel reasoning and mental math skills, it can be shocking to learn that they have severe
difficulties reading. It's easy to assume they simply aren't applying themselves.
Another reason twice-exceptional suffer at school is that they may be able to rely on their mental
strengths for one part of a class, only to fall victim to their disability at another part. A classic
example is the child that is ahead of his class in almost all academic ways, but (because of
ADHD, an executive function deficiency, or a simple failure of organization) doesn't get credit
for their work because their work never makes it onto the teacher's desk -- or does so with, for
example, no name on it.
How to Determine if You Have a Twice-Exceptional Child
If your child breezes through most of their homework only to be completely stymied by
one subject,
If your child is clearly putting effort into a particular skill and it is simply not developing
at the same rate as their other skills,
If your child aces tests about school material, but gets poor grades due to failures of
homework and/or in-class behavior,
If your child's teacher bemoans the fact that they are clearly "not living up to their
potential" or are "working well below their ability,"
If your gifted child is suddenly finding their 'gifted' label in question due to a disability
they've been compensating for but can no longer keep up with,
They're probably twice exceptional.
How to Help a Twice-Exceptional Child
The primary thing that a twice-exceptional child needs is support. It's possible for most of them
to overcome the disability that is holding them back, but they can't do it on their own. Some of

them can do it with the right set of supportive parents, counselors, adjunct teachers, and so on -others need to be put in a program that is designed to help them reprogram their brains. As their
brains learn how to use alternate neural pathing to accomplish tasks in a way that circumvents
their disability, they can move forward and take full advantage of the genus that is being held in
check.

Learning Disabilities Are Not Intellectual Disabilities

By Peter Mangiola RN MSN
To a casual observer, it might seem like Jessica is somewhat intellectually underdeveloped. She
sits in class, watching the teacher keenly and reading along in the book. She takes notes and
clearly applies herself to her work. But when the teacher asks her a question, Jessica looks lost.
She stares blankly at the teacher, her paper, and then back again.
Jessica is an almost perfectly-normal second grader. She reads at a third grade level, and she's a
little behind on her multiplication tables, but her test scores show she's only slightly above the
middle of the class academically. So why is it that when the teacher asks her to repeat what was
just said, she looks desperately around the room and then finally shrugs?
The answer is that Jessica has a learning disability called Language Processing Disorder -- the
part of her brain that is responsible for turning the eardrum's vibrations into mental constructs
isn't working properly. That same part is also responsible for converting mental constructs into
words, meaning that Jessica has genuine problems answering even a simple question, even if she
knows the answer by heart. The words are always 'on the tip of her tongue,' but they can't quite
get out.
Jessica is fictional, but her plight is real -- all over America, some 5% of kids in each grade suffer
from some form of recognized learning disability. Many of them are profoundly misunderstood
by educators and parents who don't know the facts about learning disabilities.

Learning Disabilities are Not Intellectual Disabilities. A child with a certified

intellectual disability -- a condition that reduces their overall IQ to meaningfully belowaverage levels -- will generally need lifelong assistance to function. A child with a
learning disability still learns, and will eventually (usually) catch up with their peers. It
just might take them several extra years unless they get the right help.
Learning Disabilities are Not Physical Disabilities. This confusion happens because
oftentimes, the net result of having a brain that cannot correctly process visual
information and having extreme near-sightedness are close to exactly the same. Each part
of the brain that is involved with learning has a part of the body that is involved in
perception, and determining which of those two parts has the actual problem is important.
Learning Disabilities are Not Attention-Related. As much as ADHD and related
diagnoses can also cause a child to have similar results in school, the medical community
is very clear on the fact that ADHD is not a learning disability. ADHD children can learn,
they just respond differently to what they are learning (or have learned) than a neurotypical child does.

The simple fact is that a learning disability is a failure of one or more parts of the brain that
communicate between different functions. Jessica, for example, can think in words, and can hear
sounds, but cannot hear in words -- because the part of her brain that communicates between
those sections is malfunctioning.

Fortunately, due to an ability of the brain to re-wire itself (called neuroplasticity), people with
learning disabilities are not doomed to suffer for their entire lives. Most persons with learning
disabilities will naturally overcome them before middle age -- and almost all of them can be
'shown how' to overcome them with proper training.

Learning Disabilities: Life after School

By Peter Mangiola RN MSN
The goal of health professionals is universally to help a child with one or more learning
disabilities overcome those disabilities. After all, no child wants to struggle through school, and
no parent wants to watch their child struggle. But as with all things, real-world concerns arise:
how much does this cost? How effective is it? Is this going to make my child into someone other
than the person I know and love?
Most of those questions, we hope we've effectively answered on this blog already, and of course
we will be happy to answer in person as many times as you need to ask them. But there's one
question that we rarely get that we feel is very important:
What Happens if My Child Doesn't Get Treated?
The truth is that most children with learning disabilities -- about 2 in 3 -- overcome those
disabilities before they reach adulthood. Why is not exactly understood, but we believe that as a
brain develops, it learns to use alternate neural pathing to accomplish goals that it cannot
accomplish normally. (This is exactly what we teach our students' brains to do -- we just have the
tools to get the job done much more quickly.)
For the remaining 1 in 3 individuals with a learning disorder, adulthood is just as perilous as
childhood. According to a report from the National Center for Learning Disabilities, adults with
learning disabilities ('LD adults' below) are significantly more challenged than neuro-typical
adults in a variety of ways:

Poverty: The number of LD adults living in poverty is twice that of the number living
above the poverty line. In other words, an LD adult has a 2 in 3 chance of living in
poverty.
Crime: More than half (55%) of all LD adults report having some sort of involvement
with the criminal justice system within 8 years of leaving high school, with 1 in 3
reported having been arrested and 1 in 6 having spent at least one night in jail.
Further Education: Four-year college attendance is half as high among LD adults as
among the general population. Two-year college attendance is about equal between LD
adults and the general population. Vocational school attendance is about 1.5 times greater
among LD adults as among the general population. In other words, having a learning
disability makes you significantly less likely to pursue the more advanced forms of
secondary education. According to the report, cost is the most significant inhibiting
factor.
Labor Force Participation: 22.3% of non-LD adults do not consider themselves part of
the labor force (i.e. they're neither employed nor unemployed because they do not intend
to have a job). Among LD adults, that number is more than double: 46% are not even
considering work.
Employment: Only 46% of all LD adults are employed, compared to 71.3% of all nonLD adults.

Overcoming a Disability Can Dramatically Improve A Life

Unfortunately, there is no way to scientifically test, much less prove, how many people who go
through a program successfully would have overcome their disability on their own in the end.
But it's evident given the condition of LD adult life that absolutely any chance that your child
could overcome their disability should be given to them.

Behavior Issues as an Effect, Not a Cause

By Peter Mangiola RN MSN
Medical science is a strange and often counterintuitive world. One major reason why is that
when you're dealing with an immensely complex system like the human body or brain, you can't
affect one part of the system without affecting every part that is connected to it.
To explain by way of a common example, we frequently hear doctors talk about obesity as
though it were the cause of several common health problems like heart disease and diabetes. But
the reality is that obesity is an effect of something that came before, and obesity doesn't cause
heart disease and diabetes -- it's just "comorbid," meaning that people who are obese are much
more likely to have heart disease or diabetes.
Another example, this one closer to the subject at hand: when you have insomnia and can't sleep,
but are very tired, it can radically impair your ability to solve problems. But while sleepiness is
the cause of the impairment, it's not the "proximate cause" of the impairment -- the actual cause
is that you have insomnia. If you solve the insomnia, you will solve the impairment (because
you'll be able to sleep.)
How This Relates to Behavioral Issues
Behavior issues have a lot of effects, including feelings of resentfulness, vindictiveness, anger,
and scapegoating. For decades, medicines have been designed that tackle those effects -- making
children chemically unable to be angry. But they never solve the proximate cause, because we're
only just beginning to understand the proximate cause.
The Left and Right Brains
Almost everyone knows about the left and right brains -- your left brain is your rational,
analytical, linguistic, spatial, sequential side; your right brain is your intuitive, spontaneous,
mathematical, symbolic, emotional, creative side. In normal people, they work together in
harmony. But in some people, a disconnection develops between them -- in fact, we call that a
Functional Disconnect.
When the two halves disconnect, one half almost invariably lags behind, and its functions suffer.

When the Left Brain Lags Behind, you end up with a person that has problems
communicating in written or spoken language. They have trouble solving problems,
keeping track of time, organizing, and utilizing fine motor skills like tying shoes.
When the Right Brain Lags Behind, you end up with a person that has problems
changing to meet the needs of the moment. They have trouble processing (or even
producing) nonverbal social and emotional cues, and are often clumsy and
uncoordinated in larger movements such as jumping rope or playing catch.

In short, people with left-brain lag are labeled as ADHD, Oppositional, Dyslexic, Dyscalculic,
and so on. People with right-brain lag are widely labeled with Autism-Spectrum Disorders,
including Asperger's Syndrome and Caetextia, as well as Tourette's Syndrome.

In either case, however, the fix is a holistic one; it's to get whichever side of the brain is lagging
to stop lagging. What exactly that entails is different for every child, because a Functional
Disconnect isn't just one thing -- different areas of the brain connect across the halves, and which
areas aren't connecting does actually matter. The core of a professional program is an in-depth
assessment designed to tell us not just that there is a Functional Disconnect, but where. That, in
turn, guides us toward the exercises that can most help the brain 'round itself out,' which will
eliminate the behavior problem as surely as getting sleep will help the insomniac's problemsolving.

Neuroplasticity and Behavior Problems: Change Is Real

By Peter Mangiola RN MSN
For hundreds of years, since the discovery of what exactly the brain was for (Plato and Aristotle
thought it was for cooling off the blood), medical science has "known" that the brain was a
nearly-static entity. Your neurons can grow connections between themselves and their neighbors,
but they can't do much else -- certainly a neuron that is already engaged in, for example,
attaching meanings to sounds couldn't simply change themselves to become adapted for
attaching meanings to letters, instead.
Except they can.
Neuroplasticity and Brain Injury
The first modern evidence of neuroplasticity was popularized when a woman who had suffered
brain damage to her vestibular apparatus -- the part of the brain responsible for helping maintain
balance -- was given a device that allowed her to use her tongue for balance instead. It took her a
long time to learn to use the device to not fall overand to everyone's amazement, once she did,
she no longer needed the device! Her brain had actually taken neurons that were assigned to a
different task and rewired them to perform the needed task of keeping her balance.
Neuroplasticity and Retraining
It was a relatively short time after that initial discovery that medical technicians began to ask: if
the brain can do this on its own given an obvious need, can we cause it to do this by giving it the
correct stimuli? The answer turned out to be 'absolutely!' Depending on the specific brain's
construction, it's almost always possible to create a 'game' of one kind or another that will trick
the brain into using new neural circuitry to perform a given task.
What Does This Have to Do With Behavior Problems?
Simply put, behavior problems begin in the brain. Whether you have autism, oppositional defiant
disorder, conduct disorder, ADHD, or something else entirely, you can rest assured that the brain
is the source of the problem.
In fact, in the vast majority of cases, the behavior itself will lend clues as to precisely where and
in what way the brain is malfunctioning. Autism happens when the right brain has fallen behind
in the areas of social and emotional processing, for example. ADHD happens when the left brain
falls behind in the areas of temporal processing and focused analysis.
Play Your Way to a Better Day
Once we understand where a brain is going wrong -- where it's suffering what we call a
Functional Disconnect -- we can use the science of neuroplasticity to train that brain to navigate
around that disconnect and find a new way to process that doesn't trigger the behavior problem.
By way of analogy, pretend you're in a new city, and you're driving to work. You find out that a
bridge on the highway is out. At first, you simply can't get to work; you don't know how to
navigate the surface streets. But through repeated attempts, you find first how to get there, and

then how to get there efficiently. By the time the bridge has been rebuilt a few months later,
you've got the whole 'getting to work on the surface roads' thing down to a science.
The brain might not ever rebuild that bridge -- someone with a profound Functional Disconnect
might never be quite as able to perform normally as someone whose brain is fully functional. But
they can learn to function without relying on the old pattern of 'bad brain' behavior. And for tens
of thousands of parents and children around the country, just knowing that it can be done is
something to get really excited about.

Oppositional Defiant Disorder: The Brain of a Terror Child

By Peter Mangiola RN MSN
There are few behavior problems as dramatic as the appropriately-named Oppositional Defiant
Disorder. A child with ODD hates you, hates authority figures of any kind, and will not hesitate
to display those emotions with staggeringly nonsensical behavior.
Such a child will throw an extraordinarily destructive tantrum, tearing the whole room apart,
when you tell him the sky is blue. They will continue to fight you for hours until finally, too
exhausted to continue, you admit the sky is green -- at which point they will whip around and tell
you with pure contempt that you're wrong, the sky is blue, and you're an idiot for thinking
otherwise. This makes perfect sense to them.
The Roots of ODD
Clearly behavior like this isn't borne just of poor parenting or other social conditions. And as it
turns out, it's not. Recent scientific studies have shown repeatedly that children with ODD
universally have a Functional Disconnect between their frontal lobes and their temporal lobes.
The two don't communicate the way that they do in a normal brain, and the results are predicable
once you understand how the two areas relate to violence.
The Aggression Matrix
The frontal and temporal lobes both deal with violence, but in two different ways.

The frontal lobe is the part of the brain that deals with reactive violence (i.e. responding
to incoming violence by generating violent responses) and premeditated violence (i.e.
deciding ahead of time to be violent and 'designing' the violence in the imagination.)
The temporal lobe is the part of the brain that trafficks in spontaneous, impulsive
violence. The temporal lobe is the part that says 'I don't like this thing, let's break it," or
"She's looking at me funny, let's break her."
Equally important, the frontal lobe is the part of the brain that tempers violent impulses.
The desire toward violence can form in either lobe, but when it is processed by the frontal
lobe, it is most often quashed quickly because the frontal lobe is responsible for
determining what the response your violence is most likely to receive.

The Cycle of Violence

As you can imagine, what happens to most of us is that a few to dozens of times a day depending
on factors like our stress level, a violent impulse arises in our temporal lobe and is quashed by
the frontal lobe at something approaching the speed of light. We might recognize the impulse if
we're daydreaming, but more likely than not, we simply blast past it because we're focused on
something.
If a child has a disconnect between your frontal and temporal lobes, and they're under enough
stress at home, school, or both, those violent impulses erupt out of the temporal lobe and there's
nothing there to stop them. They become reality, the child become oppositional and aggressive,
and the suffering begins.

Shortcut the Disconnect

Fortunately, the human brain is a miraculous entity that is more than capable of re-wiring itself if
the need is powerful enough or if it can be 'taught' by an outside force. Show it how to navigate
around the disconnect using the kinds of powerful tools many professionals use, and you can cut
the roots out from under the ODD tree, and find the peaceful, competent child you knew was in
there all along.

The Origins of Dyslexia in the Brain

By Peter Mangiola RN MSN
Dyslexia, and it's close cousins dyscalculia (inability to process numbers) and dyspraxia
(inability to perform fine motor skills such as writing or tying shoes), are all different
expressions of the same problem in the brain; a disconnect between areas of the brain and most
often, the left and right hemispheres. Occasionally, a different form of disconnect, such as
between the grey ('thinking') matter and the white ('connective') matter, can also result in nearly
identical problems.
How the Brain Reads
When the brain is attempting to parse a word, several different areas must be engaged. First, the
eye's signals are translated into electrochemical signals in the optic nerves. Those signals are
directed by parts of the brain called the 'angular gyrus' and the 'supramarginal gyrus,' which act
as 'conductors' during the reading process, guiding the electrochemical signals along the path
described below.
From the eyes, the electrochemical signals first travel to the temporal lobe, where the symbols
are identified in the right half of the temporal lobe, and then the left half of the lobe assigns
phonemes (the basic units of spoken speech) to each symbol.
The letter-phoneme set is then transferred to the frontal lobe, where the left half of the frontal
lobe connects the sets into words, identifies the words, and attaches meanings to the words. C-AT becomes 'that furry meowy thing.' The same lobe 'holds' the words for processing via the rules
of grammar into sentences, forming coherent thoughts out of strings of letter-phonemes and
predicting what is likely to come next.
At the same time that the left-hemisphere frontal lobe is doing those tasks, the right-hemisphere
is doing what it does best: taking the concepts the left hemisphere is producing by examining the
words, and giving them 'texture.' The left-brain sees 'cat' and responds 'that furry meowy thing;'
the right brain sees 'cat' and responds 'fuzzy warm sunbeam-sleeper laser pointer pounce play
purr Mr. Bigglesworth claws tiger feet-landing nine lives curiosity felis domesticus
caterwauling' and so on. This process primes the brain for any of the many ideas that could
reasonably spring from the notion of cathood.
Why the Disconnect Occurs
Unfortunately, our current understanding of the brain isn't enough to tell us exactly why these
disconnects sometimes occur. The most common theories agree that they occur as the brain
develops, but that's as far as they get. There's not even a lot of consensus that the relevant stage
of development happens in the womb as opposed to after birth.
Can the Disconnect Be Fixed?
The most accurate answer is 'usually.' There are definitely instances, usually due to injury, that
correcting a functional disconnect is actually impossible. But for most people, the brain's
neuroplasticity, or ability to re-wire itself given the need, can be manipulated into sculpting a

path for reading-signals to follow that circumvents that disconnect and allows reading to occur
elsewhere in the brain.
Some health professionals specialize in the kind of neuroplastic resculpting exercises -- paired
with sensory and dietary rehabilitation -- that can help a dyslexic brain work around the
disconnect and get the reading process flowing properly, often for the first time.

Seven Common Myths about Dyslexia

By Peter Mangiola RN MSN
Dyslexia is one of those once-specific terms that has entered the public consciousness and
adopted a meaning that is radically different from its scientific roots. That's not entirely a bad
thing -- language evolves like that -- but it does mean that telling someone that your daughter has
a medical diagnosis of dyslexia is likely to mean something pretty different to you as to the
person you're talking to. Here are several perfectly everyday ways in which people who aren't
familiar with the medical field misunderstand dyslexia:

Writing Backwards Is Not a Symptom of Dyslexia. It's a sign that a child's brain
hasn't quite nailed either the symbol's appearance or the fine motor motions involved
in creating those symptoms, but it's not anything related to dyslexia. The fact that
absolutely anyone can fairly handily write backwards by switching to their off hand
should prove that rule.
Dyslexia Is Not an Issue of Perception. While it's certainly possible to have a child
with both perceptive difficulties (such as near-sightedness) and dyslexia, the two are
separate issues and aren't even particularly highly correlated. Dyslexia is a problem in
which the brain cannot process letters and phonemes into meaning, not one in which
it cannot identify the letters and phonemes in questions.
They'll Eventually Catch Up. A common idea is that dyslexia is a 'setback,' (like
being a late bloomer) that will eventually be overcome and forgotten. But the
evidence is that children with untreated dyslexia will continue to struggle with
reading throughout their adult lives.
Dyslexia Is a Boy's Disorder. For years, this was considered scientific fact, however
recent longitudinal studies have proven that the imbalance was in our ability to
identify dyslexia in girls. It turns out girls simply quietly struggle through their
dyslexia instead of using it as a reason to act out, so as a culture we had a harder time
finding dyslexic girls -- but they're out there, in more-or-less equal numbers.
Only English Readers (or Romance Language readers, or some other group) are
Dyslexic. This is a fascinating quirk of language. For years, many specific languages
seemed 'immune' to dyslexia -- in particular, highly regular languages like German.
We've since learned that dyslexia absolutely happens to German children, but because
they can more methodically work through a word (there are dramatically fewer words
that 'break the rules,') dyslexia expresses itself as slow reading rather than failed
reading.
Dyslexia Can Be Countered By Appealing to Other Parts of the Brain. Several
schools of child medicine attempted to overcome dyslexia by adding colored
overlays, textures, or other sensory data to words in an attempt to 'enroll' other areas
of the brain in processing those words. There is no evidence this practice was ever
effective.
Dyslexia cannot be Overcome. Perhaps the most dangerous myth of all is the notion
that dyslexia simply has no solution. This is entirely untrue; people whose dyslexia is
caught early -- or people caught later who undergo extremely intensive training -- can

overcome dyslexia through brute force and learn to become effective, albeit slow,
readers.
I also believe there is another way to overcome dyslexia, using not extreme, brute-force training,
but through cleverly-designed play that 'remaps' the circuits the brain uses to read.

Non-Verbal Intelligence, Communication, and Dyslexia

By Peter Mangiola RN MSN
A dyslexic child has a problem in which their brain cannot properly identify and/or connect
meaning to written words. This prevents them from being able to read except through a profound
effort of focused concentration. For many years, it was assumed that a dyslexic child was simply
disabled -- that there was no corresponding increase in other ability.
But we know that the blind experience an increase in their ability to identify sounds, echolocate
themselves within their environment, and even use the movement of air against their body hairs
in order to avoid obstacles. Is it possible that the same sort of effect is present in dyslexia?
A Hidden Strength
In 2006, a pair of researchers publishing in the Archives of Medical Science produced a study
that proved that indeed, there is. Some experts maintain that 'intelligence' isn't a 'real'
measurement; it's an umbrella under which dozens of individual academic, mental, and physical
tasks fall. Ali Fathi-Ashtiani and Khodabakhsh Ahmadi of the Behavioral Sciences Research
Center of Tehran agreed, and they utilized a number of tests designed to explore intelligence in
terms of 'verbal' (word-related) and 'non-verbal' (image-related).
They chose 30 dyslexic 3rd grade boys with no noted behavioral, sociological, or perceptionrelated difficulties, and 30 'normal' 3rd grade boys with no noted behavioral, sociological, or
perception-related difficulties, and ran them through the battery of tests they had chosen.
The final score: unsurprisingly, the dyslexic students were several points behind in Verbal
Intelligence. But perhaps surprisingly, they were also ahead of the normal students by a few
points of Non-Verbal Intelligence.
Non-Verbal Intelligence
In a broad stroke, non-verbal intelligence is defined as 'the ability to analyze information and
solve problems using visual, spatial, and/or kinesthetic reasoning.' (Some sources also include
'abstract reasoning' in that list, however the general consensus is that abstract reasoning relies
heavily on both verbal and non-verbal intelligence.)
This means that a child with dyslexia will, in general, be better at a 'normal' child at the things
'normal' children ignore in favor of focusing on words. They will tend to build more effectively
with Legos. They will tend to pay more attention to the body language and appearance of others.
They will tend to learn a new dance, a new sport, or a new activity more quickly. They will
complete mazes more quickly, understand picture-only comics more rapidly, and more
effectively transfer images from their imagination into the world (via drawing, sculpting, etc.)
What Happens If the Dyslexia Goes Away?
We don't know for certain. What we do know from the example of blind people is that the brain
actually does rewire itself to divert neurons away from the useless or damaged part of the brain.
That understanding leads us to believe that the best way to tackle dyslexia is to teach the brain

how to accomplish the tasks of reading using a different set of neurons -- which is what the latest
programs are all about -- but we don't know what effect that 'retraining' has on the existing,
already-rewired nonverbal intelligence that dyslexic people excel at.

Asperger's Syndrome Is Not Autism

By Peter Mangiola RN MSN
The most recent edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders lists
Asperger's Disorder (a.k.a. Asperger's Syndrome) as falling into the diagnosis of "Autism
Spectrum Disorders." That's due to change, we believe, because recent scientific examination has
(finally!) discovered meaningful differences in the brain structure of Asperger's vs. ASDs.
Using Your Words
By using an EEG to measure the connectivity between different parts of the brain, researchers at
Boston Children's Hospital found that, much like ASDs, people with Asperger's have
significantly weaker arcuate fasciculae -- the part of the brain that connects the 'understanding
speech' area of the brain with the 'producing speech' area. In other words, even if they understand
speech perfectly and can produce speech perfectly, the act of combining those two processes to
successfully communicate is extremely challenging to them. Asperger's sufferers connections are
meaningfully stronger than someone with even a middle-of-the-range ASD, however, so their
ability to communicate is not as impacted.
Non-Verbal Non-Communication
Also in both ASDs and Asperger's, those same communications centers are also dramatically less
connected to the right hemisphere of the brain, which is the side that deals with non-verbal
communication. 90% of communication is non-verbal; it occurs via body language, expressions,
gestures, respect (or lack thereof) for personal space, and in intonation. Because the right
hemisphere is so disconnected, people with both ASDs and Asperger's Disorder have severe
problems both understanding and producing this 90% of the communicative processes.
Combined with the above disconnect between comprehension and formulation of words, this
effect nearly entirely cripples the ability to communicateexcept
One of These Things is Not Like the Other
However, the same EEG tests found that there are also significant differences between an autistic
brain and an Asperger's brain -- differences meaningful enough that treating them as part of the
same umbrella is a flawed paradigm. In particular, whereas people with Autism-Spectrum
Disorders have no connections within the brain that are particularly stronger than a normal,
healthy individual, Asperger's Syndrome individuals do.
The Strengths of Asperger's
While every brain is unique, there are definite, predictable areas in which the brain of a person
with Asperger's is more strongly interconnected than a 'normal' person. In particular, several
areas of the left hemisphere have more powerful connections in someone with Asperger's. This is
what gives their brain its uniquely-Asperger's qualities of intense focus, easy repetition of
interesting tasks, prodigious memory, and immense -- but highly literal -- vocabulary.
Can Asperger's Be Cured?
No. Quite simply, the brain is not capable, once formed, of (re?)generating structures that were
not properly built in the first place. But there is strong evidence that a holistic regimen that

provides the brain with proper building blocks (through diet and exercise),
stimulates the body and brain with sensory motor activities, and
guides the brain to build new neuronal pathways that go 'around' the malfunctioning
areas

can, in fact, allow someone with Asperger's Syndrome to come very close to 'normal' function
-- not by curing the problem, but by taking advantage of the brain's innate ability to create new
connections.

The Three-Legged Stool of Asperger's Treatment

By Peter Mangiola RN MSN
Holistic medicine has been a part of human culture since the days of the earliest Ayurvedic texts
around 600 BC. The scientific method of breaking everything down into its smallest components
led to a large-scale discarding of the notions of holistic medicine for a few centuries. As concepts
such as Complex Systems Analysis and even Chaos Theory have developed, however, we've
begun to recognize that in intricate and homeostatic systems like the human body and brain,
there is no single factor at the root of things. There are only systems that affect other systems in
more or less predictable ways.
That understanding is at the roots of some of the latest treatments for Asperger's Syndrome. If
you want to address a systemic problem, you need a systemic solution. This relies on three kinds
of treatment:
Nutrition: Your body can't build unless you give it the proper tools. Nutrition is at
the root of any holistic program, because the only way to take control of a system is
to take control of the inputs to that system. By ensuring that a child gets everything
their body needs to properly generate new neurons, construct neurotransmitters, selfregulate hormone levels, and perform the other million things the body does on a
daily basis, you enable the maximum amount of recovery in the minimum amount of
time.
Sensory/Motor: We like to think of body and brain as separate, but the truth is that
there is no physical division that can be made between the two. There are around a
hundred billion neurons in the brain, about a hundred million in the spinal cord,
around a hundred million in the gut (the enteric nervous system), and tens of millions
more in the other parts of the body. All of them are interconnected, and all of them
can and do affect each other on a daily basis. As such, attempting to address an issue
in brain balance (like Asperger's) without also addressing the same issue on a
sensory/motor level -- the 'body's brain' -- is failing to take the whole of 'brain
balance' into account.
Neuro-Academics: It is one thing to teach a child academic skills; it's another to find
a way to teach those skills that works with their specific neural abilities and
disabilities. Neuro-academics begins by addressing the core skills of any brain:
executive function, cognitive skills training, and information processing. As those
skills improve, a child's capacity to address specific deficiencies such as social
awareness, oral self-expression, and so on will expand. As these deficiencies begin to
be alleviated, the effects of Asperger's are overcome, and the child begins to function
more normally.
With these three 'legs' of the treatment in place, the treatment method will, at minimum,
noticeably mitigate the effects of Asperger's Syndrome on a child's social and academic
development. Some children can be mainstreamed after adequate treatment; others will always
be affected, but can achieve much greater levels of success than were previously available to
them.

Discerning High-Functioning Autism: The Eyes Have It

By Peter Mangiola RN MSN
Many people who live with high-functioning autism have developed a number of compensatory
strategies that generally allow them to function within the bounds of 'normalcy,' keeping their
condition successful hidden. But a hidden condition is not a cured condition, and the slightest
significant disconnect between reality and their chosen strategy will reveal that not is all as it
should be.
Doctors struggled for years to find a test sensitive enough to discern whether or not someone was
a high-functioning autistic or merely a bit socially unacceptable by nature. Relatively recently,
they've come across one that works startlingly well. It goes by the rather clumsy and not-soscientific-sounding name "Reading the Mind in the Eyes."
In this test, the subject is shown several dozen pictures of a human face with everything except a
rectangle around the eyes cut away. The subject is then asked to identify what emotional or
mental state the person in the picture is experiencing (i.e. compassion, discernment, joy, etc.) As
it turns out, people with more-or-less normal brains -- even those with socially unacceptable
behavior -- score fairly consistently on this test. People with high-functioning autism, however,
consistently score measurably below the 'normal' standard, even when their behavior is reliably
socially acceptable.
What That Means for the Mildly Autistic
In short, the insight that this test gives us into high-functioning autism is that it is, in fact, still
autism. No matter how close to normal a person is able to act, they still have a functional
disconnect somewhere in their brain that prevents them from being able to properly connect
vision with emotion in a way that creates empathy.
How the disconnect occurs is still unknown. Some researchers theorize that the neuron-axon
bundles known as 'tracts' that connect one brain region to another are disorganized in an autistic
brain; others that the neurons are OK but the synapses -- the connections between neurons -- are
malformed.
In the end, because we don't yet have the ability to change a neuron (or synapse) once it's built, it
doesn't matter. The disconnect exists one way or the other -- and that disconnect must be
addressed for the person to actually be able to emotionally connect with another person.
How to Address the Autistic Disconnect
As it turns out, a brain that is given the proper nutrition and the proper stimulation can do
something about a functional disconnect like the one responsible for high-functioning autism.
Those broken connections cannot be fixed, but the brain can re-wire itself to function without
them, essentially substituting in another part of its wiring for the broken part.

The process is involved, and requires the whole person -- body, mind, even emotions -- to get
involved. But by engaging in carefully-built exercises designed to stimulate the senses and
playing deliberately-crafted games designed to provoke certain kinds of brain activity, it is
possible for a child with high-functioning autism to develop the ability to empathize -- and learn
to open the window we all have into the soul.

Autoimmune Diseases as a Trigger for Autism

By Peter Mangiola RN MSN
There have been a lot of attempts to explain autism lately, from the vaccination-autism crowd to
a growing number of very significant studies linking autoimmune disease in mothers to autism in
children to further studies that cite a meaningful number of autoimmune-disease markers that are
comorbid with autism. It seems likely that a single unified theory of how autism happens may be
around the corner.
The Cutting Edge Theory
The current top contender for that Unified Theory of Autism is complex -- not a contender for the
Occam's Razor award -- but then, few things about intricate details of biology are simple. Let's
see if we can break it down for you. Interestingly, it does involve vaccines -- just not where you
might expect.
Temporary Autoimmune Disease is a known, if rare, side effect of vaccinations against
several diseases of adulthood, including some that are typically given to pregnant women,
such as Pertussis and Hepatitis B. The most common (more accurately, 'least rare') of
these diseases is a mild case of Guillain-Barr Syndrome, but others including temporary
rheumatoid arthritis are known to occur.
Brain Antibodies, which is to say 'antibodies known to attack brain cells' are a fairly
typical lingering effect of autoimmune disease -- and, in fact, recent studies of large
populations of the mothers of autistic children have shown that many of them have brain
antibodies in their system. Brain antibodies do not harm the mother, because they cannot
penetrate the mother's blood-brain barrier -- but developing fetuses do not have the same
barrier, so the brain antibodies in the mother's blood may be getting to the developing
baby's body and harming its brain.
Micro-glial Cells, the brain's only natural autoimmune cell, are highly sensitive entities.
They have to be, or any minor infection that managed to access the brain through any
form of gap in the blood-brain barrier could potential devastate a large portion of the
nervous system. When a developing brain is attacked, say by a brain antibody from the
mother's blood, the brain's "correct" evolutionary response is to even further jack up the
sensitivity of the micro-glial cells it produces -- after all, as far as that brain is concerned,
it's being born into a place where attacks on brain cells are commonplace.
Inflammation of the Brain is a natural result of over-activation of the micro-glial cells.
Any time your body believes it's infected, inflammation is the natural result, and the brain
is no exception.
Damaged Synapses and Dead Neurons are one of the predictable side effects of
inflammation of the brain. The primary chemical the brain uses to create the
inflammation that it uses to fight infection -- nitric oxide -- damages and kills neurons if
levels rise too high.
Newly-Forming Synapses are the most vulnerable to the effects of nitric oxide. This
includes, among 2-5 year olds, the synapses responsible for the development of language
comprehension, social awareness, and empathy -- all of the classic hallmarks of autism.

Of course, this is still unproven theory, and there are a significant number of mothers of autistic
children who do not have brain antibodies in their blood. But as it stands, it is currently the best
theory out there to explain at least one potential major vector for the autism epidemic.

Is It Possible To Improve On High-Functioning Autism?

By Peter Mangiola RN MSN
In a wordyes.
More specifically; a study published in January of 2013 proved that a small but meaningful
percentage of children diagnosed as autistic at age 2 achieved what the researchers referred to as
an 'optimal outcome' by the time they started 1st grade.
Even more specifically; 18% (very nearly 1 in 5) children diagnosed with an autism-spectrum
disorder at age 2 were given a battery of tests designed to test for signs of autism, and passed
every test and a double-blind interview with a professional clinician who was searching for
indications of autism. These 18% of children displayed none of the diagnostic markers of autism
and were non-discernable from their group of non-diagnosed peers at the start of 1st grade.
What Makes These Kids' Outcomes Better?
The study reviewed the children who achieved an optimal outcome, and they found that a small
group achieved that outcome without any particular effort on the part of any professional.
However, they discovered, the majority of the children who achieved an optimal outcome had
fairly vigorous intervention that commenced early -- shortly after they were diagnosed, before
their third birthday.
The most interesting part of the intervention review is that a significant portion of that successful
early-intervention group showed little to none of the typical Functional Disconnection displayed
by most autistic children. The theory extended is that, caught early enough, intervention can
'teach' the brain to develop in a normal manner even when the disease of autism would normally
prevent that development.
The kind of intervention most common among the group that achieved an optimal outcome was
not examined in detail; only that any intervention had occurred was mentioned.
Nearly-Optimal Outcomes
The idea of an 'optimal outcome' was defined with two criteria: first, the child showed no clinical
signs of autism; second, they were able to function on the same academic and social level as
'normal' peers. This means that there were two independent groups of 'nearly-optimal' outcomes:
one that possessed the ability to function academically in mainstream classrooms but still
showed distinct autistic traits ('high-functioning autistics'), and those that lost all clinical
indications of being autistic but were still unable to keep up in a typical academic environment.
Improving on High-Functioning Autism
Even the group that retained a diagnosis of high-functioning autism into their school years
doesn't have to be stuck with the label forever. Utilizing a unique integrated approach to highfunctioning autism has given many children the tools they needed to overcome their diagnosis
and achieve both academic and social success -- even up to and beyond 10 years of age; far
beyond when most clinicians would assume autism would be a lifelong diagnosis.

By blending a proven nutritional regimen that gives the body and brain the tools they need to
grow, a powerful set of sensory motor stimulation exercises, and some extremely cutting-edge
neuro-academic techniques that teach the brain to rewire itself according to its needs, some of the
cutting edge treatments out there can give your autistic child the best chance they have at an
optimal result.

How to Treat an Umbrella Diagnosis: PDD-NOS

By Peter Mangiola RN MSN
Having your child get diagnosed with Pervasive Developmental Disorder - Not Otherwise
Specified (PPD-NOS) is somewhat like being told that your child is "sick." Certainly, it's true,
but what does it mean? What can you do about it?
Defining Something That Is Deliberately Not Specified
PDD-NOS is part of the Autism Spectrum Disorder umbrella, but it is itself an umbrella in that it
covers anyone who clearly has autism-like symptoms but for technical reasons doesn't fit the
established three other diagnoses within the spectrum.

Autism and Childhood Disintegrative Disorder doesn't apply if the symptoms that
define it come on later in life than normal.
Asperger's Disorder doesnt apply if the child experiences language delays.
Rett Syndrome doesn't apply if the child doesn't experience the repetitive motion
component.
In other words, PDD-NOS means 'your child is almost one of these things, but not quite, and we
don't know why.'
How Do You Treat Something That Isn't Defined?
Fortunately, as much as PDD-NOS is defined by what it isn't within the context of the autism
spectrum, it is still part of the autism spectrum, and we know enough about that set of conditions
to know this: PDD-NOS is a 'neuro-developmental disorder.' This means that it comes into being
as the brain is developing, because the brain isn't developing correctly.
Fortunately for parents of children with PDD-NOS, in many cases, that is all we need to know.
The Traits of Neuro-Developmental Disorders
NDDs have flummoxed scientists for decades, because they seem to defy all attempts at
identifying the source of the disorders. Literally hundreds of different genes and gene loci have
been identified as potential genetic triggers for NDDs. Environmental factors such as oxidative
stress have been identified as causes. Epigenetic factors such as antibodies in the mother's blood
during early pregnancy seem to be related as well. In short, no one knows why NDDs happen
other than an agreement that it must be a variety of different effects coming together.
That said, all NDDs have one thing in common; they happen because some part of the brain isn't
talking to some other part of the brain correctly. When one of those disconnected parts is the part
that identifies social cues and reads body language, you get a child who cannot socialize. When
one of them is the part that turns sounds into meaning, you get a child who doesn't respond to
spoken words. It doesn't entirely matter which parts are disconnected if you have a technique that
can re-establish connections within the brain.
Many health professionals today specialize in a unique, integrative therapy that unites nutritional,
bodily, and neurological elements to teach a child's brain how to rewire itself. We cannot fix the

parts of a brain that are malfunctioning, but it turns out that the brain is amazingly adaptable,
especially in children. A different area of the brain can be 'taught' to do the job of the piece that is
broken, with the net result that a child with PDD-NOS can often be fully integrated into
mainstream class and mainstream life.