Over the last few months, I've had people find my blog as they're investigating Anna Buck's Neuro-Developmental Delay Therapy that we've had my son in since last January. I had meant to blog regularly about his progress, but it appears I haven't written much (if anything) about it since shortly after we started. So I thought I'd update with some of the changes we've noticed in him since beginning:

• Reading: Before starting NDD therapy, he had a hard time reading anything more complex than a simple picture book with a few sentences on each page, even after months of Vision Therapy. However, last summer he became interested in novels written for his age level (he's 10 1/2) and started reading books like The Lightning Thief. His eyes still tire after 4 or 5 pages, but it's a huge step over a short period of time.
• Clumsiness: Many friends have told me they noticed he's much more aware of his body and a lot less clumsy than before. He's obviously much more aware of his body, and much of that change shows in drawings of people - he started drawing pictures of people with features like ears and hair and the occasional neck.
• Panic/Anger: He was always the kind of child who would fly into a panic or get overly angry over small things - losing something, getting surprised, things not going as expected. Wow, he is so much more calm as the "startle" reflex has inhibited over the last several months. If he loses something, he will just look for it and persist until he finds it instead of screaming in frustration and impatiently expecting me to look for it.
• Hyperactivity: Much of this has decreased, but I'm beginning to notice a pattern that couldn't have been obvious when he acted hyper and impulsive all the time. Now it appears to be related to his diet, and we're making some small changes (agave nectar as a substitute for sugar, for example) and considering more significant changes (like significantly reducing carbohydrates in his diet).

We still have a way to go, but it's so exciting to see the changes in him. And we started taking my daughter to see Anna as well. She didn't have as many of the obvious reflex problems that her brother had, but she has had auditory processing and brain integration difficulties that have really interfered with her reading ability and memory. Since she started in September, she is beginning to read much better than before. She has another 3 weeks of "Listening Fitness Therapy," after which the auditory processing problem should be pretty much resolved. Perhaps I'll remember to update about that when she's done!

but, holy cow, I wasn't ready for an instant return to the argumentative, hyper child who can't listen and respond to what he's told!

Our first few days of the NDD therapy have been exhausting. It's not the therapy/exercises themselves. The home work is one fairly simple exercise that my husband does with my son at bedtime. But the specific stimulation of the brain has led to some unexpected effects. While I did expect him to be more tired than usual, I didn't expect the hyperactivity and impulsiveness to increase dramatically and immediately. The other thing that's interesting is that this child who almost never sings has started spontaneously singing.

I'm finding a great need to be patient as he is having a hard time responding to instructions, especially when he's engaging in impulsive behavior. It seems like my instruction just isn't getting to the "respond" part of the brain very quickly. But we're persevering with the hope and expectation that the next few weeks will show improvement. Our therapist told us we could expect about 6 months of seeing things "fall apart" before they improved as we stripped away coping mechanisms in order to help his brain function properly. I just didn't expect to see it so dramatically so quickly.

4 years of Speech Therapy ... he can speak clearly enough to be understood, but still doesn't have the muscle control to close his mouth while eating.

3 years of Occupational Therapy ... he has significantly increased body awareness but still crashes into people and walls; he can ride a bike, rollerblade and scooter but can't walk heel-to-toe across a room or stand on one foot for more than 15 seconds.

7 months of Vision Therapy (aka torture) ... his eyes can converge on a tool for a test but not on paper to read; he still can't copy a group of simple pictures from one paper to another.

I started praying last fall because it appears my son has some kind of neurological delay or dysfunction that is limiting him in many areas. In November my friend told me about Anna Buck, a therapist who studied Neural Development Delay in Britain. Her NDD therapy focuses on 2 areas: correcting reflexive behaviors that are retained from infancy and improving vestibular system function.

I hope to blog about our journey with NDD therapy for my son in hopes that I can help others whose children may be in a similar situation. When all the other therapies have helped but haven't solved the problem, it's possible your child may be retaining infantile reflexes that can be corrected.

We took my son for an evaluation with Anna about 2 weeks ago, and right from the beginning, I could tell that he needed help. While he appears to have good balance and gross motor skills, his performance on many of these tests showed that he has developed compensating mechanisms that were stripped away when he was asked to perform tasks different from his normal activities. And he tired very quickly, beginning to yawn after only 10 or 15 minutes of what appeared to be simple activities.

The results of the evaluation showed that Jalen does have several retained reflexes. One is the "startle" reflex that causes an infant to suddenly spread their arms and react when surprised. Children who retain this reflex end up living in a "fight or flight" state - either extremely anxious or highly frustrated and angry. My son is one of the angry/frustrated ones - it's deeper than a discipline/self-control issue. I don't want to sound like I'm making excuses for sinful behavior, but in his case (and in a few other children I have seen), there is an automatic reaction to frustration that is far beyond simple anger. And other reflexes he has retained include those that move the head automatically along with the body as well as the baby's rooting/sucking reflex (now we understand the mouth issues).

Today he begins therapy. He and his dad will visit Anna this afternoon and learn the first of many exercises to perform daily to begin inhibiting one of these reflexes. After about a month, they'll go back and start working on another exercise. The exercises are designed around the way babies move their bodies to train the brain to overcome the infantile reflexes. It will be a long road for us - we expect 18 months to 2 years to fully complete the NDD therapy. Anna has treated many children with more serious issues (including her own daughter) and found miraculous success. (She documents many of these in her book Miracle Children.)

I'm trying not to pin great hopes on this new therapy, but we have come to the point where I don't expect lifelong success with academics or relationships without some kind of help. We are willing to make this long-term commitment to help our son become who God made him in body, mind and spirit, overcoming the physical weaknesses that have held him down for many years.