May 21, 2026 | I'm a Parent, I'm a Teacher, ILT Blog
You may wonder why your child is prone to anxiety. Why she so often resorts to tears, fears and avoidance behaviours. While there are many possible reasons for this, it is sometimes useful to consider the actual development of the brain and how this may contribute to becoming an anxious person.
A principle of brain development that was described by the neurologist John MacLean, demonstrates that the brain develops from the bottom to the top and from inside out. The more primitive systems, being the brainstem, pons and medulla, develop first. This makes sense because they are our survival systems, controlling unconscious functions like heartbeat, breathing and so on. The systems regulating our emotions (the limbic, thalamus, hypothalamus and so on) develop next. Finally, the cortical systems that act as an executive control centre including decision making, problem solving, attending, controlling impulses and more, complete development at about the age of 25 years. These are the ‘smart’ brain systems.
Brain scans and imaging have shown how the primitive brain systems take over higher systems in situations of danger or threat. This is due to the natural need to enhance our survival and explains why when faced with a threatening situation, we cannot think clearly or act rationally. Oxygen supply to higher brain systems is reduced so that more oxygen can be directed to muscles and other body parts required to protect ourselves by fighting or running away. When in imminent danger, we don’t need to stop to problem solve – we need to react instinctively to survive. This summarises the stress responses of fight or flight and is a useful mechanism when really needed.
The downside is that if the stress response is activated too much or too intensely at a very early age (within the first twelve months from birth), the development of neural pathways to the brain’s frontal systems becomes compromised.
The reasons for this are threefold. First, the primitive systems are activated very strongly and stronger wiring in the survival brain systems results in weaker wiring in the higher level ‘smarter’ brain systems. This results in the development of the ‘anxious brain’. Secondly, chemicals are produced that are linked to the primitive brain structures. These chemicals (adrenalin, cortisol and others) are geared towards enhancing primitive survival and inhibit chemicals such as serotonin, which is geared towards smart brain development. Thirdly, ongoing electrical activity (firing between neurons) in the primitive systems strengthen the neural connections so a viscous cycle results – with primitive brain areas being gradually more and more in control with less ability to use the higher level smart brain systems.
This is why a well developing brain needs a safe, enriched environment to develop. Secure, enriched environments downregulate the overactivation of primitive systems that result in an anxious brain developing. If the child’s environment is compromised, it constantly activates threat or risk of not surviving, leading to the protective behaviours that are seen in stress responses. It is simply devastating for healthy neural development. Remember too that it isn’t only an emotionally unsafe environment that can predispose a child to becoming anxious. Physically illnesses also convey a sense of dis-ease and insecurity so even in the most loving and attentive families, a child prone to illnesses may be at risk for developing an anxious brain.
In order to help, what is needed is a bottom-up approach. It doesn’t help to ‘talk’ a child out of being anxious. Remember that the higher brain systems aren’t functioning efficiently. You are not going to want to discuss philosophical matters while a snarling dog is rushing towards you. The child has to be helped to feel safe both physically (including health) and emotionally.
Some of the basic needs that should be met in order to promote development and wellness are:
- The need for control (having our survival needs met, such as being fed when hungry, comforted when distressed) and understanding the situation. The latter refers to a child needing help to appraise a situation and to understand why she feels as she does)
- The need for attachment (closeness of the primary caregiver; trust)
- The need for distress avoidance and pleasure maximization. (We are all motivated towards pleasant experiences and avoid unpleasant or painful ones. This includes physical, psychological, emotional or social states, which we automatically evaluate as either ‘good’ or ‘bad’.) A child needs more ‘good’ experiences than ‘bad’ in order to develop optimally.
- The need for self-esteem enhancement and self-esteem protection. A child needs to evaluate her or his worth as a person as valuable and worthy. Positive feedback from others and unconditional love are important to developing a healthy self-esteem.
Fortunately, we know that the brain is plastic and can be changed. Neural connections can be established or weakened so by contributing to the child’s sense of security, her brain can reorganize the neural networks and begin to shift the firing of primitive systems to those of the higher level systems.
Stress is a major factor in children with learning difficulties, which is why Integrated Learning Therapy (ILT) practitioners address signs of stress in our clients.
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May 13, 2026 | I'm a Parent, I'm a Teacher, ILT Blog
Teachers have so many roles to play and balls to juggle that for many, life can seem overwhelming for much of the time. Added to that is the expectation that they have to be able to meet the needs of children with a wide variety of abilities and challenges. No wonder they feel unraveled by the end of term!
But is there something they can do to perhaps better understand the causes of the frustrating behaviours they are faced with in their classrooms every day? When some children continually daydream, fail to listen, seem to be unable to follow simple instructions and are incapable of completing any work, it is understandable that their thoughts turn to ‘ADHD’. Perhaps this is a mistake.
South Africa is reputed to have one of the highest rates in the world of prescribing medication for ADHD. Parents are lamenting that sometimes a third of their child’s class is on some or other psychostimulant or other brain-altering drug to control difficult behaviour.
It is easy to believe that ADHD is a widespread mental disorder but that is a fallacy. In our work, Integrated Learning Therapy practitioners and teachers who have studied with us see how other underlying causes can be ignored in favour of an ‘easy’ diagnosis, with a seemingly quick fix of a drug to quieten children down and calm the classroom. When we take the time and the trouble to investigate more closely, we have found there are many other causes for children’s inability to behave appropriately and learn efficiently.
Some of these causes are due to neurodevelopmental problems, meaning that brain development did not proceed optimally. These we can identify and correct. Other causes are linked to nutrition intolerances and poor diets. Others may be due to lifestyle, anxiety and so on.
My wish is that teachers could be better equipped with the knowledge and skills to understand what lies beneath the surface. We see the iceberg, but have no understanding of what is invisible to us below the level of the water.
Integrated Learning Therapy is an eco-systemic approach that has been helping children for nearly twenty years now to shed the label of ADHD and other incorrect diagnoses. Teachers who understand our approach stop insisting that children have a mental condition and pushing parents towards medications. Schools have made changes to tuck shops and lunch boxes too and even added brief periods of movement to help children’s behaviour improve. This is the natural, sensible and intelligent approach to the torrent of behavioural challenges we experience in the classrooms.
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May 6, 2026 | I'm a Parent, I'm a Teacher, ILT Blog
When I meet a child with learning or behavioural difficulties, their parents very often tell me that the child has no nutritional problems and no symptoms of an unhealthy gut. This is ironic, because I’ve very seldom met a child with sensory processing irregularities, ADHD and other learning difficulties who has an adequate diet, no bowel or malabsorption problems, or all of these. It does happen but so rarely that these days, nutrition is being considered an essential part of the treatment plan.
Slowly but surely, people are accepting that nutrition drives not only physical development but learning ability as well. Children need an adequate diet and healthy intestines to absorb those diets in order to grow and have efficiently functioning brains. It does happen that a child shows no clear symptoms of nutritional imbalances but these can be disguised in subtle ways. When a learning or puzzling behaviour is the symptom of a child’s difficulties, It is always worth looking deeper into his or her nutritional status.
Using food as a therapy is not an easy matter and a haphazard, trial and error approach will seldom bring significant results. If your current family doctor, paediatrician, nutritionist or dietician is not fully on board to help you with current, evidence based approaches to restore health to your child’s body and brain, then you may want to look further. Try finding a Functional or Integrative Medical practitioner to give you an opinion. They are trained in medicine but specialise in looking at the individual in an holistic way – seeking to treat for health rather than tackling the symptoms of a disease or other problem. You’ll find them with a Google search.
Individualised nutrition is best
Special diets and supplements for children with ADHD, autism and other disorders have been popular for several years but there is no consensus about whether they really work. This is because nutrition care must be individualised to work best. It is important to go through a process that identifies what would work best for a particular child. There is no one special diet (or even one medication) that works for all children.
To help you to begin, here are some steps to follow in the order given[1]
- Check your child’s basic nutrition status first. Make sure that your child is growing as expected and that his or her current food intake is adequate. Some developmental, learning or behaviour challenges can be due to insufficient total food intake so it is really important to complete this step first. You may need help if you are unsure as to what comprises an adequate diet and growth rate for a child but you will find guidelines on the internet or from your health practitioner. So often picky eating accompanies learning problems – but while maintaining body weight may be possible on a diet of milk and wheat products, for example, other nutritional essentials may be missing.
- Correct bowel flora. Bowel flora are the bacteria and other microbes that humans need in the digestive system to help digest and absorb food and to fend off invasive viruses, parasites or detrimental bacteria. Good bowel flora is also essential for optimal immune system functioning. Antibiotics, toxic metal exposures (lead, mercury, etc) and certain viral or bacterial exposures can disrupt the health of the gut. Restoring a healthy gut may need cutting out certain inflammatory and other foods and giving a good probiotic.
- Replace foods that your child doesn’t tolerate with foods of equal or better nutritional value. The usual suspects are gluten, casein (the protein found in dairy products) and soy. You may consider having tests to identify exactly which foods are most inflammatory for your child’s immune system or digestive tract. A common mistake is to replace cow’s milk with other milks made from rice, almonds or even potatoes. While these are suitable for baking or cooking, they are nutritionally low in value. Children rely on fluid milk for protein and fats so are not adequate substitutes. Try instead to replace the protein and fats with other foods that contain adequate amounts. Very often, the food your child craves is the one that may be causing problems in the gut – be prepared for some resistance.
- Replace micronutrients – that is, vitamins and minerals. Don’t supplement blindly – you need to know which are needed. Ways of finding out are using clinical signs and symptoms that the child shows or having tests done.
- If your child shows distinct signs of digestive tract problems that have not resolved after you’re used the first four steps for at least four to six weeks, you’ll need to revisit the first three steps with the help of a professional. Your child may need to be checked for gut inflammation or disruptive gut microbes, which may need aggressive dietary restrictions and additions.
- If your child is on the autistic spectrum, your medical practitioner would probably have advised you to consider heavy metal screening and treatment. If not, you need to ask for this to be done.
If you implement the first four steps yourself, prepare to wait six to eight months to see dramatic changes. If you don’t see any, something will be missing. In this case, you’ll need to dig deeper with specialized professionals helping you.
For children, growth comes first. For this, they need macronutrients which include proteins, fats/oils, and carbohydrates. While adults can get away with big deficits in any of these for a while, children simply can’t.
Micronutrients include vitamins and minerals, supplemented by available products, ideally after proper diagnosis has been made of which the body needs. It seems easier to simply give the child supplements. Indeed, if the child responds to a supplement, should you give up other efforts to balance his or her nutrition? The answer is NO. If the basics aren’t met with an adequate diet, children simply do not function well, no matter how many supplements they eat. You have to fix the food part, full stop. Supplements (except for omega-3 oils and probiotics) can’t stop inflammation or toxins from the wrong foods, and can’t fix growth deficits caused by imbalanced total food intakes.
The link between food and learning difficulties is well established. The question of addressing food intolerances, nutritional imbalances, unhealthy gut and picky eating isn’t an easy one. Parents and professionals struggle with stubborn children who simply refuse to eat healthily. The key is to persevere. Most children will take medication on the firm insistence of a parent. Well, food is the best medicine, so insisting that it is taken, if only in very small quantities to begin with, needs the same firm approach.
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[1] Judy Converse, MPH, RD, LD. 2009. Special-Needs kids eat right.
Apr 29, 2026 | I'm a Parent, I'm a Teacher, ILT Blog
Has your child been labelled as ADHD? If so, you may have felt relieved to have someone make the diagnosis because it explains the challenging behaviours you’ve been dealing with over the years and you’ll be offered a course of therapy to hopefully lessen the symptoms. You know that you’re not alone because so many other families have a child (or even an adult member) with the same challenges.
Most children are labelled by family doctors, neurologists, pediatricians and psychiatrists. Some of them are initially ‘diagnosed’ by teachers, psychologists, school counsellors or nurses. If so, you should be careful because many of these helping professionals are not trained to diagnose mental disorders, and ADHD falls into this category. But even if a medical person makes the diagnosis, there may be a problem because ADHD is not a disease. Too often, the ‘diagnosis’ is made by a professional because they have no idea of what’s really wrong with the child.[1]
Before you stop reading because you feel irritated by the denial of the problems you’ve faced for so long, let me assure you that we understand the difficulties of dealing with ADHD children. That is, children who really have this disorder. ADHD must be the most frequently incorrect diagnosis on the planet. We agree that in these cases, you and the child need help and drugs that might be given seem a blessing because the situation lightens and comparative peace reigns in your home (and the classroom). But even then, is this the long-term solution? No.
We know that drugs do not ‘cure’ ADHD. In many cases, they don’t even help very much. This is largely because many, many children who carry the label are incorrectly diagnosed. There is no test for ADHD. There are no blood analyses or brain scans that will reliably ‘prove’ the existence of the condition. The ‘test’ usually consists of teacher, parent and perhaps another involved person completing a questionnaire and the doctor listening to a description of the child’s behaviours. These days, doctors are so used to children presenting with symptoms that are associated with ADHD that they seldom bother to probe very deeply for something that may underlie these symptoms.
One mother complained that her son was prescribed Ritalin for so-called ADHD but this boy was diagnosed with subclinical diabetes after having been on the brain-altering drug for some years. His symptoms were caused by the very real medical disorder. Here are some more case studies[2]:
Debbie, aged five, was tiny and delicate. Her mother, however, describes her as a ‘mean little girl’ who has temper tantrums and screaming fits. As a baby, she cried continuously, slept very little, refused to nap and banged her head on her crib. Now in nursery school, she’s run away from school twice. Her teacher despairs over her out-of-control behaviour and recommends medication. Debby’s first doctor agrees.
Fortunately, Debby’s mother demands a second opinion. This, more thorough examination, uncovers a defective blood vessel between Debby’s heart and lungs, preventing a normal flow of oxygenated blood to the brain. Surgery corrects this serious and potentially fatal condition. Almost immediately, Debby’s behaviour improves, her tantrums stop, and her teachers begin praising her academic achievement.
Less startling but no less telling is the case of Mandy. She is a very bright little girl who struggled to optimize her excellent academic potential because of several irregularly functioning sensory-motor systems. This led to disorganized information reaching the brain, leading to her being unable to follow instructions, organize her thoughts or express herself in writing. She was restless and irritable, prone to talking out in class and disrupting others. A Connor’s questionnaire ‘proved’ ADHD.
Mandy’s mother put the diagnosis on hold and sought the help of Integrated Learning Therapy (ILT). We uncovered the areas of neurodevelopmental delays and addressed them through a home-based movement programme. At the beginning of the following school year, I requested that her new teacher complete the Connor’s questionnaire again to see if the areas of improvement were reflected in her classroom behaviour. Her mother reported to me that the teacher refused to do so, saying that Mandy showed absolutely no behavioural or learning problems and was a star learner.
A teacher’s opinion is not based on medical or neurodevelopmental knowledge. A quickie medical evaluation and a prescription for a drug is an extremely limited and temporary solution. The children on drugs tend to be calmer, more focused and easier to live with, at least in the short term. But, these drugs are NOT benign and their benefits are questionable.
The real tragedy is that masking children’s symptoms merely allows their underlying disorders or neurodevelopmental irregularities to continue and, in many cases, become worse. ADHD children don’t simply outgrow their symptoms. Instead, many grow into troubled teens and adults.
If you have a child with all the signs and symptoms of ADHD, don’t give in too soon. Try to find a medical specialist who specializes in ADHD and understands possible underlying medical conditions. ILT practitioners may also be useful in that they can check for neurodevelopmental causes of your child’s puzzling and difficult behaviours.
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[1] Dr Sydney Walker, MD. The hyperactivity hoax. St Martin’s Paperbacks, New York.
[2] Dr Syndey Walker, MD. Op cit, p.11.
Apr 22, 2026 | I'm a Parent, I'm a Teacher, ILT Blog
For some time now the health profession has realised the incredible importance of the connection between our guts and brains. This means that for children to learn easily and efficiently we need to take care that their digestive systems are full of ‘healthy’ bacteria. These are also known as probiotics and with this knowledge, sales of probiotic supplements have risen considerably in the past years.
But is this necessary? Humans have always needed a healthy gut so where did our ancestors source the bacteria for their gut microbiome? Certainly not from bottled pills or liquids bought from a pharmacy.
One interesting study was published in Frontiers in Microbiology. It revealed that a medium sized apple supplies about 100 million bacteria. These are found in the flesh of the apple, not the skin and represent a huge number of different types of bacteria – mostly those we need for health.
Significantly, most of the microbes seem to be centred in the core of an apple – perhaps because this is the most fibrous part of the fruit, and the bacteria feed off fibre. The seeds had the most bacteria of all.
So if you peel and core the apples you feed to your children (and yourself), you are throwing away 90% of the bacteria. This should stop and make you think. Why throw something away only to turn around and try and replace it with some or other pill?
Plenty of people eat an apple in its entirety. Try to cultivate this habit yourself. Munch the core and seeds along with the flesh and eat the well-washed skin too. Fibre is good for our guts.
The moral of this story is that fresh produce probably supplies us with probiotics. Those of us who really strive to eat a balanced diet full of fresh fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds probably don’t need to spend money on bottled microbes.
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