Help! My Child Is Stuck in a Behavior

We can feel helpless to stand by and watch our child who is stuck in a rigid behavior. Often we are left wondering what could be done to help alleviate our child's discomfort.

Often, parents ask me, “Can you give some insights or tell me what to do when my child is stuck in a rigid behavior, has echolalia, isn't using expressive language, or is running away?”

Here's what I see as underlying these behaviors.

“I see these as signs of toxicity, poor methylation, not enough nutrients, other biochemistry not functioning in the cells. B vitamins, fish oil, and Vitamins D, A, E, C are important. Minerals can be game changers, particularly zinc for picky eaters. Elimination of food colors, dyes, flavorings, MSG, soy, corn, eggs, gluten, and dairy can also create big changes. Give your child something with food coloring and watch the results. You won’t want to give it again!” 

– Luminara Serdar, BS, MBA, NMT

The expert doctors below are amazing, each having their perspectives and tips. Doctors are required to see their patients in person. If you cannot get to one of the doctors below due to physical distance or a long waiting list, feel free to reach out. I'll do my best to help guide you to shift your child's behaviors!

While I am not a medical doctor, I do look holistically at why the behaviors are there and help shift behaviors with nutrition, opening up the body's systems so built-up stressors, like toxicity, flows out.

I asked experts from the Autism Recovery Doctors Panel during the Autism Recovery Summit. And here are their thoughts.

“So many of our kids have amazing receptive language… Our society gauges intelligence based on what comes out of your mouth but we know our kids are smart! They do well academically; the steps of language include repetition, scripting, and then conversational language and a lot of this is a speech delay or it has to do with imbalances in brain chemistry. That imbalance and brain chemistry whether it be serotonin, whether it be dopamine is going to have different emotional symptoms in kids who are rigid… So if we bounce the brain chemistry we balance them happy. “ 

– Dr. Jared Skowron, CT, USA

“So this is probably the toughest question for me because there are so many things that can lead to this. You know finding the key to unlock your child, you see these little glimpses that they're there, you see the spark in their eye every once in a while you know they're in there. So, I would say the stuck in rigid behaviors, this whole category, when they're stuck they're not able to express, they're in their own world. They're not really connecting. This, for me, is usually a sign of a methylation issue; so we really need to push those methyl donors, especially methyl B12. I do find that the shots are very helpful and that's where some of these other factors come in like magnesium, zinc, and B6… Maybe your child is a little slower to grow; they're smaller than their siblings; their muscle tone is lower than you would expect for their age; they're just always tired all the time. I'm thinking it's probably some mitochondrial needs.”

“The rigid behaviors – again it can be if that gut flora is really out of balance. The one thing I didn't mention before, is the OCD-type behavior. These cycles that your child gets into, you know there's a routine they have to do before they leave the house. And it can be very limiting. Or some of the motor tics that can come: the throat clearing, eye twitching, some of those things; You've really got to be thinking strep. A lot of times what we find is these strep bugs either are living in the gut or living in the sinuses or maybe back in the tonsular tissue that you just can't swab and that tends to cause a lot of this OCD-type behavior and these obsessive patterns.”

– Dr. Amy Derksen, WA, USA

Want more answers from the rest of the Doctor's Panel?

Purchase your full-length copy of the Autism Recovery Summit Doctor’s Panel video, which contains more answers to this question and other questions!   

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Questions answered by this panel:

• I just received an ASD (or SPD, developmental delay, or other neurodevelopmental) diagnosis. What should I do? What can I do on my own, before the doctor's visit, to help?  
• I’ve been doing biomedical treatments, detox, and therapies and have been to several doctors for years. I’ve seen some incremental gains, but no real huge leaps. Now, what do I do?  
• Is there some treatment – intervention, test, supplement – that you use in your practice that consistently helps the most kids – a game changer (and what do you do with someone when that doesn’t work)?  
• Can you give some insight into what is underlying some of the following behaviors and what to do? Tantrums/aggression, crying for apparently no reason, fears, and anxiety for no apparent reason, stimming/hand flapping/rocking?   
• Can you give some insights or what to do when a child is stuck in a rigid behavior, has echolalia, not using expressive language, running away?  
• What’s your number one go-to for constipation? Tantrums? picky eating? 

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Read the 6th blog post in this series: The #1 Go-to for Constipation