Why These Behaviors? And How to Help 

Transcript of our discussion, if you'd rather read than watch/listen.

Before you read this transcript, here's why you may want to listen to the recording. It contains answers to these questions.

1. What can I do to help my teen son regulate his “excess energy” that shows up as running back and forth, usually with a head tilt and utterances?
2. What may be causing my son to wake up during the night and talk to himself for hours?
3. What strategies can be used when my son is having a complete meltdown and he seems unable to reach it when trying to get him to calm himself down?
4. Anything that I could learn to minimize these behaviors (asking the same thing repeatedly, laughing for no apparent reason, constantly moving, rocking back and forth, always having tiny toys in her hands) would be amazing!!! Especially the biting of her hand.
5. My 10-year-old son does not understand routine and doesn't seem to get the connection that we do things every day at similar times or after certain activities.  How can I help to not always fight to try to get him to do things or to recognize the connection of routine? I find this so exhausting.
6. How do you help a 7-year-old boy who throws tantrums most of the time at home? He is highly anxious and very intense. He hits his younger siblings for no apparent reason. He gets out of control so quickly.
7. Why problems going to sleep and why do wake up from sleep?
8. My son usually wants pressure on his cheeks, chest, and stomach. I am not sure why, he is not in pain when he seeks pressure, he seeks it all the time.
9. Picky eating!
10. My 15-year-old daughter has worsening OCD behaviors (tapping, repeating the same questions over and over, etc). She also has lots of anxiety and repetitive thoughts. 

Recognize any of these behaviors? We discussed these and so much more! Please have a listen.

Transcript begins: Why do we behave in the ways we behave? So what we see what you might be seeing with your child is a certain stimmy, or like, I listed all these behaviors in my email. And some parents said that their child's doing all of those, so the behavior could be anxiety, it could be picky eating, it could be anger, frustration, tantrums, anxiety, or crying for no reason.

So there are a lot of different behaviors, and why do we behave?

Why do we express?

Well, I've written down a few like things that popped into my head, well, first, we're expressing because it's an expression of originality, right? So a lot of times, you'll see kids like, hey, look at me, look, look what I'm doing, I want to show you who I am. So that's, you know, a basic expression, and behavior we do. And there can be steps in learning.

When someone has echolalia, and they're repeating the same thing back to you, or maybe they're scripting from a video, um, there's a place in our neurological development, where that's actually a stage. And so they're stuck in that stage. So it could be a learning process, right? learning something. And it could be also an expression of what's going on inside their body.

 So just think about how you feel when you have a cold or the flu, think about when you get the flu, and you like kind of feverish and you feel lethargic, you're really tired. You don't want to do anything, you're kind of crabby, and you're irritable. So think about you know, maybe you don't want to eat a lot. Think about how you as a person as a parent, Express. And I feel like the expressions that we have fall into some of those categories. Maybe there's more, I'm not covering, but there it's an expression of what could be a pure joy that we're feeling that we want to express to another. So I just want to start by saying let's just take a step back and think about why we express

Why do we do behaviors? Um, so what I tend to see in my practice, the people that come to me, I focus on what's going on internally, from a functional nutrition point of view or a functional how's the body working on the inside? And if we think about these different behaviors that our kids have or any neurodevelopmental issue, the brain isn't Developing on time.

I once interviewed Dr. Robert Melillo, he's he started the Brain Balance. And he has a really great book called, I think it's called Brain Balance, it might be, they might have some other words in it. And he was talking about how the brain areas develop at different times. So for three months, maybe this area of the left brain will develop. And then after that's done developing, an area on the right side will develop for six months. So if we have an injury or insult, or maybe we hit our heads, or maybe we, you know, are exposed to something during that time of development of that particular area of the brain, it won't develop up to par, like what it's supposed to, because there are things in the way, right, maybe we hit it, we got a concussion, there are toxins in it for whatever reason.

So, so if we have uneven brain development, a lot of times we see really, really I see in my practice, for sure, really, really bright, intelligent kids, but then maybe they can't speak or they can express a certain way like there's a certain intelligence there, but that certain areas of the brain aren't developed. Or as another one of my mentors, Dr. Neubrander, has spoken to me, there's what he sees like, there's this area in the back of the brain that is related to speech, where it's like, imagine you have a seven-lane freeway condensed down to one lane because there's lots of traffic. So there's all this input wanting to get out through the speech, but the pathway that it has to go through is so limited and so narrow that, you know, sometimes I'll talk to parents who, who hear their child, like they're really, really trying to get a word out, or you know, they're thinking, but it just, it can't come out, or they're really trying hard, but it's just like it's stuck in there.

So, these are brain development issues, and some of the things that can affect our behavior, or our behavior and our child's behavior. I mean, I want to kind of generalize this because we have this too. So think about the food we eat, right?

I had one person write in with some questions and said, My child's behavior improved when I took dairy out. So there are offensive foods that our body doesn't like. And I don't want to go off into a tangent, but I'm just going to go off into this one. And you may know this, or you may not know this, but you know, most of our food, what we call food today isn't really food. It's processed stuff. Right? And, all the nutrients have been taken out, or, or most of them, and then put back in an artificial way. So if we think about flour or bread, they put folic acid back in, they put different things back in, they put vitamin D into the milk.

But if we actually think about drinking milk, or having cheese or having dairy, I like to think, well, where did that come from? The milk, the cow that produced that milk? How was that living? Was that fed genetically modified food that is normally supposed to eat grass a cow, but was it fed, you know, grain pellets of corn? So it can fatten up? Was it given hormones? Was it given antibiotics, all of that stuff that makes up the animal goes into what the animal produces, whether it's the meat or the milk, so I just asked you to think about the back, you know, the origin of where our food comes from? So in my opinion, not a lot of food is food. And then, so kids can be really sensitive and you know, you as an adult might be sensitive.

So I know a lot of people have gone gluten-free, dairy-free, soy-free, egg-free, and corn free. And then there are really wonderful foods like blueberries that have salicylates, or you know, probiotics, or leftover foods, or fermented foods that are high in histamine, so people can have different sensitivities. And this is all a sign that something is disrupted in the body.  

So when you see, let's say you give your child sneaks a cookie that has flour in it that has wheat, and then you see this, you know, odd behaviors afterward. Maybe hyperactivity. I've heard from a lot of parents that their child will get a hold of a cupcake or sugar or you know, something with colors in it. And then they're hyper for the next two hours, or they can't fall asleep that night. So think about how food influences behavior. And, why should food influence our behavior? Well, maybe if it's not really food.

If, if we're eating whole good foods, and we're still having issues and reactions, and it's creating behaviors, then we have to look inside and say, Well, why is the body not handling this the way it should be? So that's one of the things that I geek out on fun for me.

And then think about what your child might be exposed to. So in school, there's, you know, especially nowadays, there's probably a ton of chemicals that people are using to constantly disinfect. And mold schools notoriously high, have high levels of mold. mold is very common in the house nowadays.  

You know, I remember once going out to target with my son, and we had his friend with him. And as soon as we went near, like the laundry soap aisle, he just kept getting red eyes, his eyes were watering, he would get itchy, and I thought, wow, you know, just being near those smells, he's having a reaction.

So, so think about those kinds of exposures, and not just, you know, what we might be exposed to at the grocery store. But also, like, Did you buy new furniture, what's in the bedding that your child is sleeping on, a lot of times, they put fire retardants which are pretty toxic to the body, you know, what's your floor, the glue in your floor and walls off-gassing or your new furniture or the fire retardants on your carpet or your or your sofa, your furniture.

So there's kind of a lot to think about what's in your cookware, you know, what's in your food, what's in your storage containers. So it's a lot to think about. But those things can be if someone's really sensitive, and there's dysfunction inside the body, those things can affect them. And that can create behaviors.

And when I say behaviors, I say the whole range of things, and I'm just speaking generally right now. We can have emotional reactions, right? So we all want to be treated well, and we all want to be loved. And, you know, I'm the first to admit, I wasn't always the most common parent, I did yell at my child once or twice. And, you know, we get frustrated, we get angry. And anyway, and it's not just us, it's therapists, it's teachers, it's kids. And, so, you know, there's an emotional sensitivity. So emotion, you know, we can be emotional that from our behaviors can be from feeling our emotions, we our kids can be sensitive to, you know, EMF, so that cell phone tower, I just moved into a new place, and I have a smart meter. And I bought these EMF readers. And it was like, off the charts when I went near it to read it. So I'm still trying to figure out what to do about that. But there are protective things. I like I bought my meters from a site called less EMF calm. And I've talked to parents who will turn their Wi-Fi and you know, turn things off at night, electrically, so their kids can sleep better. So that can be a big help. And they say it makes a difference. So think about, you know, cell phone towers and electrical wires and things like that. Could that be amping up your child? And what goes hand in hand with that is we tend to be sensitive to those things. If we've got mold, mold toxins in the body, and metals, so think heavy metal exposures. I've worked with kids who have huge levels of uranium of mercury of different things and have different organic compounds like dry cleaning chemicals and MTBE which is a gasoline additive. And you know, parents never dry cleaned. They don't we have no idea how they got them. But this is getting in.

So anyway, just that's to say, though, that EMF sensitivity can go with other toxins in the body. Let's see, I think about people's energy. So um, you know, are is your child's therapist or you know, speech therapy, occupational therapist, teacher, are they having a bad day that can, that their energy can affect a child also, what I've seen, whatever, okay, I'm copping to it.

What I've experienced is, when my son was younger, I might tell him one thing with my words but have a whole different like anger, energy going in my body and kids are gonna pick up on that energy. And then think about there are chemical imbalances in the body. I mean, this is what I focus on, there's inflammation, right? It can be in the brain. It can be in the gut, and it can be elsewhere in the body.  

I mentioned already uneven brain development, and then that can throw neuro chemistry out of whack. Also, toxins and inflammation in the brain can throw off neural chemistry, genetics, or epigenetics, some of you might have, might have heard of the snips, and single nucleotide polymorphisms as a way to look at genetics and what mutations your child has and that correlates to how they function helpings in their body function. So we can have things in the epigenetics means over the genes epi means over. So if there is an environmental toxin sitting on top of your gene, it can affect whether that gets expressed or not, and then affect function in the body. So think about chemical imbalances, and inflammation, there's a lot of oxidation. So sometimes we take antioxidants to help the body. It's because our cells normally do these processes and they produce oxidized chemicals, which are kind of like burn and fire, you know, they're, they need to be taken care of, it's kind of like, we need to put water on the fire of those oxidants. That's why we use antioxidants to quench those. And then and then they're not as harmful in a regularly functioning body, there's a process for doing that, naturally, there's a balance with that. So just this is, this is where it comes from all these things that can be creating behaviors. And ultimately, you know, the brain is controlling a lot of, you know, the brain is controlling function. So if we can't, I worked with a young man, who, couldn't control his hands, and he would constantly he would pull his mom's hair. So that's the brain not telling the hands to do the proper thing. So that's a neurological issue. And that's really, to me the definition of autism, it's a set of behaviors that involve the brain and its neurodevelopmental. Okay.  

  So the way that I look at the behaviors, and what is inside that causes them is, I see things that don't belong in the body. So think about if your child's bodies are like a house, and think about your house, if you haven't taken your trash out of your house for a year, what might it look like?  

Right, you might not be able to walk around, you might not be able to bring your groceries and get them into the refrigerator, so maybe they'll spoil, and you might not be able to get to where you need to go. And it's certainly difficult to take things out. 

So I see a child with autism with a body that has a lot of trash in it. And when you take the trash out, the body can function better, you can get to where you need to go. But that's a process. And you need to do it in a certain order. So if you have trash in the back bedroom, you're not going to try and move that out. First, you're going to try and move the stuff out that's closer to the door, the entryway. 

This process in the body is called drainage. And what we want to do is open up the entire body so that all that garbage in the house comes out so that toxins can leave the body. But there's a specific order and a specific sequence to do it in because like I said, if you're trying to move that trash out of the bedroom is just going to get stuck somewhere else in the house, it's not going to be able to flow through. 

And so I see this process a lot like I see the body a little bit like a machine with gears, right picture those old clocks with the gears. And I'm just going to pause for a moment because I keep hearing a noise I'm going to mute everyone.

  If the body is a machine with these gears, there are wrenches in the gears and so what we want to do is pull the wrenches out in a gentle way and then the gears just move.  

Great, I see that someone made a comment behavior is communication that is absolutely true behavior is communication. Okay, so what I want to do is start answering your individual questions and Oh, hi, three meats I didn't just see you know, and see why. Awesome for you guys to be here. 

Someone else's situation might be similar to yours. Oh, there it is zinc copper imbalance.  I think you need testing. And I think I don't know what you've done in regard to that. But that's a tricky one. And have you done testing?   

Parent: Ah, so my son was, he had low zinc. So he was given a zinc supplement. And then once he was given the zinc supplement we just did the test last month and this month, and it's very off, the zinc was high, and the copper was high. Instead of copper getting less, it increased. So that was surprising. And the doctors couldn't figure out what to do with high zinc and copper. So what do you do to address this?

Unknown Speaker  21:30 

Look at Pyroluria there, it's the way the body handles copper and zinc. So I've also had like a child, we put on zinc, and it just seems to not be getting in. So that's more of a biochemical thing happening in the body. So you can, like for instance, you can be giving your child a lot of B 12, and have a high b 12. On the test, it just tells me things aren't getting in. So what that tells me is there's a huge imbalance and it's, you need to look deeper. Are you working with a functional doctor? 

Um, so he should be able to handle that he should be able to give you some other nutrients to balance that because it's something underlying, actually, he, when I had the thought to say, b 12. And you know, you have high levels in your blood, I was thinking of his lecture during my training. So I think you're in good hands there. And there's, you know, there's something called Pyro Lauria and involved. Also vitamin B six, he'll probably know about that. But I would suggest going deeper down that rabbit hole. I want to get to some other questions. It's more complicated is what I'm trying to say than just doing that. And I think also, for that, I'm probably gonna say this for everything. But for that, I would consider different toxicities, not just copper and zinc, but I would look at what other metals are toxic and what other toxins are in there. And maybe you guys have done a panel like that already. Like if you know something from Great Plains or whatever labs he uses, I would look at other things that are in the way. Okay. I'm going to go to an email question I got because my teen son is high functioning. PDD nos have access to energy, which are his words for many years where he has to run back and forth, usually with a particular head tilt and making certain utterances he seems unable to regulate. One doctor said it was stimming and using ABA did that for a long time with no improvements. Another doctor said it's ADHD and wants to prescribe medication. I think it's sensory processing disorder, which would also account for things like anxiety attention issues, and picky eating, what can I do to help them regulate? Well, I'm one of the people that I interviewed at my summit. Carol Gardner Houston has the brain harmony program. And maybe some of you know it is safe and sound it's a it's a listening thing where it puts certain brainwaves in the brain and helps to really calm so those kids who are more stuck in that anxiety fight or flight it can actually balance their autonomic nervous system so bring the rest and digest up. But for this particular thing with this excess energy, I feel like I personally wouldn't do medication I would dig deeper and I would in it definitely be sensory processing disorder but that's just a label. So what's been what's beneath the sensory processing issue? So I anxiety and attention picky eating. So I would look at balancing minerals and vitamins but I would really look at taking toxins out. And probably there's some neural inflammation, there's probably some toxicity, there's probably some neurotransmitter imbalance. So, for anxiety, this is for everyone, for anxiety you can look at, I'm going to grab a book just a minute I, there's my book. So this is an awesome resource. It's called the mute mood cure by Julia Ross. And if any of you guys tuned into the anxiety summit with Trudy Scott, I think it was just about a month ago. She has a lot of solutions for anxiety. So if you google Trudy Scott, she uses the methods that Julia Ross has here, but she really zeroes in on anxiety. She uses certain amino acids like Gabba Gabba amino butyric acid, that's a calming neurotransmitters for the brain. trip to fan and five hydroxy, tryptophan, and five HTP. And possibly, so that's there's a combination of amino acids that can be used, and to help immediately with calming and while you're digging to the deeper issue. But I really feel like metals are a big issue like lead, mercury, and cadmium, so we have to get these out in a safe way. And next question, my son constantly picks calluses on the bottom of his feet and pulls hair from his legs, he also seems stuck in fight or flight or these symptoms of sensory processing disorder. That sounds a little steamy to me too. And I would say the same thing I said for the previous question, the with the stuck in fight or flight, right just to find some calming techniques, whether it's amino acids, or whether it's the safe and sound, the brain harmony, or there are other, you know, calming listening programs. And, again, sensory, you know, when I hear sensory processing disorder, what does that mean? It means something's not working right in the brain.

So we have a sensory-motor system, the sensory means the brain is getting input from the rest of the body and saying, hey, here I am in space, hey, this is this, I have an itch here, or you know, I have pain. So that's a signal going to the brain. And then processing that could be an issue. And the motor part is where the brain says, Hey, um, you know, finger move like this, or stomach squirt out, you know, hydrochloric acid right now, or whatever it is, you know. So it's a, it's a direction from the brain, to the rest of the body. And there's a lot of coordination that goes on. So I find what gets in the way are toxins, there can be neural networks that are tangled, right? Because they didn't develop properly. So there are all these tangles and I think of like, a brown overgrown tree with all these branches, right, there just are weeds, you know, they're all tangled, and then the brain is so smart, it finds a way around that to do things. So that's what I see a sensory processing disorder, again, wrenches in the gear, so to help with a fighter flight, again, you know, the amino acids, for listening programs, breathing is a great one, if kids will listen to that, and then the picking and pulling it sounds really steamy. And I think STEMI behavior can be because of, again, a toxic situation. But I think we make these neural networks, right, we find these ways to comb and to make ourselves feel good, right? So that could actually make him feel good in a certain way. So let's think about why the behavior is. Well, maybe that feels good, and that's calming, and that that's a consistent thing that happens. And then this is where I kind of, I'm not a super huge fan of ABA, applied behavior analysis, or maybe all the methods they use, but I think that we can retrain the brain. Not sure if we do it through ABA or just certain, you know, really, we need to retrain certain things. So whatever neurological program or, or method you use for that, do tests from places like 23andme to provide any useful information on neurotransmitters detoxification, etc. How do I find someone who will interpret the test for me? What's his name? Bob? Miller. Check Bob Miller, snips epi genetics. I can't remember the name of the place. I'm not sure 23andme provides that but what Bob Miller's company does is they take a genetic profile and correlate different sorts of behaviors that can come from that or like let's say they find an MTHFR mutation, and then say, oh, you're 60% down in your level of ability to detoxify. And then they can give you clues as to what nutrients to help with that. My, you know, my, my first step would be to get the stuff out in the first place, right? that's causing the mutations. So I would start with his organization, I'm going to come back to zoom and go to the top and see, let's see, chewing hair, aggressively holds paper, always. So I think the holding is an anxiety thing. So think about that. Think about why. Why does your child hold? aggressive, I really feel like okay, if anybody's constipated if any child is constipated. When the feces sit in the colon for a long time, even if they're not constipated, let's say you're doing some kind of nice Staton or killing something that's going to produce toxins. What we want to do is not have them, you know, the liver, they go through the liver, and they process and then they're going out through the digestive tract. And what we don't want them to do is reabsorbed into the body. So a lot of times with aggression, even anxiety. I'm not sure about the chewing hair, that could be a sign of anxiety, too. You know, I don't have a full context here. But these kinds of things can be related to constipation and toxins just getting reabsorbed in the body. So I don't know if you've heard me speak before. I'm a big fan of binders and binders are like, you know, things you take orally like activated charcoal, and they bind like they're like sponges, they bind up toxins in the gut. So they actually go out in the bowel movement and don't get reabsorbed. And some kitzur I'm seeing are on tons and tons of binders because they're letting go of a lot of stuff.  

And this is making sure it leaves the body. How do we know practically that drainage is working? Well, what I see when drainage is working is I see behaviors tend to settle down. And a lot of times parents will tell me that their poop, their child's poop is stinky. Black Tari looks metallic and has flecks in it. Lots of different signs, maybe have parasites in them. The urine is cloudy and smelly, I had one mom who would tell me that she would have to go turn on the bathroom fan after her son urinated because it was just so stinky. So that's a sign that things are coming out in the urine, things are coming out in the feces and bad breath is another sign right that things are coming out through the breath. So yeah, I'm trying to think if there are any other signs that you know, drainage is working. I also hear from my clients that they like their kids just seeing more with it more attentive kind of more life. interactive with the family interactive with siblings. I'm seeing that a lot. So it's really improvements. I would say keep going with drainage, whatever you're doing Maria with your practitioner, or for yourself, keep going just keep going. It's a process. Ruby says my son wakes up laughing no reason. Is he eating something that's causing this? If so, is there a test to figure out what foods to avoid? There are food sensitivity tests, so you can talk to your practitioner about getting one of those food allergy tests. Waking up laughing my sense of that is if it's in the morning, you know we detox at night when we sleep and so if there's a lot of toxins leaving the body you know roofie I would use binders for him at night. So activated charcoal and chlorella I love the binders from cell core bio sciences biotoxin binder is a good one to start with. And even increasing apples if your kids eat apples, you know the pectin from apples will help. So it might be a toxin overload in the morning waking up laughing It's possible. Virginia My daughter is 28 years old with seizures and autism finally she is responding to detoxing using hold the Clark we did drainage first and we are on parasites removal but for years she is very aggressive towards me only I were monitoring her constipation but she will not stop hugging me very hard and pulling on my hair yeah so you guys might have some certain entanglement like a neurological network that you like a habit that she's formed, right. So partly is I would say to you know really work on changing like to consciously outwardly to And give her different directions which you've probably done is my guess after the years. You might want to increase binders but it sounds like you have a good  

It sounds to me like it's a behavioral emotional entanglement thing.

I've seen this before where this boy I was working with would constantly kiss I've seen it with a lot of kids constantly, hugging, grabbing, and kissing the parents and I think it's a real attachment thing with parents and kids. And that you need to just really kind of a train I mean, in a good way, your daughter that this is inappropriate, and this is what's appropriate. 

So however replacement behavior that's my best guess. If I were working with you, I would clear a bunch of emotional stuff and entanglements. So look, that's a clue to look for those things. Maria, excuse me, the reason for high b 12 without supplements, is the test result is 1978, and the high cholesterol 242 That's HDL. He also has a potential pathogen Klebsiella. And another one mo l arella. Wisconsin senses. Okay, so some bugs in there. Um, obviously some dysfunction in his gut microbes producing b 12. Without supplements. So the microbes in our intestines make the 12. So, it sounds like he's got some imbalance with pathogens. So Gosh, that's what I would think of the cholesterol I'm not a super expert in the cholesterol, but um, what comes to mind is that he might have some bile blockage. So bile ducts, I might think parasites I might think a lot of toxicity, liver bile, not flowing liver and gallbladder and bile ducts not flowing. Because cholesterol is a big part of making a bunch of hormones. And if it's high and blocked, they're there. They're not going down the pathway to make our hormones to make things so you might have some hormonal issues, I don't really know because you didn't mention it. So I would work on getting his liver and bile open. And there are a bunch of good supplements for that. There are castor oil packs, you can do a physical, clockwise. Sorry, I'm thinking colon, you could do a liver compression. So you can actually put my screen now. You can actually right under the right side, you can just compress and, like help to squeeze out the bio. You can also do coffee enemas. So I would look up how to do that online. Those are some things that'll get the bile moving this product from cell core bio sciences tedco t udca. It's a bile acid that helps move things through ox bile. Also, there are a lot of supplements that are ox, ox bile I would get I think it's natural factors uses cows from New Zealand that tend to be cleaner. So I would use that ox bile. So just anything to get that moving. And then probiotics. Okay. webelo Oh, I had an email from you. My son is very sensory and recently his sensory needs have increased he is always humping on soft pillows, soft toys, and cushion hands. He humps on it so intensely until he becomes hard and erect. This has given me concern and I was wondering what I can do to get his sensory overload under control. So I feel like sensory seeking is the brain needing input. You know, it's it feels good in some way to seek sensory things. Um, I've had parents who have told me about priapism. So priapism is when the penis becomes hard for no reason. But it sounds like he is stimulating that. I think it's toxin related. And so I would definitely, definitely for this I would, you know, seek some help with drainage and detox. I mean, all your kids actually but Excuse me. I think that he's seeking something right. He wants to feel good. So maybe give I think, let me pull up your email because   

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