Failure To Thrive is a suspension in normal physical development that can be the precursor to delays in the normal development and normal maturation.

Failure To Thrive Syndrome is a description of a condition given to infants who are consistently less than the normal weight for their age or who do not gain weight. There could be many reasons for this. Many causes involve socio-environmental elements that work together to keep the baby from having the nutrition the baby needs. Often, medical conditions prevent a child from developing normally. Another significant contributing factor is the baby’s own sensitivities.

When There Are Socio-Environmental Issues For The Condition

Many environmental and social factors can be a part of Failure To Thrive. Parental neglect or abuse, parental mental health disorders, and dysfunctional family situations in which routine, nutritious meals are insufficiently provided, may all blunt a child’s appetite and food intake. The amount of money a family makes to spend on food and the nutritional value of the food they have also affects growth. Also, inadequate intake of food may be a symptom of poor parenting and not enough stimulation from the environment.

When the situation is not based in medical difficulties, it is called Non Organic Failure To Thrive Syndrome. Long ago, Non Organic Failure To Thrive Syndrome was thought to be caused by inappropriate parenting. But there are many recent articles which have shown a growing recognition that poor parenting may not be a common root of the condition.

When The Causes Of The Issue Are Medical Problems

Sometimes Failure To Thrive Syndrome is caused by a medical issue in the infant. This is often called Organic Failure to Thrive. The issue can be as simple as difficulty drinking, chewing, or swallowing (as with a cleft lip or cleft palate). Other medical issues, such as acid reflux, esophagus narrowing, or poor intestinal absorption, may also affect a child’s ability to obtain nutrition from food. Infections, tumor, hormonal or metabolic disorders (such as diabetes or cystic fibrosis), cardiac problems, kidney disease, genetic disorders, and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection are other medical reasons for Failure To Thrive.

If The Issues Are Based In Reactions To Sensitivities and Intolerances

Often an infant’s or a baby’s Non Organic Failure To Thrive is caused by the baby’s body reacting to normal environmental factors as if those normal things were toxic. This is a intolerance of some things in the environment which the child’s defenses thinks are toxic.

This reaction to this “toxic attack” could be shutting down the child’s normal developmental process as a temporary protective measure until the “attack” goes away. And, because these environmental factors are not toxic to others, the family and the medical professionals do not know to eliminate these “toxic” things from the baby’s environment. In this case this short-term conservation defensive response continues on an ongoing basis. This means that the infant’s own defenses interrupts the baby’s normal development on an ongoing basis, because of the child’s sensitivities and intolerances.

Diagnosis For The Roots In Medical Problems And Environmental And Social Issues

Doctors indicate that a child has Failure To Thrive when a baby’s weight or rate of growth is much lower than what it should be when compared with prior measurements or standard age-height-weight charts. If the physical development is adequate, the baby may be small but still developing normally.

To find out why a baby may be failing to grow , medical practitioners ask the parents specific questions about feeding, bowel habits, social, emotional, and financial stability of the family, which might affect the infant’s access to nutrition, and illnesses that the child has had or that run in the family. The medical practitioner examines the child, looking for signs of conditions that may explain the infant’s delay in development. The doctor makes decisions about blood and urine tests and x-rays based on this initial evaluation. More extensive examinations are performed only if the doctor suspects an underlying disease.

Determining The Child’s Sensitivities and Intolerances

There are some available diets ( for instance: Casein Free and Feingold diets) which attempt to address these intolerance issues. These diets perform well for those children who are sensitive to the things which are specifically restricted by these programs. But, for the majority of Non Orhanic Failure To Thrive children whose intolerances are affecting their development and growth, these diets are not quite right and not specifically designed for them.

It is best to have a specialist, who knows how to perform this specific test for sensitivity, work with your Non Organic Failure To Thrive child to determine your child’s precise list of intolerances and sensitivities. Those who perform this testing can include chiropractors, nutritionists, and other wellness practitioners trained for this specific type of evaluation.

Treatment and Prognosis For The Roots In Medical Difficulties And Social And Environmental Issues

The medical difficulties and environmental and social issues approach assumes there is something wrong with the baby’s body or the child’s social environment. These treatments are focused on a fault in the child’s nutritional processing or nutritional access.

Treatment depends on the cause of the difficulty. If a medical disorder is found, specific interventions are performed. Otherwise, treatment depends on how far below normal the baby’s weight is. Mild to moderate Failure To Thrive is treated with high-calorie nutritious feedings provided on a regular schedule. Parents might be counseled about family interactions that are damaging to the child and about financial and social resources available for their family. Severe Failure To Thrive Syndrome is treated in the hospital where social workers, nutritionists, psychiatrists, feeding specialists, and other specialists work together to determine the most likely causes of the child’s Failure To Thrive and the best approach to recovery.

Treatment For When The Roots Of The Failure To Thrive Syndrome Are In Sensitivities and Intolerances

The interventions for the intolerances and sensitivities approach is to determine which environmental factors the baby is reacting to and eliminates those factors from the infant’s environment. When the infant is no longer reacting to those, the normal process of development re-engages and growth and development can proceed normally. With this intervention, food is absorbed appropriately and growth and development starts to catch up. There are specialists in Non Organic Failure To Thrive syndrome who can determine your child’s intolerances and coach you in getting your child back on track.

Summary

The environmental and social approach for Non Organic Failure To Thrive children assumes that something is wrong in the baby’s social environment in such a way that nourishment is not available or is not accepted by the baby.

The medical disorders approach for Organic Failure To Thrive infants and children assumes that nourishment is not being processed and absorbed by the infant because of some medical problem.

The intolerances and sensitivities approach for Non Organic Failure To Thrive in babies assumes that the baby is having responses to environmental factors and these defensive responses are shutting down the normal growth and developmental process.

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There are some diet programs which have been distributed widely for a baby with developmental diagnoses such as Non Organic Failure To Thrive Syndrome. The Gluten Free Casein Free and Feingold Diets are among the favorites for this field.

Shifting The Paradigm

I want to congratulate the developers of these diets for modifying the paradigm about what might be causing the world-wide increase in the occurrence of developmental problems for babies. For years our modern doctors could not understand that the things a person consumed could upset that person’s developmental health. These diets are quite popular in the communities concerned about Autism Spectrum Disorder, as well as other developmental difficulties and these diets are showing that they are dramatically affecting the lives of many of these children.

These diets work well for some children with immediate improvements in a variety of measurable symptoms. For other children there is less improvements. And, for others there is no improvement at all. One of the unanswered questions about these diets is why are some children dramatically helped by these diets and others are not helped at all?

We have been working with children with developmental problems for decades. We are now concentrating in this area of restarting the developmental process. One of our breakthroughs has been an acceptance of the relationship between intolerances and developmental diagnoses.

Sensitivities and Intolerances

Each of us has some factors around us to which we are sensitive, or of which we have an intolerance. This is not so much an allergy where we have a forceful and immediate immunological response to some thing. This is much more like a subtle defensive response we have to something in our environment over time.

If someone is allergic to bee stings, they have an strong and fast response to getting stung by a bee. They can have swelling or even enter life-threatening anaphylactic shock. But, consider the possibility that a person has a sensitivity to, or an intolerance of, a deodorant soap bar. They may not have a response to it until after they use it for many days, and then they may develop a minor skin rash as the response because of that sensitivity or intolerance. If you determine that this rash is related to the deodorant soap bar, you can stop using it and the rash will fade away.

Developmental Problems

We have recognized that babies with developmental difficulties, such as Non Organic Failure To Thrive Syndrome, have multiple environmental factors to which they have these defensive reactions. And, it is the stacking of these multiple responses which seems to be the cause of these developmental diagnoses. The collections of these defensive responses ends up with the body shutting down functions which are non-essential for survival today.

This defensive response process evolved in a less contaminated environment and the body only needed this defensive response to last for a few minutes or hours while the person walked or was carried away from the things to which the body was responding. A few minutes of a conservative, defensive response was usually enough for offending thing to be avoided. So, if the body shuts down some functions not needed for the process to get away from the offending thing, it would not have an impact on the long-term survival of the person.

Shutting Down The Developmental Process

The difficulty is that our world is much more contaminated now and children with developmental diagnoses are much more sensitive to contaminants than when we evolved these responses. If the babies have these kinds of piling on top of each other defensive reactions to something which is eaten at every meal, the defensive responses can never stop. If the child has these stacking defensive reactions to the laundry detergent or fabric softener used in the house, the child always has residue of those chemicals against the skin, so the reactions can never end. Imagine if the child has an ongoing series of these kinds of intolerances and reactions and the child’s body never has a chance to stop having these reactions.

One of the functions commonly shut down in these stacked defensive reactions is the developmental process. If a child’s defensive reaction includes shutting down the developmental process, and the defensive response never stops, the developmental process never gets to move the child forward toward maturation. In this case, the child does not develop appropriately.

Feingold and Casein Free Diet Lists

Here is where the Gluten Free Casein Free And Feingold Diets come in to play. These diets provide a list of restrictions of environmental factors to which numerous children with developmental problems are responding defensively. So, the children with developmental difficulties who have an intolerance of the items restricted by the diet will show some dramatic results. The children who have an individual menu of intolerances which is aligned with the diet will benefit from it. For those children who try the diet, but whose set of sensitivities are not aligned well with the restrictions of the diet, there will be little help.

For this reason we acknowledge the significant contributions the GFCF and Feingold Diets have made in our understanding of developmental problems. They help us all understand that the children with developmental issues are reacting to some list of things in the environment and we can help these children get back on track, if we eliminate those things from the child’s environment on their list.

These diets are on the right track, but there is an assumption that some particular environmental factors are causing the developmental diagnoses. The problem with this assumption is that the defensive responses these children have is about their own personal list of offending factors (not a generic list). Their own list probably will not include all the restricted items of the generic diet. Each child must be using a program which is tailored to their own individual list of intolerances.

Sensitivity Evaluations Is The Key To Success

We have developed an approach for testing each of our client children for their own specific menu of sensitivities and intolerances. This gives the parents a precise menu of factors to eliminate from the child’s environment. So, instead of a generic diet program which may (or may not) have the items a specific child needs to restrict, we give each parent a precise list of things their child needs to restrict.

This Is Much More Than A Diet Program

Our testing approach includes anything that the child eats, breathes, and touches. This includes more than the child’s foods and drinks. It involves testing the child’s responses to meds, household chemicals, and everything else in the child’s environment. Our thorough testing technique will help you develop an appropriate plan to clean all of the offending environmental factors from your child’s environment.

What Happens When The Child Stops Having These Defensive Responses?

There are many different types of developmental difficulties in children. Each has their own set of symptoms which are recognized as the set of signs of that particular diagnosis. Many children have so many symptoms that they have multiple diagnoses, because their own set of symptoms cross boundaries from one diagnosis to another.

Because of this symptomatic and diagnostic complexity, we would not be able to predict which symptoms a child will develop out of initially as a result of living in an environment where their offending factors have been eliminated. But, our experience is clear that when children enter and stay in an environment free of their offending environmental factors, their developmental process re-engages and their developmental process tries to move them forward through their missed or next developmental stages. You know this approach is being successful when you see your child start moving through developmental stages.

We encourage our clients to establish a developmental baseline with our free Developmental Checklist before they start working with us. We encourage them to use this same checklist, monthly, to keep track of their child’s progress as they continue.

By tracking the child’s developmental forward movement, parents can see that their child has re-engaged the developmental process. This progress means that the child is losing the symptoms which were used as the basis of the child’s diagnosis.

Sensitivity Re-Testing For The Long Term

After some time of developmental movement using our process, we encourage parents to re-evaluate their child’s sensitivities. Many of the offending things will cause defensive responses, and the child can slowly bring those things back into the environment. Many other things will still produce the defensive reactions and they will need to stay on the restricted list for this child. Which items can be brought back and which items need to stay restricted is individual for each child.

It Is Time For Your Child To Re-Engage The Developmental Process

If your child has developmental diagnoses such as Non Organic Failure To Thrive Syndrome, come by our free, private social network for parents. Talk with us and each other about your child’s situation.