Posts Tagged by Fish Oil

– I promise I’ll write more about the 2011 CASANA Conference today, but I came up with this last night and I felt like I needed to write it first. –

Something momumental happened at our house last night!  E let me brush her teeth with big girl toothpaste.  This may or may not seem like a big deal to you, but I’d like to explain to you why it is such a huge deal in our house.

E has/had some pretty severe oral apraxia and sensory issues.  She had to be taught how to stick out her tongue.  She needed an IEP goal to learn how to pucker and kiss.  She HATED having her teeth brushed up until four months ago.  When I say HATED, I mean screaming, needing to be held down, it takes two adults to do this kind of HATED.  To be quite honest, I didn’t always brush her teeth.  I didn’t have the stomach to constantly fight her about it and felt my energy was better used elsewhere.  It is only by the grace of God (and the fact that she rarely drinks juice) that she doesn’t have any cavities.  Dentist appointments were a nightmare.  You get the idea.

Last January/February, my husband figured out that E’s adenoids were inflamed.  Doctors can’t see the adenoids without an X-ray so it took some effort to get the referral for an X-ray.  The X-ray in itself was an experience with E yelling at the tech that he was a “monster.”  (Of course, this time monster quite out quite clearly and he knew what she was saying!)  The X-ray was finished, complete with the picture of the techs finger bones over her brain because he was having to hold her down, and surprise, surprise, her adenoids were extremely swollen.

E had ear tubes put in a second time in March as well as an adenoidectomy.  Within two weeks, she started sleeping through the night – something she hadn’t done ever.  We expected this.  It was one of the tings we were hoping for.  But maybe the biggest surprise of all was that E started to let us brush her teeth without even so much as whimper!

The swollen adenoids were the reason she wouldn’t let us brush her teeth.  It wasn’t her sensory problems.  It was that she felt like couldn’t breathe when we but a toothbrush in her mouth.  I can’t even begin to tell you how awful I felt about all those times I held her down but she was unable to tell me what the problem was and I assumed it was related to Apraxia and SPD.  She had a dentist appointment in June and it was the best one we’ve ever had.

The reason why I’m telling you this is because I had the revelation last night that if E had still been taking Nutriiveda and/or fish oils I would probably have attributed this progress to those.  Instead, E is only taking a multi-vitamin and honestly, I forget to give her that half the time.  The reason why E let me brush her teeth last night with big girl toothpaste (as opposed to baby toothpaste that you can swallow) is because she has MATURED.

Kids mature.  Even special needs kids mature.  If E was in absolutely no therapy of any kind, she would still improve somewhat from year to year because of maturity.  She would definitely not catch up and close the gap but she would not act like a four year old forever.  We’ve got to be careful as parents to not mistake some sort of magic potion for maturity.  Now I’m not saying Nutriiveda and fish oils are bad but they are not the magic potion to cure your child with Apraxia.  Will your child make progress on them?  Certainly if your child is also receiving intensive, appropriate speech therapy.  Would your child have made the same progress without them?  Probably.  There’s no way to know for sure but there are no studies showing that these treatments help CAS.  There are studies, although not enough, that show that intensive, appropriate speech therapy helps kids with CAS.  If you are limited on funds, PLEASE spend the money on speech therapy and not some magic potion.

E also had another big moment this week.  She wore tights and ballet shoes to her dance lesson on Monday.  If you remember, she took the first lesson in bare feet and then we moved onto ballet shoes.  E doesn’t do tights but now she does.  Why?  Maturity and a little bit of peer pressure.