By the time my son was about four years old I was coming to the rapid realisation that his health, wellbeing and progress were very much in my own hands. His G.P.’s words.....

‘You know what you’re doing and it seems to be working so the best thing to do is to carry on.....’

           ..... were still ringing in my ears and there was certainly a conspicuous absence of anyone leaping in with any answers.

As an ex-Special Needs teacher I did know what I was doing in relation to the cognitive and psychological aspects of my son’s autism but no-one was listening when I kept telling them how intricately these factors correlated with his physical symptoms, particularly his gut health and his increasingly chronic sensitivities to foods, pharmaceutical medicines (both prescribed and ordinary, over-the-counter items like paracetamol), cosmetics such as soaps and shampoos and environmental chemicals and pollutants. His reactions to these things could be quite devastating.

There were two main things that I needed to sort out as quickly as possible. The first was his chronically sensitive gut and the second was the problem of raising a young child without the use of the antibiotics, decongestants and temperature reducing medicines that parents usually take for granted in treating the ills and ailments of childhood. In my son’s case these preparations could make him sicker than whatever was ailing him in the first place.

Parents can easily be derided for turning to the complementary sector, and often are, but where exactly are we expected to go when orthodoxy has no answers and does not appear to be listening ? We should never forget that what we now term ‘complementary medicine’ is what humanity has used to maintain health for all but the last hundred years or so. I have a great Ghanaian friend who finds the heavy use of pharmaceuticals in our society difficult to comprehend. He is also quite perplexed by the extraordinary prevalence of autism here. It is not the case that it is not diagnosed in his country. He says that in Ghana it is known as ‘the white man’s disease’ because it is rare to see a child exhibiting the symptoms  at all, which poses serious questions about the possible role of vaccines and antibiotics as triggers for this condition.

My own first port of call  in the complementary sector was a private clinic in the West of England which gave specialist advice on anti-candida treatment and regimes and, as I have previously detailed, these did improve my son enormously.

He was next tested for gluten and dairy intolerance by Paul Shattock’s research team at what was then the Autism Research Unit at Sunderland University. This proved positive on both counts and the removal of gluten and dairy from his diet radically improved his attention,  his general ‘with-it-ness’ and, most importantly, his eye contact returned and  then gradually progressed to near-normal. But I was still left with the problem of gut sensitivity and ordinary childhood ailments.

The first two complementary practitioners that I went to had both previously worked as mainstream doctors before moving into the complementary field.The first was a Nutritionist/Naturopath and the second an eminent Chinese herbalist. I did not learn anything new from the first and my son’s very delicate system could not cope with the strength of Chinese herbal treatments. We then tried two homeopaths to no effect BUT finally we made our way to a local Irish medical herbalist and, wow, what a difference

I have, in previous articles, been careful not to identify any of the professionals we encountered in our early days and if you read my previous articles you’ll understand why. But I have no problem in naming Rosari Kingston, Medical Herbalist of the Herbal Clinic, Skibbereen, because our experiences with her go a long way to highlighting what is not right in the dynamics of conventional, mainstream parent/professional encounters.

Rosari has, effectively, been my son’s G.P. for the last ten years and during that time I have come to see that there are two main strands to why this has worked so well.

The first is that traditional herbal medicine is both gentle and practised in such a way that remedies are ‘tailor-made’ for the individual client, making it perfect for my son's acutely sensitive and idiosyncratic system. The practitioner takes plenty of time to listen to all the holistic aspects of a problem and then prescribes either a single remedy or a mixture of herbs as appropriate. The practitioner records all details of the patient's circumstance and symptoms without any preconception of fitting them into an existing model, a mode of working which ensures that what was really happening with my son was taken into account...something which had not occured in our mainstream encounters. And, most importantly, the herbal preparations really worked without any devastating side-effects.

The second most important factor, I believe, is the very different interactional dynamic that pertains in a complementary consultation. As I have detailed in previous articles one of the most prevalent problems that parents of disabled children have is  the way they feel they are treated by mainstream professionals, frequently citing being ‘talked down to’ ‘not being listened to’ and generally treated as ‘lesser-than’. Being treated as an equal and with respect, as I have found one is within the complementary sector, is not only a fundamental courtesy, it is a genuinely supporting, consoling and healing experience. When you are struggling with so much difficulty these things are desperately important. And to be really, genuinely listened to gives hope.

When I contrast our years of positive 'alternative' progress  with the comment a psychologist once made to me the difference is both staggering and tragic. In reponse to me explaining to this particular professional the measures we were taking to calm my son's gut problems because he only ever headbanged when his digestive system was awry she responded as if I was somehow delusional, telling me in no uncertain terms...

' This is autism, if you get rid of this symptom another one will just come up to take it's place...you do realise that don't you ?'

And just for good measure, in case I was still deluding myself, she repeated it. Well, nothing came up to take its place other than a much happier and healthier boy who had far less autistic symptoms. The thought of raising a child without recourse to all the modern arsenal of pharmaceuticals may seem very intimidating but my son is proof that, with the aid of natural, herbal treatments it can be done. And, most importantly, we have been able to manage the chronic gut problems that trigger the worst of his autistic symptoms.

                                          Greenpower rules OK!