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Steps You Can Take at
Home
by Viola Frymann, D.O., F.A.A.O., F.C.A.
A program of monthly meetings was
instituted at the Osteopathic Center for
Children & Families to provide informative lectures on
various aspects of the work of the Center
allowing for plenty of time for questions,
discussion and valuable contributions from
other parents whose personal experiences
helped the newcomers. These were essentially
extemporaneous talks, sometimes illustrated
with slides, and occasionally with practical
demonstrations of a child being examined or
treated. These were not written lectures but
from time to time a zealous parent would make
an audiocassette for her friends. A few of
these tapes were transcribed. I trust you will
read them as if you were sitting in a group of
parents eager to learn what happens to
“my child” at the O.C.C. and how
can this approach help him?
The subject I would like to discuss today is,
“What can I do at home?” What we
do in the Center is only a small part of the
whole program. What we do in one-half hour a
week needs to be supported by what you do on
the twenty three and a half hours on that day
and all the rest of the days between your
visits here. In addition, there are acute
episodes that come up and parents so often
wonder, “Well, what can I do right now
to cope with these acute episodes?” So I
thought we might talk about a few of these
things. Perhaps, as we go along questions will
occur to you so don’t hesitate to
interrupt if you have a question.
First of all, why do acute episodes occur?
This is rather a fundamental concept of
disease and health. We often seem to act as if
these various bugs are floating around in the
air and all of a sudden they decide to settle
somewhere. If you happen to be the one they
settle in, that’s just too bad. So you
pull out some kind of shotgun to destroy that
invader. We tend to say, “Well, he
caught something,” and so you try to
find something to combat the bugs. Isn’t
that just about how it comes over to you most
of the time?
Did it ever occur to you to ask yourself,
“What is the purpose of this acute
episode - the cold in the head, tonsillitis,
digestive upset or whatever - what is the
purpose of it? What is it there to accomplish?
Is it just there to irritate the patient and
distress the parents? Can we look at these
acute episodes as a healing experience?”
The body is trying to bring about a change,
and, therefore, it has to produce a sort of
eruption of some kind within the body’s
physiology in order to bring that about. Have
you ever thought of a child’s cold in
the head as a healing episode?
A. No, I consider it somewhat of a nuisance.
It just causes more trouble. (from the
audience)
I agree it is inconvenient. Yes. That’s
not the question. There are many things in
life that are inconvenient but a lot of good
may come out of them, nevertheless.
Let’s consider for a moment why we tend
to get colds. We get colds very frequently
when our resistance is lowered,perhaps from
wandering from good food or not getting enough
rest or being under great stress. The cold
takes us out of circulation for perhaps 24 or
48 hours, and forces us to rest, forces us to
pour fluids into the body and so we begin to
get better.
These acute episodes can if they are handled
wisely, form stepping stones to better health.
Let’s look at some of the symptoms that
occur. Fever: It is universally taught via
that box you have in your house, namely the
TV, that if you have a fever you take
something to lower the fever, Tylenol,
aspirin, whatever. The first thing is to lower
the fever. But the fever is one of the
body’s efforts to combat the infection.
The fever is the manifestation of the
body’s immunity at work. The child who
is sick without a fever gives us far more
concern than the child who is sick with a
fever. If the child doesn’t have a fever
when there should be a fever, that indicates
that the body is not putting up the resistance
that is necessary in order to overcome this
problem. I’m not talking about the fever
that goes up to 104-106, I’m talking
about the average fever of 101, 102, 103 which
accompanies in most instances the flu, ear
infection, the common infectious diseases of
childhood. The fever is very important. So we
do not address the fever, we address the cause
of the fever, which is a different
approach.
How about pain? What should we do about pain?
The pain of an ear infection or a throat
infection? It is generally assumed, often
naturally so, that heat is more comforting
than cold. The very thought of heat is much
more soothing than is ice. Ice has the effect
of stimulating the active circulation, whereas
heat draws passive congestion. Just imagine
for a moment that you soaked your finger in a
cup of hot water - for 10 or 15 minutes. What
would it be like when you took it out of the
water? It would be swollen, red, probably
throbbing, and it would be stiff. Is that what
you would want to produce in your
child’s ears or your child’s
throat? He has enough congestion there already
and that is why it hurts. If we can use ice or
a cold compress, which means a cloth wrung out
of ice cold water, in the immediate
application you disperse the blood in the
area, but almost immediately there is a
reaction in the body that brings active
circulation into the area, and that active
circulation is part of the healing
process.
If, in the event of an earache you use an
application of cold instead of heat, it will
have helped the process to turn around and
begin to clear. If you use heat you tend to
increase the congestion and in the end make
the infection worse. Never use heat by itself.
We may sometimes use heat alternated with ice
to enhance the difference between the
two.
I had one teacher who used to say,
“Before you start treating the patient,
get him to throw the heating pad out.”
The only thing the heating pad is good for is
keeping your feet warm in bed at night, but
not to put on some local area of your body.
That is also true for sprains, whether it be a
back or an ankle. Put ice on it, put cold on
it, and the swelling will be decreased, you
will increase the motion, and it will begin to
feel better.
Keep one of the ice packs which you can buy
for the picnic basket in the freezer. Then you
will always have a cold application if and
when needed. It will be much more convenient
and easier to use than ice. If there is an
acute throat infection, wring a cloth out of
ice water and wrap it around the neck. It is
cold as it is put on, but as it draws the
circulation into the area it becomes hot, very
hot. You will often find that as the tonsils
get better you will see a little rash on the
skin, which is showing you the direction of
the body’s reaction. In a very short
time the rash on the skin disappears.
If, at the very first sign of a sore throat,
you push the fluids, wrap a cold pack around
the throat, you will find very often that in
24 hours it will be gone. Put cold fruit
juices on the inside of the throat and cold
packs on the outside.
What about sinus infection? The same basic
principle applies. Just place the ice pack
across the face. At first it may be difficult
to bear the cold. It may be only a few minutes
at a time, but you will begin to feel the
congestion breaking up.
These suggestions don’t mean that you
are going to be able to solve every problem at
home. But if, instead of acting as if it
weren’t there, you proceed actively at
the beginning with the measures of pushing the
fluids, applying the cold applications locally
and encouraging rest, many of the minor
problems come under control without any major
complications. The longer you leave it
untreated the harder it is to clear it.
Now let’s consider the relationship of
injuries to acute episodes. Very often an
acute episode will follow an injury of some
kind, either immediately or a week or two
afterwards. Some of the things we talked about
in the past probably led you to begin to
understand why this is so.
Never forget that the body is put together
like a delicately designed piece of machinery,
and every part of the body is designed to
move, to move in relationship to every other
part. You have a very delicately integrated,
moving piece of machinery. And if something
happens to that moving machinery and
interferes with its free motion in some area,
that in turn interferes with the circulation
of arterial blood, the drainage of venous
blood, the drainage of lymphatic fluid from
the area and the actual motion of the area
itself. That, in turn, produces stasis or
stagnation in the area, it permits congestion
to occur and then it becomes a fertile field
for any organism that is in the area.
We find not infrequently that a child has a
blow on the head and, before very long he is
complaining of an earache. At that point the
earache may not be an ear infection; it may be
a congested ear, the ear drum may look red,
but it is a response to the fact that the
temporal bone which holds the ear has become
reduced in its normal physiologic motion. If
that structural problem can be corrected the
earache disappears. This is not uncommon. So
if you begin to think of the injury and the
effect, and the child does come down with an
earache or acute infection, just think back to
what has happened in the last two or three
weeks which might be a factor contributing to
this.
Let us consider another sort of manifestation
of acute episodes. That is an asthmatic
attack. An asthmatic attack can be a very
frightening experience. It is usually more
frightening for the parents than for the
child. Children tend to take these crises in
stride much better than their parents do. We
have found that children who have had a fall
landing hard on the buttocks, will often
precipitate an attack of asthma if they have a
predisposition.
One little boy we have treated, who had a lot
of asthma before we saw him, had been doing
very well and I hadn’t seen him for nine
months. One day his mother called to say he
had suddenly developed an acute attack of
asthma. I asked her if he had had any
injuries, and she said no, he hadn’t. I
asked her if she were sure he hadn’t had
any injuries. When he came in I said to him,
“Have you sat down hard
somewhere?” He said, “Yes,”
and I said, “What did you do?” He
said, “I fell off the donkey.”
“Didn’t you tell your
mother?” “No, because I
wasn’t supposed to be on the
donkey.” So you may not always know the
injury that preceded that is causing the
trouble.
We are not concerned only with respiratory
problems like the colds or the asthma or the
flu, sore throats, but there are
gastrointestinal upsets - the acute diarrhea,
the acute vomiting episode. Here it is
important to think about what has precipitated
this. With little children who are just
beginning to get onto solid food, this may be
a reaction from pushing them onto the solid
food a little too fast, and so a very good
rule for introducing new foods to babies is to
do it in very small amounts. Give one teaspoon
of a new food once a day for three days. If
that is acceptable and causes no adverse
effects, gradually increase the quantity. Then
introduce one teaspoon of another new food
once a day for three days. Thus over 15 days
you will have introduced five food which are
now well tolerated. This is a good rule when
you are introducing any new food to children.
Then you will find you won’t get to that
point where they just refuse to eat it. Later
make sure they get a little taste of whatever
food you are serving. Making it a little
harder to get makes it more desirable.
There are some very simple home measures
which you can use to help an acute episode of
vomiting or diarrhea. If it continues to go
on, a very valuable remedy is in the water in
which brown rice has been cooked. Feed that at
about one teaspoon every ten minutes. It is
important that you don’t give more at
any one time because if you put a volume of
fluid into the stomach it will come right
back. Then follow the rice water with some of
the brown rice, which can be pureed in the
blender or through a sieve, with just a touch
of honey to make it a little more tasty and
feed that, again in very small quantities.
This is for vomiting primarily.
With diarrhea, the body is probably trying to
get rid of something which shouldn’t be
there. One cause of diarrhea in small children
is that the food which has been given to them
is not prepared finely enough. The body does
not yet have the equipment to digest it, or
maybe they don’t chew it adequately.
Corn is one thing that will often be found
almost unchanged. That means the child should
not be having corn because the body cannot yet
handle it. It is too coarse for this body to
cope with. The same for raisins or any coarse
food which the child does not digest. These
foods should be ground or soaked or pureed
until the child’s body can handle
them.
Once you have addressed the cause of the
problem, the rice water and the rice may be
very helpful here too. Another valuable remedy
is to take a ripe apple and scrape it with a
spoon, so that it is the consistency of apple
sauce but it is a raw apple. Then, when you
are over the acute phase, use Meusli. The
Meusli is an old, old recipe that comes from
Switzerland, which was used by the shepherds
in the mountains, and it is still available in
almost every cafe in Switzerland. It is a
staple food, and by no means a unique health
food. Its basis is raw oats that have been
soaked to which is added apple and banana,
raisins and some ground nuts, a little lemon
juice and a little honey. This is a wonderful
food for quieting down digestive difficulties
at any age in life. Any chronic distress in
the digestive system or even an ulcer can be
helped by a steady diet of Meusli, even for
several weeks at a time, with absolutely
fantastic results in quieting down digestive
difficulties.
In the immediate post-war period in England
there was a representative from Switzerland
who came to the Hospital for sick Children in
London, which is renowned throughout the world
for its expertise in solving children’s
problems. He treated children with celiac
disease which is a severe disturbance of the
digestion of foods which occurs in children.
Their measure for treating these children was
the use of Meusli. This work was not published
for one simple reason: all the children got
better. That’s not possible according to
the usual standards - that every child would
have got better.
Why is it that simple measures can be so
profoundly effective in these episodes? It is
because the healing process comes from within
the body, not from outside the body. We
don’t heal anybody, neither do you. It
is the patient who heals himself. All we do is
give him a little assistance, set the stage,
clear away the things that were in error and
permit the healing process to take
place.
I can’t emphasize enough how important
it is to realize that the child has the
capacity to overcome his problem inside
himself if we will set the stage and create
the circumstances in which he can do so.
All of the minerals in the body must be in
balance. Calcium must be in relationship to
phosphorus and vitamin D so the body can
absorb it. If one is missing you may not be
utilizing something else. We can see children
who are not utilizing calcium, who have
calcium deposits in their hair which are a
thousand times more than they ought to be. It
is not that they are not getting enough
calcium, it is that their bodies are not doing
the right thing with the calcium.
Here we come back again to how the body is
functioning on the inside to make the best use
of what we put into it.
Let’s consider another area of factors
which may manifest themselves in illness in
the child. They come under that very broad
heading of “stress.” Stress may be
directly on the child, as for instance, a
parent who is too demanding - demanding
performance that is perhaps beyond the age or
the capacity of the child. The pressure may be
at school or the child may believe that there
is pressure for performance. Sometimes I talk
to parents about this and we hear, “No,
we have never bugged him about grades.”
But if I talk to the child, he says,
“Well, I’d better get good grades
or I will get into trouble.” That may or
may not be true but it is how he perceives the
parents’ approach toward his performance
in school. Sometimes we need to look at
ourselves through the eyes of our children.
How do they interpret what we say or what we
do to them? That is what influences their
reaction to circumstances.
How often do you praise your child? How often
do you tell him how good he is? How often do
you tell him how bad he is, how naughty he is,
how incorrigible? If you were to turn a tape
recorder on in your house for a few hours and
listen to what is said, you might learn a
great deal about the way your family
functions. That is one of the best therapeutic
measures that I know of. Just let a tape
recorder run when nobody knows it is on, and
then play it back. You will be astonished at
what you hear, but you will learn so much. You
will find, I’m sure, as most of us do,
that he says this, .she says that, and I say
this. And the script rarely changes because we
don’t hear the script. We only feel
motivated to react to this or to that in an
endeavor to shut them both up and it
doesn’t work.
The stress that is put on a child is
sometimes quite unconscious, and more
seriously, unrecognized. If we can look
through a mirror at ourselves and all the
circumstances that surround this child we will
find out where the stress is coming
from.
There may be stress on the child which is
indirect, which isn’t directed to the
child at all. There may be stress between the
parents or between the parents and the
grandparents, or stress between the parent and
somebody who takes care of the child. The
child is in the middle there, and receives
that tension that is around him. Children are
like reflectors of their parents, and
particularly their mothers. I’m sure you
have had the experience that when mother
isn’t feeling very well the children are
unbearable. It is not the child’s fault,
it is because the security which is the center
of that family has suddenly been pulled out
and they are trying to make the best they can
of it. Mother is the central figure in the
child’s security. Father contributes to
it, yes, but you will find that mother being
sick or mother being pulled out of the family
is a major problem for that child, whether it
be for a day or for a much longer
period.
If parents are in conflict, this reflects on
the child. How does the child deal with
difficult or unpleasant circumstances? If the
child has a problem at school - he’s not
getting along very well with the teacher -
what do we do about it? Do we talk to the
teacher or to the principle and endeavor to
have the child removed from that teacher? We
often do that. Just project into the future
another fifteen years, when your child has a
job and he doesn’t get along very well
with his boss. Is Mother or Dad going down to
talk to the president of the firm and say,
“Well, he didn’t get along very
well. I think we’d better move
him.” You know what he will say,
don’t you? That’s the end of that
job.
When do we start to deal with difficult or
challenging or uncomfortable circumstances?
Can we help our child to handle a difficult
situation at school? Can we teach our child to
recognize that perhaps this teacher has some
problems at home, that this teacher is doing
the best he can under the circumstances? Or is
this teacher challenging the child a little
bit more than he thinks he can handle, but
will in the end, produce performance in this
child which wouldn’t have been produced
otherwise?
It is a well known fact that the teacher you
remember is the teacher who demanded
performance from you. You may have thought at
the time that he was mean. Those are the
teachers you remember, aren’t they? Do
you remember the teachers who were very kind
and sweet and who put up with anything you
did? You can’t even remember their names
in many instances. The teachers who demanded
performance - these we remember. In the great
majority of instances, it isn’t the
teacher who is the problem, it is learning how
to cope with a difficult situation. This
doesn’t mean that we don’t have to
make sure there is nothing of a more serious
nature. If we can teach a child how to deal
with a difficult or challenging situation he
won’t be stressed by it and he will have
learned a very important lesson in how to deal
with the problems he will be confronting later
in life.
Praising a child, accepting a child,
encouraging a child is so important, no matter
where they stand in life. If a child is
handicapped he needs all of the acceptance,
the encouragement, the stimulation we can give
him. You know we all thrive on praise. If
someone is constantly beating us down with
“Well, you didn’t do this and why
didn’t you do that, pick up your
clothes, and wash your face,” and are
constantly at it, none of us does very well
under those circumstances. We need praise, we
need some one to tell us we did a good job, or
we tried hard and have done better today than
we did yesterday. These are the things that
make children strive to do better.
Another problem, which sometimes is
unavoidable, is repeated changing or moving in
a child’s life. Children thrive on
stability, on security. They like to sleep in
the same place, have their own little corner
where their possessions are. If moves are
unavoidable, then endeavor to establish a
close little niche in the new location as you
had in the old one, so they can quickly relate
to a home-like feeling. We see children who
are in Service families, constantly uprooted
every year or two. This is very hard on
children. They need as much stability as we
can possibly give them under those
circumstances. It isn’t easy for any of
us to be moved around a lot. Particularly is
this true of a child.
An extension of this is having people around
that the child can relate to. Sometimes it is
unavoidable, perhaps, that a baby sitter has
to be changed a series of times. No matter how
good the sitter may be, if the child is going
through a constant need to relate to a new
person, it is another hurdle he has to get
over. The fewer the times we have to produce
these challenges to a child, the better he
will do. This doesn’t mean that it
isn’t of value to leave a child with
somebody else at times. It is important that a
child can learn to be with other people. At
the same time try to maintain that
undergirding, stable environment rather than a
lot of change.
The need for consistency of rules and
regulations: A child needs to know his
boundaries. There are times when that is
difficult, times when he doesn’t choose
to conform to those boundaries, and that cuts
right across your plans for the day. What are
you going to do about it? Are you going to let
down on the rules and regulations? Are you
going to say, “Well, just this once we
won’t bother?” Or are we going to
go through some inconvenience so that the
child realizes that rules are there to be
kept, not to be broken? Sometimes this can be
a real cause for confusion, disturbance, and
all your plans are thrown out because Johnny
doesn’t choose to put his shoes on this
morning. It is so much easier to do it for
him. If you do it for him today you might find
yourself doing it for him tomorrow too, and so
it goes on.
Routine is a great help to children. It gives
them stability. If they get up at the same
time, eat at approximately the same time, they
have the same sort of activities at about the
same time gives them a sort of rhythm in their
life. And rhythm on the outside helps to
establish rhythm on the inside. Again, this is
not absolutely rigid, but if they become
accustomed to a rhythm and routine, you will
find that life is less stressful to
them.
The emotional environment: Have fun! Get down
on the floor and play with the children. Have
time when the children can tell you what to do
in a play and fun situation because you will
find they will be much more willing to listen
to you when you have something to tell them.
Laugh with your children, have fun. Sometimes
one of the best ways to overcome their
behavior is to laugh. If a child is mad about
something and you laugh at him his madness
doesn’t carry much weight. If a child
can get mad and upset you he has won the day.
But if he gets mad and you laugh at him, he
realizes it isn’t doing any good, and
soon the anger begins to break up. That
isn’t easy but you will find it will
work.
Anxiety and fear on the part of parents is
picked up by children. The fear may have
something to do with them or it may have
nothing to do with them. They may not
understand the fear, but they pick it up and
they respond to it.
Thus, children present us with very great
demands, not demands necessarily for what we
do to them but demands for what we are,
because our children demand of us a growth on
the inside, a stability, a harmonious state
within ourselves and the people we interact
with. That is what establishes a healthy
environment for that child.
These are some of the thoughts I would like
you to take with you and think about, and see
how they may fit into your situation at home.
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Osteopathic Center for Children & Families
4135 54th Place • San Diego, California 92105
• 619.583.7611
information@osteopathiccenter.org
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