Making Progress on a Tight Budget
1) Take advantage of every service that the county or your local school district have to offer. If you’re not satisfied with what the school is (or is not) doing, learn about your parental rights at www.wrightslaw.com.
2) Read.
a) Go on-line. Check out our “links” page. There is a lot of great information there. These are web-sites run by professionals that we have checked out and have a lot of confidence in.
b) Read books. Go to www.amazon.com and look for used copies. If you can’t even afford that, visit your local library. If your library doesn’t have what you’re looking for, request a book through Inter-Library Loan. We have some good titles listed here at PEP/Albany and plan to list more recommended book titles soon.
3) Start to make dietary changes on your own. You can identify problem foods if you . . .
a) Keep a food/symptom diary.
b) Rotate foods – With a diversified rotation diet, not only are you unmasking possible hidden allergies and sensitivities, but you’re also building more nutrition into the diet. Eating a variety of foods is much healthier than eating foods like macaroni and cheese every day. Check out our page called “Rotation Diets” for more information.
4) Find an open-minded pediatrician and see if you can get him (or her) to order some tests so that your private health insurance will pay for it. Great Plains Laboratory offers some unusual testing services and I believe that they accept many types of insurance.
5) If you’re considering chelation (to rid your child’s body of heavy metals) but you can’t afford it and your insurance won’t cover it, look into Ioncleanse. You don’t have to purchase your own device. A local nutritionist, who offers the Ioncleanse service, let us do a free trial. Then we signed up for a package deal that I thought was a real bargain.
6) Consider adding some nutritional supplements to your child’s diet, but read up on it first. At the very least, a child that is not consuming milk or dairy products will probably need a calcium supplement.
7) Switch to non-toxic cleaning supplies. We use white vinegar and baking soda a lot. Tea tree oil is a great disinfectant and a little goes a long way. We’ll be starting a page on “green” cleaning soon.
8) Get to know your child and understand him/her as much as possible. Listen. Observe. Try to view the world from your child’s eyes. When s/he stims, stim along with him/her. I guarantee that time you spend getting to really know your child will be time well spent.