Cases, Cases, Cases 31I have encountered this theme time and time again and can formulate it as a
simple rule of management: deal with dietary intolerance first and many other conditions
simply recover, as the overload effect disappears.
Case no. 3: Behavioral problems
The next case is that of a schoolboy which is so like the story of hundreds
and thousands of others that I think it a great shame that all teachers, as well
as parents, are unaware of the importance of diet in influencing behavior.
Luckily this tale has a happy ending, but so many do not: often delinquency,
even crime, follows in the wake of poor eating, and the helpless teachers
and mystified parents never suspect the real reason. Such a pity, when the
cure is so easy, as this book shows.
I have allowed the lad’s mother to tell the story in the form of a
letter to me:
Dear Dr. Scott-Mumby,
It’s marvelous to be able to write and tell you what a
complete success your dietary program has been with our son
Alan. As you know, we had some awful problems, but now,
thanks to you, he is the lovely boy he promised to be as a
toddler. Let me go back to the beginning.
Alan as a little baby was always so happy and a delight to
be with. In fact we had no inkling of what was to follow. It
wasn’t until he reached the age of about three, when he started
to go to preschool, that things began to go wrong.
We were told that he behaved rather aggressively towards
the other children and that he was demanding and seemed to
want the attention of the group leader all the time. We were
surprised, because this was so untypical. We talked it over and
assumed it was just a phase he was going through and that he
needed time to adjust. But in fact it got worse.
Then we suspected that he had communication problems.
Although quite bright and certainly not backward for his age,
his speech was virtually non-existent. We decided this should
be tackled vigorously and, after much cajoling, we managed to
get professional help from a succession of speech therapists.
This paid off in the sense that his speech is now almost
perfect, unlike that of many of his peers. But his behavior,
unfortunately, did not improve.