Immune development parallels psychological development

One of the most significant emotional stresses experienced by a child involves separation, mainly from the mother. In fact, the development of a child is intimately bound to the development of an independent self, with an ability to function without the parents, with strong discerning boundaries able to keep out what is detrimental for them and allow in what is needed. There are therefore strong parallels with both physical and psychological development.

Consequently the developmental milestones of, for example, teething, weaning, walking, talking, etc will take a child closer to independence but simultaneously further away from mother. There is therefore an accompanying stress associated with these events, allied to a certain amount of frustration that accompanies any learning or breakthrough process. It is therefore no coincidence that illnesses often occur at these points in a child’s life. At these times of most stress, immune function is weaker and therefore toxins can build up with the accompanying accumulation of microbes.

Orthodox paediatricians, alternative health practitioners and parents, have noticed that after childhood illnesses there is often a developmental leap in the child, this is because the illness often occurs at the point of learning. The learning can involve any issue but will always involve many systems at once; learning to digest new foods, learning to produce new enzymes, learning to eliminate certain blood poisons, learning to create a fever, learning to produce certain immune reactions, weaning off of breast milk, teething, learning to crawl, walk, talk, all of which may also be accompanied by the stress of separation and with the difficulties and frustrations of the learning process itself.

The illness is an attempt to resolve an underlying issue, the issue will be different in different individuals, if an issue isn’t there the illness itself cannot resolve it; two children fall and bruise their knees, one is learning to ride a bike, one learning to ice skate, resolve the issue, heal the bruising and one learns to ride a bike and the other learns to ice skate. Bruising is not a pre-requisite for either and the resolution of bruising in a child that is not learning either will not result in a child that is able to ice skate or able to ride a bike. “Doctor, will I be able to play the piano after my broken arm has healed?”…“Of course” says the doctor…”Great” says the patient, having never played the piano before.

All illnesses are unique to the individual issues of each patient, the manifestation of illness may be as a result of a variety of learning issues, the symptoms of measles, for example, is the end result of a process that started some time before. After measles, one child is more able to talk, another more able to balance, another more able to digest new foods, or deal with emotional stress, these issues may be similar to other patients by virtue of their similar learning process and environment; children of a similar age learning similar things experiencing similar frustrations in a similar environment have similar reactions. This is simply NOT by virtue of being in the presence of a similar bug. The disease measles for example is the infiltration and build up of blood poisons in a child with an immune system that is not yet capable of an efficient inflammatory response, with relatively weak membranes and at a point of crisis, often when they are most stressed, physically, toxically, mentally or emotionally. Resolve the crisis, eliminate the poisons and many systems have learnt, leaving the child less susceptible to those issues after.

Similarly you do not ‘need’ a specific illness for a specific development, anymore than you need to break a leg in order to learn how to ride a bike. The public perception that ‘there isn’t so much measles around’ is reflective of the disease being caused by microbial things that we can get rid of. However if the incidence of measles diminishes this means that many individuals are either not reaching that point of crisis and are not resolving their issues in that way (just as there are children who learn to ride a bike without breaking their legs) or they may not be healthy enough to produce skin reactions that resolve in that manner.

However you cannot learn to ride a bike without ever falling off and so as with immune development, it is inherently ‘a learning process’, which necessarily involves trial & error and trial & success, the extent and exact manifestation of the error, is dependent on the individual. If your child becomes blood toxic at a point where immune development is occurring then they will develop symptoms of measles or immune rashes regardless of whether someone else has it or not. Remember the example of a country like Australia with good disease notification, it is noted that children develop childhood illnesses even though isolated from others for months, therefore whether ‘it’ is around or not, they could equally learn without the obvious manifestation of crisis reaction, i.e. without the inflammatory skin rash.

Minimising the consequences of our learning mistakes will therefore be important, reducing the toxic load on the child, minimising physical and emotional stress, etc. but eradicating the error from the process of trial & error and trial & success is not possible. In order that we minimise the consequences of error we therefore need to understand the problems inherent in the disease process, what is the human body reacting to with the dis-ease symptoms?
 
In the developmental illnesses of children, these will be for example, separation issues, the rate at which they are learning to gain independence, the amount of time away from parents, walking, talking, weaning, new foods, toilet training, toxins in food, pollutants in their air, on their skin, in their environment, emotional stresses of the family environment. If your child is ill these are the stresses that will need to be reduced, in fact as everyone is probably aware when their child is unwell and if the illness is not properly resolved, there is often a period of regression where they become more dependent.