I had every intention of writing this story about a young lad who “struggled at school.” His highly educated parents even had him privately tutored by the best teachers without significant improvement.
He presented with the classic story: a diagnosis of speech and language disorder, traumatic birth, cord wrap, difficulty in latching, severe archer, circumcision with adhesions, constipation, toddler traumas, current bad posture, failed orthodontics, fierce teeth grinding, zero-second brain cycle, and fascial strain everywhere in his body. All of the dots connected perfectly.
Thinking about how to compose this story, I realized that I would be writing about me. When I looked at him, I saw myself in the 1950s, which brought back a lot of unpleasant buried memories.
My father was an orthodontist and my mother was college-educated, a rare couple in that generation. They believed that I needed to get the best education possible to be successful and happy in life. It worked for them, and they wanted that for me.
I had a sickly childhood as documented in other posts. I was doing fine in school until my parents decided that I would go to the Choate School, the number-three-ranked high school in America, for eighth grade.
I scored very high in the math testing, but my reading comprehension did not register on the radar screen. The admissions director told my parents that I would need to go away to summer school in Newport, R.I., for remedial reading. If I did well, I would be accepted.
At 12, I left little league baseball, the love of my life then, and spent the summer reading paperback books. I did well enough for Choate to accept me.
I had trouble with English class for all five years. My writing composition was poor, and I still struggled in reading comprehension. My parents paid for my ninth grade teacher to tutor me in the evenings. He ultimately told my parents, “Barry will never write anything.”
Somehow that struck deep into my psyche. When I published my first book in 1999, I was terribly excited about the work but had greater enjoyment in actually publishing a book. Since then, I have written two more books and over 1,000 stories on my website.
I remember the deepest wound occurred after I took the SATs during my junior year. I scored in the top 1% of test takers in math but unusually low in English. I still remember my college adviser telling me that it was the lowest score ever recorded by any student at the school.
He told me not to worry, saying I probably made a mistake in blackening the answer boxes with my #2 pencil. I retook the test and wound up with a similar score. Any ego and self-confidence that I possessed at the time vanished.
When you attend an elite prep school like Choate, you are expected to attend a top college. That did not happen for me. I wanted to go to Yale University, but my advisor said do not even bother applying—no chance.
I was rejected by my other top choices: Williams College, Brown University, and Georgetown University. I ended up settling for one of my two safety schools, Lehigh and Villanova.
My lack of English skills also limited my life’s work to science or mathematics. I was not suited for a career like law or teaching where reading comprehension was paramount.
I worked harder than anyone over the next ten years at different levels of education to reach the pinnacle of becoming a periodontist. I loved surgery and was good at it and ready to experience the good life. Then the headaches came, and God led me into another direction.
When I saw how powerful the work was cognitively for children in the late 1970s and early 1980s, my heart’s desire was that no child would have to go through what I did. Now almost 50 years later, I am still looking at me.
For every parent who resonates with this story, my thoughts are: Your child’s god-given intelligence and gift to the world is trapped inside of him or her. This therapy can help get it out so he or she can shine brightly in life.
For this child, I have strong hopes that the work will make a significant difference in his life. I am reminded about the starfish story where a man walking on a beach after a terrible storm saw a boy throwing an occasional starfish back into the ocean.
The man said, “With tens of thousands of starfish on the beach, how can you possibly make a difference?” The boy picked up a starfish, threw it back into the water, and said, “I made a difference for that one.”
Dad Emails After the First Session
“I wanted to share with you what we have seen so far with our son. As we walked out of your office yesterday, I saw real hip mobility as he walked while, before, he was constricted and had his knees often bump against each other.
“As we exited the building, he asked me if I liked social studies. Then he told me about the governments of ancient Egypt and ancient Greece with Egypt a monarchy and Greece a democracy. He had never brought up anything like this from school before.
“Then, when he got home, he had an easy bowel movement. He continues to have full sentences and a stronger gait. This morning, when he found out something we had planned was not going to work out, he didn’t throw a fit but just expressed frustration and then asked to play with his figures with me.
“When he brought up these ancient civilizations yesterday, I nearly had tears in my eyes. I’ve never heard him talk about anything besides his own hobbies or shows or his immediate surroundings. I am eager to resume therapy and am optimistic like you are!”
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