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Is Your Child a Sufferer . . . Are You? By Rabbi Y.Y. Rubinstein
A whole raft of treatments that used to work, for example, anti-biotics, are proving themselves less and less able to deal with bugs that have become resistant and new conditions that appear from time to time.
And it's not just in the world of physical ailments that treatments have started to fail. In the world of psychology too, treatments and therapies that were once believed to offer solutions have not lived up to expectations.
Now parents face a new and potentially graver problem as they attempt to bring up their kids. Like so many such conditions like ADD and ADHD, it is known by its acronym, B.O.Y.
Many clinicians, although highly qualified in the fields of Psychology and Counseling were utterly unaware of this condition till recently. Often they misdiagnosed it as the traditional ADD or ADHD. Of course this led to inappropriate treatments and considerable expense for medications that simply did not tackle the problem. Now they are looking and sounding pessimistic that they will be able to deal with what seems to be a Pandemic.
Jewish parents are no less affected by this condition than anyone else. Mrs Gloria Epstein of New Rochelle, NY was quoted in a recent study, "Michael junior had just turned four. My husband Michael senior and I hadn't noticed anything unusual. Little Micky was such a loveable baby, you know what I mean? Then he started doing crazy stuff, running about, yelling, breaking things, fighting with his sister and giving us Chutzpa. He took to writing on his walls with felt pen and every toy we gave him lasted only days before it ended up in the garbage. We took him to our therapist hoping it would be something normal like ADD and Micky could take medication and we could get back to being normal family. The doctor told us that little Micky might be suffering from a recently diagnosed condition called, B.O.Y.
We were devastated. When we decided to become parents we never dreamt in a million years that we would have to contend with something as horrific as this!"
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Indeed many professionals have seen their incomes plummet as more and more parents have realized that traditional Therapists have no more idea about how to treat B.O.Y syndrome than they have.
Help though may well be at hand. Researchers have found convincing evidence that B.O.Y. may in fact not be a new condition after all but an old condition, which has been ignored or forgotten.
This has caused researchers to go back through the records to discover what treatments were used in the past and whether they can be applied to today's epidemic. The good news is that first results look extremely promising. Even more exciting is the fact that effective treatments are being developed from historic Jewish sources!
We took the new findings to Mrs. Epstein of New Rochelle and asked her if she and her husband would be willing to try them with Michael junior. We asked her to fill out a daily report of how the program went. After a month we visited to see if there had been any improvement.
Mrs. Epstein recorded her first day on the program.
"Michael and I took Micky to the Mall and when we passed by a pet store he started to shout that he wanted a pet snake. We said he couldn't have one (he lost the last two and the neighbors complained when one turned up in their bath) and he started to tantrum and scream.
We tried our usual approach of appealing to his better nature and pleading with him to stop. Of course when a child is suffering from something as dreadful as B.O.Y. you simply cannot expect his underlying positive personality to assert itself.
Our immediate reaction was to rush him to a Psychologist and demand a course of Ritalin. But we knew modern therapies were useless against B.O.Y and we had committed to this new program. Michael dialed the course designer, Dr. Solomon King.
It was hard for Michael to make himself heard above Michael Junior's yells and threats but eventually, he managed to explain the situation.
Dr. King told us to do something that was so shocking to us, that at first we could not believe what he said. He said we should tell Micky if he didn't stop screaming (he had now kicked Michael six times and called him a Pig) we would… spank him!
We told Dr. King that we could not do that, but he assured us that this technique, applied sparingly and only to the soft round area at the top of the legs, would do the trick.
Michael and I looked at one another in desperation and in the end it was me who offered Micky the ultimatum. He told me I was a Pig too and that's when I turned him round and delivered three spanks to the prescribed location.
Michael junior looked to be in a state of shock and his father and I held our breaths as silence engulfed our little family. Could this ancient treatment, we had been told had worked in years gone by, work now?
Little Michael stopped screaming and we were soon able to walk past the pet store.
Dr. King had explained that children affected by B.O.Y. sometimes suffered side effects from the therapy like confusion and surprise but that this soon passed as the sufferer became used the treatment.
That's exactly what happened. Micky looked stunned as though he could not believe what had happened. Then the silence changed to quiet sobs but amazingly, in just a few moments these too disappeared. We were astonished.
Other treatments prove just as effective. Dr. King suggested that we should try stage two and three almost immediately. Michael and I weren't at all sure about these two, the names, Consequences and Discipline sounded so alien and strange, but we have to admit that Dr. Solomon King was right."
Mrs. Epstein's experience has been repeated in families across the US and there is now hope that children suffering from B.O.Y. have a real chance of a lasting cure. Schools are looking into the new therapy and although there is strong opposition from many leading educational experts, pilot schemes have shown encouraging results here too. Opponents may have to concede in the face of the evidence.
Mrs. Epstein summed up her experience in first controlling then defeating the worse effects of her sons condition. "Frankly the change has been remarkable. Sometimes Michael and I feel ourselves slipping back to the old certainties of medication and other expensive treatments. But we support each other and are busy telling our friends about the Cure for B.O.Y. Frankly we cannot thank Solomon King enough for doing the research and discovering the therapies that brought a suffering family a real cure."
I asked Mrs. Epstein after her positive experience of, "B.O.Y Therapy" if she would be happy to have her families experience shared in the Jewish Press and she replied she would encourage anyone to try it. "The irony is" she continued, "My husband and I are not even sure what the letters stand for."
I was able to enlighten her, B.O.Y stands for Boisterous, Ordinary, Young. It is closely related to another condition called G.I.R.L. Gregarious, Insistent, Robust and Loud.
Parents wishing to find out more can contact Dr. Solomon King by e-mail Proverbs@Tanach[Hebrew Bible].Com
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And in KINDLE EDITION for Just $9.99 by clicking here . Comment by clicking here. JWR contributor Rabbi YY Rubinstein is a world renowned educator, lecturer, radio broadcaster, and seasoned author whose articles have appeared in Hamodia and other periodicals.
• A parenting guide for the perplexed
© 2011, Rabbi Y. Y. Rubinstein
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