Episode 238 — Engage In ACTIVE Healing
Guest: Sargent Goodchild • Date: January 9, 2025
Episode Overview
Sarge Goodchild shares how simple, foundational movements like crawling can unlock incredible potential for children with developmental challenges. His holistic approach improves health, fosters independence, and demonstrates the life-changing power of movement.
About Sargent Goodchild
Sargent L. Goodchild Jr. began life as a brain-injured child. At four years of age, Sargent was diagnosed with a seizure disorder. None of the many professionals who met with Sargent were capable of seeing his potential. The best medical advice his parents were given was to put him on anticonvulsant and muscle-relaxing medication. He was eventually placed on various combinations of seven different medications. The effects of which were incredible toxicity without seizure control. It was too much for his parents to bear. Through a friend, they found neurodevelopmental therapy, and within nine months of beginning a functional movement program, he became both seizure and medication-free, as he still is today.
Sargent has been working with children with various disabilities/challenges for 30 years as a practitioner of NeuroDevelopmental Movement ®. He has been the subject of numerous newspaper articles and was recognized for his accomplishment with an internationally adopted child in a news story for WBZ-TV in Boston that was subsequently picked up by the CBS affiliates in New York City and Philadelphia. In addition to running Actie Healing, Inc., Sargent is on the board of advisors for Documenting Hope, Bioregulatory Medicine Institute, and Healing Complex Kids.
You’ll Discover
Three Key Things To Have In Place (4:18)
Why The Pons Is So Important (8:19)
How Active Healing Differs From PT and OT (17:24)
The First of Three Factors To Address (28:29)
The Second of Three Factors To Address (30:43)
The Third of Three Factors To Address (32:21)
Ways To Prevent SIDS (36:39)
Sarge’s Backstory (40:14)
The Relationship Between The Midbrain and Seizures (43:52)
Referenced in This Episode
Full Transcript
Sargent Goodchild | 00:00
What we want to do when we approach these kids, whether they've got autism or they've got epilepsy, they've got cerebral palsy, maybe it's an attachment and bonding disorder, or maybe it's just... A learning disability like ADD or dyslexia. What we're going to find is that there is an element of a movement disorder in all of these children regardless of their diagnosis.
Cass Arcuri | 00:21
Want to truly be the best parent you can be and help your child thrive after their autism diagnosis? This podcast is for all in parents like you who know more is possible for your child.
Len Arcuri | 00:32
With each episode, we reveal a secret that empowers you to be the parent your child needs now, saving you time, energy, and money, and helping you focus on what truly matters most, And I'm Len.
Len Arcuri | 00:42
Your child.
Cass Arcuri | 00:43
I'm Cass. Welcome to Autism Parenting Secrets.
Len Arcuri | 00:59
Hello and welcome to Autism Parenting Secrets. It's Len and I'm at the Documenting Hope Conference. This is 2024 in Orlando, Florida. And I'm here with Sarge Goodchild of Active Healing.
So today's episode is going to focus on movement and Sarge is going to better explain what he does and how this can be a real powerful modality to look at as you're looking to support your child to be the best version of himself that they can be. So the secret this week is engage in active healing. And I'm excited to welcome Sarge to the podcast. Welcome, Sarge.
Sargent Goodchild | 01:36
It's great to be here, Len. Thank you for this opportunity.
Len Arcuri | 01:38
Well, when I think back to going to conferences as a parent when everything had started with my son, Ry, you were at the first conference I think I went to, which was a Defeat Autism Now conference. Yeah. And Autism One early on. Those were the conferences that were really big for me. And again, I think... I'm excited for people to better understand what you do in this different approach. And we did go down this road with you early on. It was one of the early interventions we did for Rye. And just long story short is that movement was not on my radar initially as I started to say, what can help? Ride based on where he was. And it was really your presentation that helped me see things differently.
So for parents who are new, maybe newly diagnosed, they're hearing a lot of things they can do for their child, but movement's usually not the first one they hear about.
Sargent Goodchild | 02:31
No, it's not. And it's a shame because what most parents I don't think understand, I think what most people really don't understand is that movement is not a separate disorder. That our kids are faced with. Movement is often at the center of the disorder that our kids are faced with. And until we begin to address the developmental milestones, the gaps and the aberrant patterns that our kids often show during these milestones, We can't really get into the deep foundational parts of the brain. And start to make the changes that are going to support everything that we do with our kids thereafter.
Len Arcuri | 03:12
Got it. Got it.
So in many ways, it's, you know, again, if you're thinking about autism, most people think about the brain, right? And they're just focused, what can help my child? They're not thinking of things like the gut, for example. Which, like most people, don't understand that immediately, that the gut is so key to neurological function. And I think what you're suggesting is that movement is not some disconnected aspect where people think about physical therapy as an example, as something that might help their child. It's so much more foundational.
Sargent Goodchild | 03:45
Right. So what we want to do when we approach these kids, whether they've got autism or they've got epilepsy, they've got cerebral palsy, maybe it's an attachment and bonding disorder, or maybe it's just a learning disability like ADD or dyslexia. What we're going to find is that there is an element of a movement disorder in all of these children regardless of their diagnosis. And they're going to share problems with digestion, they're going to have inflammatory response in their body, they're going to have structural changes in their body, and we want to begin to approach all of those different things. My tendency is to feel that the three legs that are going to hold the stool up for our children... Are going to be structural. We want our kids to see an osteopath or a chiropractor or someone who's doing craniosacral therapy because we want to make sure that we're taking care of the structure of the spine. Got it. We want to make sure that we've got a functional medical doctor or someone, you know, a MAPS doctor, et cetera, because we need to be optimizing the child's chemical environment. We want to make sure that we're getting rid of the foods and the exposures that are causing an inflammatory response in their body. And we want to make sure that they're getting the supplements and the nutrition that is going to support of all kinds.
Len Arcuri | 05:06
Them. Right. Give the body the building blocks of what it needs and defend against poisons.
Sargent Goodchild | 05:13
Make sure that they can detoxify, etc. Right.
So super important. And then the third piece that is often overlooked by parents, that's where active healing steps in. That's where a program of neurodevelopmental movement can be really useful. We have bodies really only for one reason. And that is... They are a vehicle that allows the brain to go out and explore the world and have experiences that create learning. And that help mature the nervous system. And I don't think it's not a big jump. For anyone, any one of your listeners to understand that there's a function structure loop. That is to say that function always leads to structure. And structure always leads to function.
So if you look at it from an automotive perspective, You don't go down to the boat ramp and haul your 40-foot boat out on a trailer using a Ferrari.- Anymore then you would take your F-250 and out on an Indianapolis racetrack. They have very different structures and they perform very different jobs as a result of that. They're capable. Because of the structural changes in those two vehicles, they make them very capable at different functions. You can look at it from a legal perspective and creating a legal brief when you're defending someone on, you know, Bye. For a violent crime, it's very different than if you're approaching a subject who's performed a white collar crime. Those cases are going to be structured very differently because of how they have to function for the client. Sure. Whether you're building a house, etc. If you're sitting around eating Lay's potato chips, drinking Budweiser, and spectating all your sports, we all... Instantly conjure an image. Of a guy who's probably wearing a wife beater, who's got probably stains all over it, and he's not particularly in good health or shape.
Totally different when we start talking about someone who likes to lift weights and is mindful about the way that they eat. And enjoys physical exercise, those functions create a different structure What we now have to do is we have to take that principle and we have to apply it. To healthy childhood development. And we have to realize that when a child is going through this sequence of developmental milestones, what they're doing is not only creating a healthy physical structure, such as arching the bottoms of the feet, stretching their heel cords, wearing hip sockets, developing secondary curves in the spine, breathing against their own body weight so that they're developing a much stronger chest and lung capacity, which is ultimately going to be able to oxygenate the brain better. We can see that fairly easily. We can understand that evolution. We tend not to think about what's going on neurologically for that child.
So when a child is on the floor learning how to crawl, they're developing part of the brain called the pons. And the pons is responsible for a lot of different functions, but among them, The pond signals the production of serotonin. The PONS makes us feel like we belong. If we have a healthy PONS, then we have a healthy sense of belonging. We belong in the family, we belong in the classroom, the school building, the community, etc. And the PONS is responsible for all of our sensory issues. Awareness.
So when the PONS is off, we can feel like the black sheep, like mom and dad like our brother or sister better than they like us, right?
Len Arcuri | 08:58
So if a child has a lot of sensory issues, the PONS is absolutely a possibility as to why that might be.
Sargent Goodchild | 09:06
If your kid needs the seams on the socks lined up perfectly or they have what I call the hot feet where they're always dancing around and they can never get comfortable. If they're a texture eater, if they have a difficult time transitioning from winter clothes to summer clothes or summer clothes back in winter clothes, you know, there are some kids who you can come up behind them and give them this big, giant, enormous bear hug and they just kind of melt in your arms. But if you take them and you just gently stroke their arm like that, they'll try to jump out of the window.
Right? It's so hard. All of that sensory integration disorder stuff that we know so well in our kids is That's all. In my experience, that is all generated from the PONS. Okay. And so What we want to do is we want to go back And we want to go through the developmental milestone that was intended by nature. To develop and mature that part of the brain. Okay.
Len Arcuri | 10:06
So there's a sequence developmentally that we're kind of all designed to go through. Something disrupts that. And therefore, these developmental milestones that might seem more physical, you're talking about the fact that each of those stages is key from a neurological Right.
Sargent Goodchild | 10:24
Perspective. They're part of our innate blueprint.
Len Arcuri | 10:28
That means we've lost on a lot of people that they see only the physical aspect of it and feel like, Neurologically, that's all separate, but you're saying that's actually the case. Right.
So.
Sargent Goodchild | 10:36
We have kids who, when we place them down on their stomachs and we ask them to crawl, we expect them to do it. Almost as though they were a Navy SEAL. Even from three months of age to eight months of age. And what that means is ... Specifically when I refer to the way Navy SEAL does it, and probably Most of our kids actually do it better than the Navy SEAL. If things are unfolding healthfully as they should. We want to look at a few different factors.
So a child is on the floor learning how to crawl on their stomachs. They ultimately when it's in its most sophisticated form, it should be in a cross-lateral pattern.
So that means that if I've got my right knee flexed, my right toe is digging into the floor, and my left arm is extended up above my head, it's on the floor, obviously. And it's dissecting midline. I don't know if you can see this, but right at the rest.
Yeah. Right. And so, Those two, when they get into their position, they're landing simultaneously.
And then I'm pulling with my arm as I'm thrusting off on my leg. And that's happening simultaneously.
So when I end up in the opposite position, we can almost clap it out. It's a two beat pattern.
So that right and left and right and left and right, back and forth. So it's cross-lateral. Unless you're strong, Toad Egg. Most of the forward movement that we're achieving should be achieved through the strongest muscle, which is the leg muscle. And in a ton of our kids, you put them down on the floor, and you'll see that the bulk of their forward movement is coming from their arms. And in order to do that, they don't get that extended reach. The hands don't come under the chest. They don't rotate.
So they don't. Learn how to pronate and supinate their wrists correctly. They're going to have difficulty with penmanship. They're going to have inappropriate pen pressure. They're going to have, A lack of manual skills, a lack of fine motor skills, because everything's been done really tight.
So those hands haven't been opened. And be gotten stimulated the way that they were expected to.
So while all of this is taking place, while we're arching the bottoms of the feet, while we're wearing hip sockets, while we're stretching heel cords, while we're breathing against our body weight, while our eyes are learning how to track across the horizontal plane, as all of these things are unfolding, the most important thing that's happening in the background that we can't physically see is that we're maturing the ponds. Interesting. And as we do that, we're integrating our awareness of sensory integration we're developing that profound sense of healthy bonding. And we're setting the floor for language to evolve as well.
So my feeling is that the PONS is very involved in our kids who are pre-verbal.
Len Arcuri | 13:38
So would you say that physical issue that the PONS has not matured or developed, that that's relevant in the majority of cases. If a child is challenged with respect to delayed speech or if they're nonverbal, There's a lot of factors potentially, but you're saying that if someone's looking at it from a root cause perspective, what's not in place that could be, That the development of the ponds is one that you're feeling very.
Sargent Goodchild | 13:55
I think that it's often at play. Right.
Strongly. We have to, at the very least, we have to rule it out. You brought up in the beginning of our conversations, The fact that the first time we met was at an Autism One conference. And I'm not sure if it was this conference in particular, but Woody McGinnis who was one of the early, what was then called Dan Doctors. Yes. Now it's referred to as now. Woody McGinnis was there. And Woody McGinnis got up and he gave a speech and he was talking about how Bernard Rimland, who's the father of, or I would consider him anyways, the father of maps and the father of damn doctors. He was a really early adapter.
Len Arcuri | 14:55
He established the autism research instance.
Sargent Goodchild | 14:57
Right. Yeah. Bernard Rimland, back in the mid 70s or late 70s said we're going to find that there are toxins and they're going to be behind the ponds and they're going to be behind the midbrain. And this is way before there was instrumentation that would be able to determine that. And Woody got up and he was on stage and he was, as he was discussing this, he said, we have no idea. We have no way of measuring this. And I have no idea how Bernard Rimland was going to was able to determine this. But I'm here today to announce we found toxins behind the ponds in the mid-rank. Interesting. We've now got the internet. And I don't know how he did it. I don't know how he knew this back in the 70s, but he did. He was a deep And I can tell you how he did it.
Len Arcuri | 15:46
Thinker.
Sargent Goodchild | 15:49
He was really good friends with Art Sandler. And Art Sandler was one of the early people who did neurodevelopmental movement. And so we can use what the process of neurodevelopmental movement involves using on the functions that we're able to assess in a child to determine which parts of the brain are healthy and which parts of the brain need more support.
So, When we talk about crawling is a window into the organization of the pons. And so when we see healthy crawling, What we're getting a glimpse of is a healthy pons. Now.
You know, I could whack you in the ankle. Put you down on the floor and ask you to crawl. And it would be unfair to say that you had an unhealthy pons. Now what you actually have is a fractured ankle. Right. Right.
So we want to create a diagnostic trail of evidence that suggests that backs that up, that backs that finding. It says, well, look, you know, not only can Lyme not crawl, But he's got a really high pain threshold. And he has trouble with tracking. And we start creating this diagnostic trial of evidence and everything is going to point the pawns. But we need to make sure that we're backing it up with other evidence. And that we're not just seeing a structural problem. That in the body, like with the hips or the back or the neck or what have you. Does that make sense?
Yeah.
Len Arcuri | 17:18
No, it does make sense. And I think as people are listening, again, what you're describing, this more physical movement, they're going to be thinking, okay, well, my child has PT, physical therapy, that must be getting at this, right? Which is not...
Sargent Goodchild | 17:36
We've identified that you can't crawl. I'm just going to pick on you. I bet that you crawl really well. I'm sure so. Go ahead. But let's say I put you down on the floor and I watch you crawl. And I say, okay, so I see these issues. They are supported by stuff that I'm seeing in your vision, your sense of touch, your hearing, your manual skills. All of it is pointing to the palms. You're an intelligent guy. I can say, hey, look, When you crawl. I really need you to lift that heel, get a firm toe dig, and launch off that leg. And by the way, I want your arm to reach well above your head. I want your hand to be open. I want it to be a two-beat rhythm. I want it to be a cross-idle pattern. I can start. Feeding you all of this information. But when I do that, you start to control that movement now from your cortex. And the cortex is not where your core issue is. Any issue This is my experience and my opinion. And I'm not saying the kids don't have cortical issues and cortical delay. But I think to treat the cortical issues before you establish a healthy foundation in the nervous system, is to put the cart before the horse. And when I explained to you how I want you to crawl, you now are going to crawl using your cortex. And I'm going to take away from the influence that I want to have down here in the pawns, which has no capacity for spoken or written languages.
So we're circumventing some of the influence that we want to have on the pawns by intellectualizing the process for you.
Len Arcuri | 19:19
Okay.
Sargent Goodchild | 19:20
So what we want to do is we want to put you up on a massage table or a comfortable table of some sort. And I'm going to have one parent on one side of the table and the other parent on the other side of the table. And, you know, depending on the child's his level of function, we may need a third person on the head. And we're going to take you through this really dynamic range of motion. Where we don't speak to you at all. We just show you what it feels like to move in a really coordinated, proper pattern. And we're going to do that several times.
So we'll do 60 repetitions of one of these dynamic ranges of motion. And then we're going to put you down on the floor and just ask you to do it to the best of your ability. And so we're going to organize the inputs.
So that your body is getting all of the right messages, but it's getting it through its sense of touch and muscle memory. Instead of through. An intellectual process. Got it.
And then we're going to set up the environment. So that you can be successful.
So let's say you're a child with cerebral palsy. What we're going to do a set of these dynamic ranges and these really choreographed dynamic ranges of motions with you off on the table.
And then if you've got cerebral palsy, so you don't have that ability to coordinate your arms and legs well enough that you can move on a horizontal surface. Well, we're going to put you on a slide. We're going to put your head down on a little bit of a slide and we're going to create that incline that's enough so any movement from your arms and legs is going to cause forward movement down the slide. And for the first time in your life, you're going to realize that randomly chaotic movement of your arms and legs actually can propel you forward towards a goal.
Len Arcuri | 21:06
Got it. Because otherwise, that's not something that child would understand.
Sargent Goodchild | 21:10
Right. Or Right.
Len Arcuri | 21:11
Embody.
Sargent Goodchild | 21:13
And, you know, gravity is our worst enemy for a lot of different reasons, especially as we age, right? Right. But... If you're a kid with cerebral palsy, Gravity can be an insurmountable barrier to you being able to achieve these developmental milestones unless we turn it around and start using it in your favor. Got it. Often programs start with this skill of crawling on your stomach and then will evolve from there. And we'll start working on exercises that teach you how to treat them. And same thing being Front and center. Which is, we're not going to intellectualize this process.- We're going to do this through hands-on practice. Work.
So I'm going to put you through this. Passive Rage of Motion really well choreographed.
And then... With enough repetition, that's going to translate to an improvement in how you do it when we ask you to do it on your own. And that process is going to mature the brain from the ground up. And when we do that, I refer to it as Neurologically, it's reverse Reaganomics. - It's - It's trickle up, right?
Len Arcuri | 22:23
Trickle up.
Sargent Goodchild | 22:26
'Cause it's amazing, I can't tell you how many times I start with, say, a kid with a severe learning disability or even autism. And you know, in the summer, these kids, one of the profoundly sad things about kids with autism is their love of water and how that often ends in tragedy. Right. A lot of parents are interested in teaching their kids how to swim.
Right? Which is a very important skill, especially if your child is on the autism spectrum. And we take these kids to the pool and we teach, we give them swimming instructions year after year, and they seemingly make no progress. And I tend to pick up a lot of kids in the fall.
So swimming lessons are now over. They've had an unsuccessful year of swimming. Trying to learn how to swim. And I get them in the fall, swimming lessons or whatever. And we put them through this process where we teach them how to crawl, we teach them how to creep, we start integrating reflexes, we do all this tactile work with them. And boom, you put them in the pool and they don't need swimming lessons. They just naturally are good swimmers. That's an example of showing how when we square away the foundational skills that these kids need, how everything up above those skills starts to work normally. Or typically.
Len Arcuri | 23:43
Got it. Well, it's yet another example of the fact that of all the things that you're wanting for your child, unless the foundation, a strong foundation is in place, all those other maybe higher level things that you're wanting them to learn or to be able to, skills that they would be able to have, it's going to be impossible or just so much harder unless that foundation is established. And what you're describing is that there is like a developmental series of steps or milestones that again that the root cause of why your child may be hampered now in terms of their ability to thrive is that there may be steps missing. And that's where physical therapy, if they're having that with their child, that's not going to...
Sargent Goodchild | 24:27
Physical therapy intellectualizes the Okay.
Len Arcuri | 24:30
Process. I see what you're saying.
Sargent Goodchild | 24:33
And what happens with physical therapy is we start So physical therapy is great, and occupational therapy is great, and our kids often need those interventions. And I'm not, so I'm not arguing against anyone. Seeking out those services for their child. But this different.
Len Arcuri | 24:49
Is entirely.
Sargent Goodchild | 24:51
This is entirely different because we're working on a much more global scale. So remember I was talking about how, you know, when you're crawling on your stomach, that arm's going way up over your head and then it's coming in, it's getting trapped under your chest, it's rotating and it's going back out again.
So you've got this, it's not quite a swimming motion, but it's similar to a swimming motion, right? That gives us our ability to pronate and supinate the rest. If you go to an occupational therapist, and the occupational therapist sees that your kid picks up the pen like this, so it's prehensile grasp, right?
And then when they're writing their name, or doing whatever, you know, feeding themselves. It's being done from a prehensile perspective. And we know at the same time that they can't do this.
So occupational therapists may have a glass of water full over here, empty over here, and they just have them transferring the water between glasses to develop that pronation and supination. But then we're going off to an optometrist because they can't track.
Yeah. Right.
And then they're got orthotics in their shoes because they've got fallen arches. Right. And they walk on their tiptoes because they've never stretched their heel cords and they don't have a normal heel toe gait. Suddenly mom or dad is like chief taxi driver. To get to all these different therapy appointments that the child needs. By going through the process of neurodevelopmental movement, we hit on all of those areas. And so much more. Right. We're going to work on that kid's ability to bond. They're no longer going to feel like the black sheep in social situations. They're not going to be as easily triggered. Their serotonin levels are hopefully going to be normal because now the pawns can communicate. This is how much I need. This is when I need it.
So for.
Len Arcuri | 26:41
Physical therapy and occupational therapy, which absolutely have a place, are you suggesting that those two, if neurodevelopmental movement's not in place, that those two modalities, as beneficial as they may be, will be limited to what they.
Sargent Goodchild | 26:54
Can do? And they're going to take longer.
Right? So one of the really interesting ways for me that I noticed probably 20 years ago. Was that I'm a huge fan I'm a huge advocate for chiropractic care, perineal sacral therapy. I think those are really important. They're game-changing Yeah, I think they're remarkably important.
Len Arcuri | 27:14
For my son.
Sargent Goodchild | 27:18
But one of the things that will happen is you'll have a child who goes and they seemingly need like two adjustments a month. Two adjustments, excuse me, a week. Months, sometimes even years, right? And these kids just can't hold their adjustments.
And then suddenly you involve neurodevelopmental movement. And because we're working on the functions... That are developing not only the neurological structure of the brain, but the physical structure of the body, suddenly those kids are holding their adjustments. And now they're down to once a month or once every six weeks. You're basically, you're creating a really rich, a nutrient rich soil. That everything else that you plant in it is going to grow so much better. When you have these foundational skills in place.
Len Arcuri | 28:05
That makes sense. And in terms of if someone's listening, wondering, well, why isn't this in place, right? For each child, their history, what happened in utero, or even when they were young, my guess is it's probably some form of an environmental...
Sargent Goodchild | 28:20
It comes down to three factors that I think you're probably really well aware go ahead.
Len Arcuri | 28:24
Of. Well, this conference is all about helping to educate people on all these factors. Right.
So.
Sargent Goodchild | 28:29
So the three factors are, there's the structural factors. Right. Birth trauma is a huge issue with most of our kids, right? There's over-obstructerate manipulation of the neck, there's pitocin, there's epidural, there's C-section, there's vacuum extraction. There's just a well-meaning doctor putting too much traction on the neck as he's trying to deliver your.
Len Arcuri | 28:49
Child. And so often that is something that comes up in the history of kids on the spectrum, especially there's usually some form of birth.
Sargent Goodchild | 28:56
Trauma. And even before that, you can have kids who, because of a, you know, like I had one case in which the mom was, deeply into horses, loved horses, and had a whole history of falling off horses before she ever became pregnant. And unbeknownst to her, like she'd, you know, she'd had back pain and she'd had, you know, but she always got over it. She was a high achieving, very driven, very successful woman. And so she just moved on. She fell off the horse, you know, shake it off, rub some dirt in it, move on.
And then she got pregnant. And one of the things that was clear to me was that pelvic structure had just been altered and she'd never had a chiropractor adjust her after any of those falls. She'd never gone for perineal sacral therapy. She wasn't into massage therapy.
So no one had addressed that structural difference. So now her son, who's developing, in that system doesn't have the room to move, and that impacts his vestibular system, so he doesn't get in the right position when it's time to get birthed. And so you can always move a step back. Right. It's chicken or the egg. You can, you, it seems to me like you can always go one step from where you thought you started.
Yeah. Yeah, so differences in a child's vestibular system, and they don't present properly at birth, and then You have more birth charts. Got it.
And then now you've got birth, you've got vestibular. Issues compounded by birth trauma, And now you deviate. These milestones that the child should be passing through. And now you have... Even bigger issues and just everything is compounding.
So physical is definitely an asset. Yeah.
Len Arcuri | 30:39
That's one.
Sargent Goodchild | 30:41
Yeah. Or I should say structural is one. Camp off like toxins in of it.
Len Arcuri | 30:46
The food, water, air, all.
Sargent Goodchild | 30:50
All of it, right? Mom decides to get a COVID vaccine during pregnancy. Yep, because she had to keep her job. That can have a profound impact on the poor.
Len Arcuri | 31:00
Child. Absolutely. There's so much even in utero, right? In terms of what, I mean, we had our house, the floors redone, the house painted, all kinds of stuff. Who's to say how much it had an.
Sargent Goodchild | 31:12
Impact? I have a woman who developed severe chemical sensitivity after the people who were coming in to refinish her floors cut it with acetone. And had she been pregnant at the time? There's no way that we could rule that out. As a factor in what was going on for her child. What chemical exposures did dad have When he was growing up, did he grow up on a farm where there was all these agricultural chemicals, pesticides and herbicides and everything else that he was exposed to? Or Maybe dad's kind of a jerk. Right. And maybe, Mom is... Under enormous amounts of scraps because she doesn't have a great relationship with her husband or the father. And she's just dumping cortisol. Into the picture. That's going to have a huge impact on the child's development. Got it. As much as, you know, the well baby visits as much as you know we We've got. Horrible food. That we put in our kids if we're not being mindful of toxins - And then the third is emotional.
Len Arcuri | 32:15
That. - Yeah, we've had so many episodes that talk about the environmental and nourishment and nutrition.
Sargent Goodchild | 32:24
And for me, emotional is hard really to separate from the chemical.
Len Arcuri | 32:30
Or even the physical trauma.
Sargent Goodchild | 32:32
Right? Right.
Yeah, it's... When you're emotionally upset, you're dumping chemicals into the situation that aren't good. And I think one of the other secrets that a lot of parents don't understand is that this unborn child. Via the umbilical cord. If you're happy, if you're a mom and you're happy, you're producing. Neurochemicals that are associated with like, you know, like whatever neurochemicals, serotonin or maybe it's oxytocin or whatever it might be that are you know, make us feel really good.
Like we got our dopamine hit, we got our serotonin, we got our oxytocin, we're feeling great. It feels great.
Right? Because it's getting all of that in its system.
So when you feel really good, Guess what? Your kid feels really good. Your unborn child feels really good. And if you get upset and you're stressed, guess what? Yep. Your unborn child feels really upset and really stressed. And somehow we think that when that cord gets cut at the moment of birth, that this child who's been programmed by this neurochemical interaction that we have between us. Is suddenly Three years later. And they're not. Right. Right. If mom leans over the crib and she's got a smile on her face and she feels really happy. That baby thinks that he's happy. Right. And even though there's no physical connection, we'll produce the neurochemicals that mom is producing in that moment because he's been conditioned to do that.
Likewise, if the mom leans over the crib and is like, God damn it, why won't you just go to sleep? Right? Guess what? That kid is producing all of the chemicals that mom is producing. And it's not, I don't mean to pick on moms because it's not mom, it's not refrigerator mom, it's the caregiver, right?
So that child has been conditioned to respond to his caregiver. Through this interaction.
Len Arcuri | 34:33
And it's yet another example where, again, how the parent's operating, how the parent's showing up is just so important because the child's going to feed off of that, you know, whether it's physically or emotionally, you know, parents have so much power. Ability to influence what's happening for their child. And I think what you're talking about in terms of this different opportunity to focus on movement as a way of helping your child be the best version of themselves that they can be, it's just something that I know wasn't on our radar initially. And it's.
Sargent Goodchild | 35:07
Hard for a lot of parents because you put your child down on the belly and you're putting him into a position of stress. Right. You're putting them into a position. People aren't yes.
Len Arcuri | 35:16
Aware of that, but.
Sargent Goodchild | 35:18
You're putting them into a position where now they have to separate their breathing from their body movement. Right. When you're on your back, you're not breathing against anything.
So there's no stress there. When I put you on your stomach, suddenly there's stress there. Right. That stress is really important.
You know, we can't have growth without labor. Right. Right. And so we want the child to labor a little bit to breathe because that's what's going to set them up with the pulmonary system that's going to oxygenate them throughout the rest of their lives. But when we first put a child in that position, they squirm and they get uncomfortable and we think my God, Johnny's so upset.
You know? Johnny needs to be a little bit upset, right? We don't want him. We don't want him terrified. We don't want Right.
Len Arcuri | 36:02
To introduce trauma.
Sargent Goodchild | 36:03
We don't want to introduce trauma, but it's okay for him to struggle a little bit in that position. He's got to struggle a little bit so that he can begin to figure it out. We have to allow enough room. For our kids. That we're going to allow that. I think personally the Back to Sleep campaign. Is a big contributor to all of the problems that we're seeing today. In neurodevelopmental disorders. Has I think that's still very prevalent.
Len Arcuri | 36:29
That faded a little bit or is that still very well? Yeah. Okay.
So you're saying that is not helpful?
Sargent Goodchild | 36:36
I don't think so. I mean, there's a lot of different reasons for SIDS.
Right? There's SIDS. SIDS happens a lot after well baby visits within a certain period of time.
So I'm not going to go into more detail than that. Right. Fuck. I will say that there's definitely a correlation, but there's a very strong correlation between the children who are dying of SIDS being the second or even more often the third child in the family. And they're sleeping on the same mattress that the first child slept on. And the rate at which the chemicals in that mattress are decomposing is much faster because of the age of the mattress. And those kids are, if they're laying face down, are breathing directly those toxins in from the mattress surface. And so when you flip them over on their back, they've now got more ambient space. And so the concentration of those toxins is reduced. And so you see less sense. There's a better option. Don't put flame retardant chemicals in our children's mattresses. No Or use a slipcover.
Len Arcuri | 37:41
Doubt.
Sargent Goodchild | 37:45
That prevents them from venting from the top side of the mattress and only allows them to vent from the bottom side of the mattress. But when you're seeing kids who've been raised on their backs, developing positional plagiocephaly, it speaks to that whole function and structure loop again, right?
So the function of sleeping on your back creates a flat, structure in the back of the head. I don't know what could be a more clear sign that that's not a healthy position for a baby to be in. We're misshaping their head.
Len Arcuri | 38:16
Physically.
Sargent Goodchild | 38:18
Yeah. Yeah, right?
And then we're going to put a helmet on him. Without getting in the shape of that. It defies logic to me. It used to be that we put our children to sleep, and I'm talking about 70s, early 80s. Or before. We'd put a child in cloth diapers. To bed at night and they would wet themselves.
And then not only would the diaper become wet, but the surface of the crib mattress would become wet. And very often, or most frequently, the very first time a child moved from one side of the crib to the other side of the crib would be because he wet the crib and he wanted to get away from the uncomfortable, wet, damp feeling, the cold feeling of the mattress.
So they'd move across it. And that's when it all starts. Interesting.
Right? And now we put kids in these. We put them on our back, we put them in diapers that, like, other than their weight, you would never know that they were wet.
Right? And it's all having a detrimental effect. On these developmental milestones, which are so critical for developing healthy brains.
Len Arcuri | 39:31
Right. So the current modern way of what we have available now is kind of partly contributing to the child not having these natural consequences that instill the sense of movement and development that you're talking about.
Sargent Goodchild | 39:44
Yeah. And you're taking it even a step further. I'm assuming that you're referring to products like Jolly Jumpers that hang in the doorway and the walking stations, and they're all bad. They're all... The Convenient. In the moment. And incredibly inconvenient for our children over the long term.
Len Arcuri | 40:06
That makes sense. Now, just in a few minutes that we have left, would you mind explaining a little bit to our listeners more of how you came into learning all this and your own personal backstory, which I think we probably should have started with, but it's not too late.
Sargent Goodchild | 40:19
Well, it's a good thing that we didn't start with it because we probably wouldn't have gotten all this other rich information that I think is actually more important for your listeners. But I was considered mentally retarded and uneducable as a kid. I had severe epilepsy. I was put on an enormous amount of medications, which never prevented me from having seizures, but it did prevent me from going through any kind of normal childhood.
So I was left in the back of a classroom in a public school building in a study carrel. That was, you know, in the early days of Head Start programs. That was considered an appropriate educational setting for a child with my level of disability.
So I was left in a study barrel where I couldn't see the blackboard. We had blackboards back in those days. Couldn't see the blackboard, couldn't see the teacher, couldn't see most of the other students in my classroom. And I was left in the back of that study carrel, just drooling all over my paperwork. Wow.
Still having tons of seizures. My mother was told I had autism and that was back when autism was like closer to one in 10,000, right? Not one in 33 or 35 that we're at right now. Mild cerebral palsy, obviously severe epilepsy, My father told I had Huntington's disease, and I wouldn't live past the age of eight. I'm not eight. No, are not.
Len Arcuri | 41:40
You.
Sargent Goodchild | 41:41
I've made it past, considerably past. You know, I was in public school. They were doing what they were with me. And my mother was not working. And I had a brother and sister both younger than me. When my brother and sister and I were off at school, my mother was going and volunteering her time for a child who was near drowning. And she was doing these dynamic ranges of motion. And this little girl, Sarah, was doing incredibly well. And my mother would come back and share these stories with my dad. And my dad. Was very introspective guy. He didn't like to even like to snap to judgments really quickly. And he, but he was having a hard time. Understanding what my mother was talking about, like you're putting this child on a table, you're moving their arms and legs, and she's starting to achieve all these developmental goals that she's not supposed to be able to achieve.
So he went and he volunteered on one of my mom's volunteer days. And that led ultimately to me being evaluated. And while I stayed on the medication for the seizures for another 10 months or so, nearly as soon as I started doing the program. My seizures went down. And at the end of 10 months, I was completely off of all the seizure medications that I've been taking for the previous five years. It took another three years of doing the work for me to recover my intellectual and my physical abilities, like athletic abilities. But at the end of that time, I went from the kid in the back of the classroom drooling all over his paperwork and You know? Being teased ruthlessly by the girls and being physically abused. I was bullied. Bye, both.
You know, physically by the boys and emotionally by the girls on the playground every day. And I went from That kid in those circumstances to, you know, the co-captain of the soccer team, the co-captain of the lacrosse team, and doing really well academically. Incredible.
Len Arcuri | 43:43
You know, yours is truly an incredible story. And all the things that you mentioned, we can focus on each one, but I just want to focus on the seizure activity. Again, for parents who are listening, if that may be something their child's struggling with, it would be implausible for them to think, wait, physical movement can actually help.
Sargent Goodchild | 44:03
With the activity? Yeah, so we've talked a lot today about the PONS, and we haven't really struck on the midbrain at all. But the midbrain, controls a lot of the electrical activity.
So out of chaos comes order, right? When everything fires at one time, that's a seater. In really simple layman's terms, right? And so we want there to be chaos. We don't want all the fine ring to happen simultaneously in one part of the brain. And so midbrain is largely responsible for that. And a reflection of how well organized the midbrain is how well your child creeps up on hands and knees in a quadruped position. And so when I see a kid with seizures, that's often one of the main things that we're going to be working on is... Getting that cross-lateral pattern and that two-beat rhythm and all the other aspects of healthy creeping established for that child. But the other thing that we need to understand is that diet plays a huge role.
And then the other big thing for these kids with seizures is oxygenation. Right. And these kids tend to have shallow chests. They tend to be of story of stature and smaller in terms of their growth charts. They're not growing at a typical rate. That's lack of oxygen. And so we have a trick. We use hypercapnia for isolated periods of time to increase carbon dioxide in the blood by 10 or 15%. And that drives breathing from the lower lobes of the lungs while dilating the blood vessels that are bringing oxygen to the brain. And ultimately, you're getting 60 to 80% more oxygen in the brain. And that is phenomenal for seizures.
Len Arcuri | 45:37
That's amazing. We could talk for a long time about many aspects of what you teed up, but in terms of, I know when we first started, we drove up and went to your facility. In terms of what you're doing now and how you help parents, is it something that's an in-person thing or do you really practice more virtually now to teach parents how to do.
Sargent Goodchild | 45:56
This at home? No.
So there's a big virtual component, but to do that initial assessment and that initial training, I need to see my families in person. The office is Self has grown enormously since when you guys came. I now have a host of detox and array of detox modalities as well.
So I do full spectrum infrared sauna. I do ion cleanse, detox on foot baths. I do pulse electromagnetic field therapy. I do audio-visual entrainment, cranio-electrical stimulation. I'm probably missing, sonic whole body vibration. I do a whole bunch of different things to open up drainage pathways and get parents on board with the fact that, you know, you can't. You can't build onto a house that's actively on fire. And we need to put the inflammatory response away. Before we can really make a lot of progress with a neurodevelopmental program.
Len Arcuri | 46:48
Okay, makes sense. Well, Sarge, thank you so much for taking the time to lay this out for our listeners. Again, I think this is a path that fewer people are aware of, and so the fact that you can share what this looks like and if people want to find you, where should they go?
Sargent Goodchild | 47:02
Activehealing.org is my website. I'm on Facebook, Active Healing. Instagram page, I think, is Active Healing as well. I'm not great at social media, but I'm getting better. And I would want to leave your listeners with just one thought before I step away. And that is never let someone's opinion of your child become their reality.
Len Arcuri | 47:26
Those are strong words. And I'll add to what Sarge said, if you want to see him. I know he was at Documenting Hope's conference last year or this year. He'll probably be at the next one. I will too.
So another great way of seeing and being able to talk to practitioners like Sarge. There's nothing like being able to have a conversation with people. And.
Sargent Goodchild | 47:47
I do virtual screenings. So before someone makes a commitment to come see me in my office, we can do a bunch of stuff online. And just make sure that I'm a good fit for the family, that the child's a good fit for the program, and that this is an appropriate place to start because it's not always. We might need structural care. We might need a MAPS doctor. We might need other stuff before that child can really benefit from me.
Yeah, Thank you.
Len Arcuri | 48:11
All great advice. So again, thank you so much, George. Fantastic. See you again.
Sargent Goodchild | 48:16
I appreciate it.
Len Arcuri | 48:18
Your child wants you to transform now. And the fastest way to do that is with personalized support. To learn more, go to allinparentcoaching.com/intensive.
