Starting even in the womb, kids are exposed to a wide variety of stressors. Research is now finding that many of the early developmental, behavioral and learning problems in children are at least in part due to the stress of the mother throughout her pregnancy. If life is stressful for mom, her baby absorbs her stress hormones through the placenta, and then goes through a kind of withdrawal at birth.

As reported in the National Scientific Council on the Developing Child, Science Briefs: "Stress during pregnancy can have adverse influences on children after birth by altering the development of brain and endocrine systems that control behavior. It is thought that such changes also may have long-term consequences well into adult life."

This early stress can manifest in a variety of developmental, behavioral and learning difficulties. Imagine how this further challenges a child trying to cope with the typical everyday stressors of childhood and family life. Often misdiagnosed, these children are frequently labeled, medicated, put in special classes, or they just struggle.

What if we could make life a little easier for these children by calming their nervous system and giving them more resilience to deal with stress? As you can imagine, behavior can change, school and athletic performance can change. It's not uncommon to hear a parent comment: "he (or she) is like a new kid."

Keep in mind, the symptoms of fight-or-flight in a child can mimic other conditions. What is interesting is that sometimes a child who comes in with a specific diagnosis, leaves having significantly fewer of those symptoms after completing their Fight or Flight Therapy.

In such cases one of two things may have occurred. If the original diagnosis was correct, performance improved because the child's ability to handle the stress of living life with their disorder has improved. Instead of having to deal with their disorder and fight-or-flight issues, now they are left with only one. We've lightened their load, and performance and behavior improves.

On the other hand, remember that most practitioners and educators are not trained to think in terms of fight-or-flight. With the overlapping of symptoms, it's easy to see how mistakes can be made. For example, think how the hypervigilance of fight-or-flight might look very much like the distractability of attention deficit. Indeed, there are cases where the symptomatic improvement with Fight or Flight Therapy is so great, it must be concluded that the child was originally misdiagnosed.

In either case, a child's life has been changed for the better.

Here's how Fight or Flight Therapy changed one boy's life: