1. How can Early Childhood Educators help children with epilepsy and seizure disorders?
30-40% of the children on autism scale usually tend to develop seizures and epilepsy within a few years. All of us including you or me can have seizures if our seizure threshold is crossed.
2. What developmental domains are affected? (Social, emotional, physical, cognitive, and language)
All development domains are affected unless the underlying issue is resolved. My son's Math percentile (nationwide US peers) increased from 34% in Dec 2014 to 90% in June 2015. He is continuing to make improvements in other areas also.
3. What are some barriers that the children may face in a classroom setting? In the home setting?
They may not understand complex instructions and you will have to break the complex instructions in multiple simple steps. They may also having absence seizures and the teacher may mistakenly assume that the kid is not paying attention.
4. What is something that you feel a lot of people don't really know about epilepsy?
The underlying issue about Autism, Alzheimer, Seizures, Epilepsy is the slow death of existing brain neurons and inability to develop new brain neurons and pathways. Somehow, the brain is not able to receive nutrition.
Lot of kids suffer from digestion problems in their gut. A special kind of diet has been proven to reduce brain related issues.
Everyone wants a pill to fix these issues. I wish they would make pill for a kid to swallow and get all education without the need for any efforts on part of society, parents and teachers. Sorry for my sarcastic tone. All of us are failing our kids.
5. What ways can ECEs work with parents to ensure the best care for their children?
Provide empathy and knowledge.
6. How may families receive funding?
Do not know anything about funding. Why would families need funding?
7. What are some current treatments that families decide to use for their children?
In the current system, it is the neurologists who make the decision to use one drug and then use another drug if the first one fails. These drugs have numerous side effects including cognition and cause lot of behavior problems. This is the wrong approach.
Another proven approach is Diet based. This is usually done by doctors after putting a kid on medications for 5-6 years.
In my case, I have bypassed medications for my 9 year old son completely and went straight to diet and it has done wonders.
