Children are full of yang qi and respond quickly to the methods of East Asian medicine. There is a lot of good you can do in using our methods to treat kids, especially in treating some conditions that conventional medicine can only offer symptomatic relief.

Our guest in this episode got started with treating children by working through some health issues with her own kids.

Listen as we discuss the common issues that children present with in the clinic, how to enlist the help of parents, how to help children feel comfortable with needles, and a few things about treating kids that you won’t find in books.

Head on over to the show notes page for more information about this episode and for links to the resources discussed in the interview. 

The medicine of east Asia is based on a science that does not hold itself

separate from the phenomenon that it seeks to understand our medicine

did not grow out of Petri dish, experimentation, or double blind studies.

It arose from observing nature.

And our part in it east Asian medicine evolves not from the examination

of dead structures, but rather from living systems with their complex

mutually entangled interactions.

Welcome to qiological.

I'm Michael max, the host of this podcast that goes in depth on

issues, pertinent to practitioners and students of east Asian medicine.

Dialogue and discussion have always been elemental to Chinese

and other east Asian medicines.

Listening to these conversations with experienced practitioners that go deep

into how this ancient medicine is alive and unfolding in the modern clinic.

Hello, everybody.

Welcome back to qiological.

My guest today is Robin Ray green.

Robin is an author.

She's written a book called heal your child from the inside out.

She's been the guest of many different podcast shows.

Uh, some of which include nutrition, heretic, and hay house radio.

She has a practice that primarily focuses on kids.

Which is where the book came from.

And in particular kids, the kind, they're not really sick,

but they're not really well.

There's some kind of chronic thing that's going on.

She often works with asthma and allergies and skin conditions.

So this is the focus of our show today working with chronic issues

with kids, helping them to get better.

So they don't need to go to any dang doctor at all.

Robin, welcome to chilada.

Thank you so much for having me.

I'm delighted to be here.

Yeah.

I'm happy to have you here too.

I don't see a huge amount of kids.

I don't consider myself a kid specialist, but when my patients say we see my

kid, you know, I'm happy to do so.

So I've got a little bit of experience with kids enough to know that they're

really different than adults in many ways.

And looking forward to finding out more about how I can help some of

these young patients in my own.

Right.

Curious to know as a beginning, is there any sort of inciting story or

something that happened that sent you down this path of treating.

Yes.

It certainly, wasn't where I envisioned myself being when I was in

acupuncture school, I thought I was going to be a sports acupuncturist.

My background was in exercise science and after I had my son was

right out of acupuncture school.

He had a severe case of eczema that Western medicine was unable to treat.

And we went to many different specialists and we had all kinds of testing done.

And at the end of the day, the doctors were basically like, well, here's some

creams and put some bleach in his bath and you know, he'll just probably outgrow it.

And do we hear this all the time?

Yes, of course now being my own child and seeing him suffer every day, that

is something I just couldn't let stand.

I couldn't just, you know, be very fatalistic about it and hope that

something he would outgrow it.

And that is what spurred me to start training and pediatrics just simply

with the desire to heal myself.

But along the way during that journey of training and sharing my son's story

with my friends and my patients, I realized my real calling was to work

with kids and sort of organically, my family practice was born.

Wow.

You know, it's amazing.

Isn't it?

How so often we can set off in a particular direction.

It gets us started and then somewhere along the way we go, oops.

Nope.

Actually over.

Exactly.

And so often unexpected it is unexpected.

It comes right out of the periphery.

Tell us a little bit about how you work with kids.

Like, like your child who they've got.

Skin condition.

Western medicine says, well, you know, there's steroids, there's creams,

mainly we're scratching our head.

What kinds of things do you see with these kids?

Especially from our Chinese medicine point of view, are there any particular

patterns or things that seem to show up that, you know, the average

practitioner would commonly see in their practice that they should think about?

Well, I think the first thing that we need to know about children is that inherently

they come into this world with a underdeveloped lung, kidney and spleen T.

So it's, it's growing, it's developing, but it's not quite as strong as it's

going to be later on in childhood.

And then of course, into adulthood and children today are faced with a lot

of different challenges that say 50.

60 years ago.

I don't think we were facing environmental toxins are a big concern.

Plastics, the extreme increase in vaccinations, you know, we're now.

Yeah.

We're, we're vaccinating something like 14 different vaccines

and 41 doses by the time.

Six years old.

So there's a lot of challenges to the body.

And then on top of that, I feel like our food has changed.

There's a lot more processed food.

Um, people's guts are out of balance, so there's a lot of

different factors going on and all it takes is just this perfect storm.

One little thing to.

Sort of be like the straw that broke the camel's back.

It's just one little thing.

And then it puts these kids over the edge and then they start to have asthma or

allergies or eczema or sleeping problems or digestive stuff, or focus issues.

And unfortunately, Western medicine.

There isn't really a one size fits all solution for these problems.

We have to dig a little bit deeper.

We have to look at, you know, the child's medical history and we have to look at the

health of their spleen sheet, their gut.

A lot of times, what I find is that children have a lot of food sensitivities.

They are not able to tolerate things like gluten or dairy,

eggs, peanuts, and other foods.

And this in turn continues the body to be in this sort of influx.

The state where there's just a lot of heat all the time, a lot of heat, and that heat

can manifest on the skin or in the lungs.

Or we can have kids that are really deficient, you know, kids that

were where they just have those dark circles under their eyes.

And they just don't look as vibrant or connected to the world around them.

And so these are the types of things that we're seeing, you know, you can

go to the doctor, but what can the doctor do when your child just isn't?

Well, You know, there's nothing they can, they run the blood

test, they do all the testing.

They send you to a specialist and there's really nothing wrong from the Western

perspective, but children aren't thriving.

And that's where I feel like Chinese medicine is so beautiful because

we don't need a Western diagnosis.

We can use our medicine, we can figure out, you know, what's gone

wrong and where the imbalances are.

And then we can gently nurture that child back to full and vibrant health.

Yeah.

Kids are so full of young.

I can see how, you know, if you get a little bit of extra heat, man,

that can just easily flare do you tend to see with these kids that

there's more heat and less dampening.

Or is it just depend on the kid?

It just depends on the kid.

And what I'm seeing more of is a lot of, of, uh, contradictory things.

So I'll see like cheat efficiency with dampness.

We'll see, you know, dampness and dryness at the same time.

We'll see excess and deficiency at the same time.

So it's not always a pattern is like complicated.

It's not always straightforward, like obvious spleen sheet efficiency where

there's loose stools and fatigue, and maybe the child's napping a lot

and they just have poor muscle tone.

That's sometimes, but a lot of times it's very complicated.

So it's you just take some experience to weed through all of the signs and symptoms

to find the underlying root cause.

Right?

I mean, this is common even with adults.

So common that on occasion, when I get a textbook patient, I doubt myself.

Okay.

It's like really?

Oh, that is exactly . Wow.

Who would've thought since it is such a common thing to see contradictory signs

and especially in kids, any wisdom for us on how you work with that stuff.

What's your process for looking at these complicated, intertwined

situations and untangling those three?

Well, there's really a couple of components to what I'll do.

And the first part is understanding the child's five element nature.

Who is this child?

How is their temperament influencing their illness?

How has it all connected?

So the first thing I do is I have them fill out my five element questionnaire,

had the parents fill it out, actually, and then I get a sense for who this child is.

You know, if there have a dominant wood personality, or

if they have metal influence.

You'll often see whatever the child's dominant element is.

You'll see.

Usually related to that, but not always.

So that gives me some clues.

And then the second part of the questionnaire they fill out is like a

five element diagnostic questionnaire.

And this takes them through each of the elements.

What signs and symptoms may be apparent if the child is deficient

in that element or excess, then that further guides me down to.

Okay.

What are our priorities?

I can see, say for instance, the child with frequent illness

and eczema, The metal element is going to be their priority.

And then when I'm diagnosing for herbs, I'll then dial that down

into a specific diagnosis to help me pick the right herbal formula.

So that's the first part.

And then the second part is I actually use the.

System it's Meridian analysis.

And it's really so helpful for kids because kids can't tell me always,

especially when they're really young, they cannot tell me, you

know, my head hurts here and it feel the quality of the pain is this.

Like they can't, I'm only getting maybe what the parents are observing.

And not a lot of additional information that adult could provide.

And so the accurate graph can show me where the meridians are out of balance.

And then combining that with the information from the five elements,

I'm able to give a very good root and branch treatment for the child.

Yeah.

I can see how those two different perspectives could help to dial something

in, you know, it's, it's trickier with kids cause they, they are not as

expressive as adults, at least verbally.

Generally speaking, you know, you mentioned that one of the things

you want to do is get a sense of that dominant element of the kid.

And I think a lot of us are used to doing that with adults.

And I'm sure that this is in your book, so, you know, people can go

there and really get that depth of it.

But just for our listeners today, could you go through the five

elements just briefly and tell us what a fire kid would look like?

Or what would a metal kid look like?

How would we know?

Yeah.

So the first thing to remember before we go into each element, Really, we

all have all five elements within us.

And one element sort of shapes us more than the other four.

And for some people there's two elements that really shaped

them more than the other three.

So just keeping that in mind.

The other thing to keep in mind with children.

Until they reach about five or six, it can be more difficult

to determine their element type.

And you may kind of go back and forth on a couple elements, not knowing

which one really is dominant yet.

So just allowing that process to unfold as you observe the child, as

you observe how they are at home and in other environments, you'll get a better

sense as they get a little bit older.

But I'd like to think of the elements on a continuum from most young to most yin

and most young being the wood element and wood children are, they're very driven.

They're very physically active.

Like go, go, go kind of kids.

They're the ones that are like, Figuring out, oh, if I just put the

chair over here, I can climb on the counter and get to the cookie jar

on top of the fridge entrepreneurs.

Yes, exactly.

We will already see that.

And so like in my clinic, when I'm working with wood children, a

lot of there's a lot of movements.

Like we don't sit still on the table.

Like we know, especially a toddler, who's a wood child.

We're going to be probably on the floor.

Playing with some toys and we've got it.

I've got to switch things up to move with that dynamic personality

and physicality of a woodshop.

And then we have fire children that are also very active and very, uh,

curious and, and outgoing, but they're not quite as driven as the wood child.

They're a little bit more curious.

So as things like they're the more, more of the bright, shiny object child.

Ooh, what's that over there.

And then.

They're wanting to touch and poke and experience and explore.

But their real motivation is, is just being the center of attention

and being adored and loved.

So they might entertain you.

They might want to have your attention.

And, and a lot of times fire kids are like, mom, mom, mom,

mom, look what I'm doing.

Mom, look over here.

Like they just love all that attention.

And then in the middle of the continuum, we have the earth child

and earth children are, have a mixture of yin and yang quality.

So at times they can be very outgoing.

Um, they're very friendly.

They're very loving, um, caring helpers.

Those are the often you'll see like the momma's little helpers.

They they'd like to nurture and love pets or baby brothers or baby sisters.

And they're very lovable.

And then at other times they might be shy.

Yeah.

Uh, want to hide behind mom and they'll kind of flip flop between those two.

So oftentimes Earth's children are difficult to type because you kind

of feel like they could be more than one element, but a lot of

times they're really just the earth.

Right.

And it sounds like yin and yang aspects of that earth element.

Exactly.

Exactly.

And then we move into the metal element and earth kids are sweet and metal

kids are just really super sweet kids.

They, they just really have this visionary quality about them.

They notice a lot of things in their environment.

They're very empathic and pick up a lot of energy.

The metal kid.

Yeah.

Yeah.

They have a very physical in pathic.

Um, fire kids are also very empathic as well in a different

way more in the emotional sense.

Metal kids are empathic, like, uh, in the sense like physically, they

can feel what others are feeling.

They'll feel it in their body.

They need those rhythms that have a sort of already a

natural sense of right or wrong.

So like a metal child who I'm treating in my office.

If I tell them, you know, no, you can't climb on there.

They'll never do it again.

You know, you don't really have to tell middle kids twice.

You probably don't even need like all the baby proofing, like the electric

outlet plugs and all of that for metal kids, because they'll most likely not.

Once you tell them what the rules are, they're pretty much

just going to follow that.

Then we move on to water kids and water kids are, they can be out of sync with

the rest of the world because they have such deep, uh, emotional connections.

They are deep thinkers, they have deep feelings, they have

really rich imaginations.

And so they can sometimes be a little bit in their own world.

They often don't require as much affection and attention as like the woods.

Fire earth kids, Stephen Callan, who wrote the book, fire child

water child talks about for water.

Kids less is love.

So just being with them, just being present with them

really fills their bucket.

They don't need quite as much affection or reassurance that some of the other

elemental types I'm thinking about.

And I hear this a lot.

And I, and I've had patients that often talk about exactly the kind

of kids that you've been describing, where they've got, they've got this

eczema, or they've got these allergies.

Can you walk us through a treatment or two to give us an idea of, of

how you actually take all of this and spin it up into a treatment.

And a formula.

Yeah.

So the first thing I do is a really thorough intake with the parents.

And I get a sense for the child's birth history, where they born via C-section.

Was it a natural birth?

How old was the mom?

Was there any trauma?

The birth is really important for determining.

Often the gut health of this child.

So when children are born and go through the vaginal canal, they get their

first inoculation of the bacteria.

That's going to populate their gut.

And when that does not happen, due to a C-section, that can leave the gut

open to being populated with other bacteria that we don't necessarily want.

And then I also want to.

The child's vaccine history where they vaccinated.

Were there any vaccine reactions?

Um, the other really important thing when I'm working with

chronic illness in children is to know when did the symptoms start?

Cause what I find when I'm working with toddlers is a lot of symptoms

begin at around a year when the child either goes from breast milk to.

Cow's milk or, you know, the bottle, you know, formula to solid foods.

And I find if the child's spleen, she is not fully developed or, you know,

from a Western terms, if the gut flora has not fully developed in the child,

there's a tendency for that child to have a lot of food sensitivities.

And when they're eating those foods that are triggering a lot of inflammation

or damp heat in the body, then that's a lot of times the underlying.

The other really important thing to note is any strong

illnesses that the child had.

Like if they had a stomach flu or if they had, you know, some other

illness, like hand foot mouth disease, I have recently had a

patient whose I'm treating for Arthur.

And she's nine years old and she's got a long history of

like, she's got celiac disease.

She has a long history of other food sensitivities.

And then when she was seven, she got hand foot mouth, and that

triggered all of her joints.

Red hot and swollen then from there that eventually went away,

but now she has chronic joint pain and chronic jaw pain as a result.

So the other thing that's really important is to check for lingering

pathogenic factors, because if we can balance the gut, if we can get rid

of the lingering pathogenic factors and these children can, can overcome.

These chronic illnesses and they do not have to become a lifelong issue.

All right.

When you think about getting rid of pathogenic factors, I mean,

there's all kinds of different ways of thinking about that.

Can you give a couple of examples?

Sure.

I think we need to see where the lingering pathogenic factor is

residing in the organ systems.

So is it like for instance, in this child, it's residing in her stomach

channel because it's affecting her jaw.

We're also thinking about the liver and golden.

Of their relationship to, you know, the shaoyang and having an,

an illness or a foreign invader half in half out of the body.

So I'm usually addressing points like gallbladder 34 and triple burner five.

And then I'm also looking at.

You know, whatever herbs we need to, to use to help with that.

So that would be really specific to the diagnosis.

One of the things that I really like, uh, for kids a lot of times is a variety of

like antifungal, herbs or antibacterial.

So as long as they're spleen, she is strong enough to

handle the stronger herbs.

Those are some of the things that I'll use.

So it really just depends on the issue.

So for instance, with this little girl who has the lingering pathogenic factor

and the jaw pain, no, we're just starting her on a formula called , which is a blend

of tumeric boswellia and ginger, and.

Expel the lingering pathogenic factor.

And we may have to go deeper.

We may need to do something like twanging, Leon, or we might want to use

something like Flogistix clean, which is from the con herbal line for kids.

I like to take it slow and add things in one at a time, because I know with the

parents that I work with, if I try and add too many things at once and something

goes wrong, the child gets worse or they don't feel good, or I have a stomach ache.

They usually just stop everything because they're not sure what's going on.

So it's important to us to start slowly and gently with

children and then go from there.

Yeah.

When treating kids, I mean, you're treating the kids at the same time.

You've always got the parents in.

Absolutely.

The parents are, I feel like half of what I'm doing in addition to

treating the child is counseling.

The parents for me, having been through it, having had a child who's

been really ill and feeling scared and afraid and not sure what to do.

And when my son, Noah was really sick with the.

I had these visions of him, like being 20 years old with eczema all over

his body and, you know, no one likes him and he has no friends that, you

know, of course, as mothers, we go to like the, the worst case scenario,

and now I'm on the other side of it.

And he's a healthy, happy 14 year old.

That is just amazing and has a ton of friends and his skin is doing fine.

And so being on the other side of it, Helpful for me to help the parents

see that it isn't always going to be this way, that we will find a solution

and to let go of the guilt that they often hold about their child's illness.

Oh, I hadn't even thought about that side of it.

Yeah.

It's really emotional for parents.

And a lot of times when I just simply ask, you know, how are

you doing with all of this?

Because usually the parents that I see are already doing a lot of

things for their child, their.

Some of them are up late at night, searching the internet, trying to find

solutions to their child's problem.

And a lot of that emotional stuff gets internalized.

And I feel like if we don't release some of that emotional baggage from

the parents, that energy does get on some level transmitted to the child.

And I think it's really important for us to help the parents

heal emotionally as well.

And to let it go.

And a lot of.

I mean, I've literally seen the parents have an emotional release in my office

in the next time, which is one treatment.

The child is already doing better.

And I feel like it's just because the parents are no

longer holding all that fear.

I'd like to shift this just a little bit.

You mentioned earlier that you also treat issues of focus.

And this is such a big thing these days, you know, so many kids are on drugs to

keep them calm down or supposedly to help them focus or just keep them behaving.

I'm using air quotes here because they're being kids and they're

being asked to sit still all day.

So what does Chinese medicine have to offer?

To the parent that doesn't want to put their kids on some kind of a, a Medicaid.

That is a fabulous question and certainly a concern that

many, many, many parents have.

And I think the first clue to this whole problem is understanding

the nature of their child.

If they have a wood or a fire child, the chances are much, much higher

that their child will have maybe not necessarily a diagnostic label, but a

label from the parents of hyperactivity.

Or our inability to focus or even parents labeling their own children as ADHD.

So I think in part, we have to understand that it's very difficult

for a wood child to sit still in a classroom setting, to sit still and

pay attention and do worksheets and follow this very structured environment.

Equally a water child can have issues in a very structured environment.

There they're a little more go with the flow and they tend

to learn in a different way.

And they, because they're quiet, they may be left behind.

They may not be focused and not learn the lesson because they

were daydreaming about something.

So the first part is understanding who the child is.

And a lot of times when parents have a better understanding of

their child's innate nature, it helps them to understand that the

child isn't willfully doing things.

It's just part of who they are.

And part of the way that they're reacting to the environment that

they're in, they're not broken, right?

They're not broken, not broken.

She's just a wood girl.

Exactly.

And I don't want to replace one label with another label, but I feel like the

five elements when we can understand through that lens, a would child is not,

there's nothing bad about a wood child.

There's nothing bad about a fire child.

Um, there's nothing wrong or broken with them.

It just means we have to help them adapt to their environment in a different way.

So then there's a lot of strategies.

As far as lifestyle and routine that we can put into place to help them.

For instance, with a wood child, they may need to get to school 30 minutes

early so they can play on the jungle gym and get all that energy out.

So by the time they're supposed to sit down and pay attention to in

class, they're not trying to reign in all that energy that they have.

And the same thing for a fire child.

And we may need to wake up a water child and get them outside and

moving before they go into class.

So they're able to pay attention and focus equally as we do with the word

child, but just for a different reason.

So there's lifestyle factors.

The other big thing is diet sugar.

Artificial colors and flavors and preservatives things like MSG and

parents may not realize that Campbell's soup, you know, has MSG in it and

that's affecting their child's brain.

And then a lot of the food at schools these days is terrible.

When my kids were in public school, we homeschool now, but when they

were in public school, I'm never picking my son up at brunch recess.

And all the kids on the lunch food program had chocolate or

strawberry milk and sugary danishes.

And then for lunch, they would have like pizza or basically everything was

super processed and just heat it up in, you know, from frozen, in, in a.

And an oven and there was very little nutritional value.

So a lot of these kids that are eating a lot of these toxic chemicals, of

course, it's affecting their brain.

Of course, it's affecting their ability to focus.

And spleen is malnourished.

Totally.

Their spleen is malnourished and their kidneys not nourished.

So their brain is not nourished.

It's it just becomes a whole.

A downward spiral and sugar is another thing it's so sugar is also so hot and

we already have kids have all that young.

And then we add some sugar in there.

And these poor, of course they can't focus.

I can't focus if I eat a ton of sugar.

So there's a lot of education that has to happen and we have to help

part of, I feel like what I do.

Is hold the parent's hands as they are going through this process of

realizing, oh my gosh, my kid is eating all this crappy food and

I'm giving them too much sugar.

And I didn't know, I didn't realize I didn't read the label.

So that's a lot of what we'll do with that.

And then of course, The acupuncture itself is just so helpful for these kids.

You know, they get that same rush of endorphins.

They get that same calming effect that adults do when they get acupuncture.

So you combine all of that together, and it's a really beautiful combination

to help kids that are, you know, diagnosed with ADHD or are hyperactive.

Yeah.

So getting needles into kids.

I'm, I'm curious to know about how you do that and if they're not copacetic

with the pins, are there other methods that you've got for activating the

channels and the points to help?

Absolutely.

So that is definitely a number one concern of all parents, this

like what is going to happen.

And the first thing to know about treating children is the

treatments are a lot shorter.

So a lot of parents envisioned that I'm going to like have their child lay on

the table for 30 minutes, like their treatment, but that's not the case.

So for children eight and under I do what's called in and out needling.

So I'll tap the needle in and take it right out.

And then the other thing is children.

I use really, really tiny needles.

I use Siron J 15, dark blue and dark green needles.

These are the smallest needles available on the market and

they're virtually painless.

So when, uh, when a child comes in after we've had the whole

interview, I sit them down.

I look them right in the eye and I tell them, you know, you

and I are going to be part.

And I'm like a detective and I'm going to help you figure out what's going on with

your body and how we can help it heal.

So you can, you know, feel good and run and play and do

all the things you want to do.

And then I tell them, one of the things I use is, um, our taps and

I call the needles taps because of the fact that I tap them in taps.

That's great.

And taps don't sound scary.

Taps don't sound scary at all.

Yeah.

There's no negative connotation with being tapped as versus a needle,

which they all think of a shot or a blood draw they've had that.

So, and then I show it to them and I lifted up and I

show them this little tiny.

So tiny when it's inside the package and inside the tube, like

you literally can't even see it.

It's so tiny.

And then I take it out and I show them how tiny it is.

I show them how it works, usually on the parents.

So the parent can tell their child what it feels like.

And then usually at that point, the child is either like, okay, I'll try it.

Or, you know, they're giving me a lot of body language in science

that they're not open to it at all.

So if they're open to it, they'll try it.

And I would say nine out of 10 times, if they can get to the point

where they'll we'll, they'll try.

They're fine with it.

They realize it really doesn't hurt.

They're kind of fascinated by.

And once they get used to it, a lot of times, even on like three and

four year olds, I can let the needles rest for even 30 seconds to a minute.

But then I still have eight year olds that were still doing in and out.

So it really is just dependent on the child.

And then if they don't want the needles, this is the thing

I have non needle techniques.

There's no pressure for them to do acupuncture.

And since there's no pressure.

I don't feel nervous about their response to what I'm showing them, because I

really have no attachment to whether they have the needles or they don't have the

needles because regardless, I know I can give them an effective treatment and that

energy of knowing that it doesn't matter.

It really relaxes the kids because they know I'm not pressuring them.

I'm not, it's not like, oh, this isn't going to work or you have to do this.

Or sometimes the pressure is coming more from the parents than from.

So I have to handle that, but then I show them all my different,

uh, non needle techniques.

So depending on which state you're in and what your laws and regulations

are, your non needle techniques could be, um, a little microcurrent device.

There's the SIM plus pro or the pointer.

Plus you could use a laser.

You could use tuning forks, you can use just simply acupressure.

You can use your seeds, you can use acupressure magnets.

So there's all kinds of ways that we can stimulate the acupuncture

points without using needles.

And because kids are so young because they have so much young energy, it

doesn't take a lot to shift their energy.

It doesn't take a lot to get the chief flowing where it needs to flow or, you

know, moving it in a different direction.

It doesn't take much.

And so there's a lot less pressure on me to do a lot for that child.

The treatments are really short and simple almost to the point where when

I'm training new practitioners in pediatrics, they're like, is this enough?

Is this really going to do anything?

But after, you know, almost 15 years of working with kids, I can guarantee

you, if you are, you still have to be present and grounded, you still use your

T to influence the, you know, whatever non needle technique you're using.

And it's just trusting that, that it will work.

And it also takes time for them to heal as well.

Is it a common mistake for those of us that are used to treating adults

that we could very easily over-treat.

I think so.

I think it is that pressure of in the room when really a pediatric

treatment can take five minutes or less.

Like it's really fast, especially if you're doing in and out

needling, it'll be longer if you're using non needle techniques.

Cause some of those have to, you know, hold on the points

for, you know, 10 to 30 seconds.

So it really just depends, but a lot of times it can make us feel like we're not

do we want to keep doing more and more?

And I think it's just a matter of trusting, like when you've made

your diagnosis and you know, what you're treating, just treat that.

And then the other thing to do is give home care in between visits.

So acupressure points that the parents can massage on a daily basis to reinforce

whatever you're doing in the treatment.

Probably what's the kids eating.

Oh, yes.

Lots of dietary, uh, discussions and education has to go on as well.

You mentioned tuning forks now.

I've, I've heard of these.

I haven't used them myself.

I know there's all kinds of protocols and this and that.

And, and it seems like there's a bunch of different.

I don't know frequencies.

I don't want to even know how you talk about this.

Are there any particular, if somebody wanted to use tuning forks on a

kid, I'm just, I'm just thinking for myself, boy, that would make life easy.

Do you need like a whole, you know, a bunch of different forks and know

how to use different frequencies?

Or is there one in particular that's like, yeah, this is good for.

I really gravitate.

I have the whole set, but I gravitate always to the earth tuning fork.

It's the gold tuning fork and I have two of them.

And those are the ones I tend to gravitate towards for kids because

it's so grounding, you know, a lot of what we're dealing with is

underlying earth related issues.

So it really is a good match moving along a little bit in years.

What about kids that are a bit older?

Let's say you've got someone who's entering their teenage years.

I mean, you'll see it both in girls and boys, but you know, especially in

girls, as they start to menstruate and the hormones start to come on and then

they've got all this acne that happens.

Yes.

You know, first a little tip about treating teens is I think a lot of

practitioners it's more likely you might see a teen than a child if

you're not, you know, specifically specializing in pediatrics.

And a really important thing to remember with teens is.

Not to treat them like adults don't assume that an adult treatment is acceptable

for a team because I've treated teens who have seen other practitioners who

used needles that were too big, too many.

And it really freaked them out.

Like they, they left and was like, I'm never doing that again.

The practitioner didn't have a conversation with them or didn't give

them permission to say this is too much, or I don't want that point when

you're treating teens to make sure that you are checking in with them about.

You know, things like liver three might be too much for a team to handle.

They might want to use a non needle technique on that now

for acne, for hormone imbalance.

Again, it's really the same type of program is for younger kids.

We have to look at their diet.

Their sleep, their stress levels.

And, you know, there needs to be conversations about

self care at this point.

And with teens, the hard part is they are now controlling their diet.

They're controlling what they eat.

They're away from home quite often, you know, they're at

school or afterschool activities.

So the parents don't have as much control over.

What they're doing.

So there needs to be conversations about, you know, you're old enough

to make decisions for yourself.

And if, like, for instance, one of the things I will often recommend

with acne is that they quit eating dairy because it's so damp.

There can be some resistance to that, especially if the teen is

like eating dairy for most of their meals, which is, can often happen.

And so we there's like educational conversations that need to happen

to explain to them, you know, why.

Why is there a problem and how can you avoid it?

And what do you do?

A lot of this stuff I do with teens, it's like, well, what are you going to do?

If you go to your church, youth group and they're having pizza,

what are you going to do?

What are you going to say?

Um, how will you handle that?

That will help them to empower the team, to make their own healthy choices.

Some teams are quite motivated and others, you know, they're kind

of there because mom wanted them there and they're not as motivated.

So there's a whole wide range that you'll be dealing with, but sometimes

you have to have parents leave the room and talk to the teen on their own.

There are times when I feel like the parents are too domineering and the

teen is not having a chance to really, you know, voice their own opinions or.

Anything.

So there's a lot more dynamics, I think with teens than children, because

with children, no parents have more control over what's going on and the

teens, you have to get them on board.

And yet at the same time with things like needling, you

can't treat them like an adult.

Do you almost, I mean, you treat them like something in between an

adult and a child is what I mean.

Exactly and most teens will let me do needles there.

They're usually fine with it, but yeah, you really do need to check in with them

and make sure that that they're okay with what you're doing, because they're

less likely to voice their discomfort unless you specifically tell them that.

That's okay.

So what I'm hearing then is that often with kids and acne dampness is the first

thing that you're going to go look.

Yes, dampness and heat.

We're looking at where are those things coming from?

And some of it is just the nature of.

The hormones, you know, of, of what's happening in their body.

And some of it, a lot of it is due to what they're eating in their lifestyle.

There's a lot of teens are eating too much sugar, too much dairy, too much wheat,

and they're also not getting enough.

So typically teens are getting an hour less sleep than they

were a hundred years ago.

And that hour is so important for them to, for their bodies to be in balance.

How much sleep should a teenager get teenagers need between

nine to 12 hours of sleep?

Well, that explains why my niece sleeps in so late on Saturday.

And it's really hard for these kids because a lot of them

have a full school schedule.

They have homework, they have afterschool activities.

So a lot of them are not getting to bed until say 10 or 10 30.

And then if they have to be up at six 30 in the morning, if their body

really needs 12 hours, they're getting a lot less sleep than they need.

And that in turn can also affect focus.

So it sounds like sleep is a.

Making sure they get enough.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

And that's, that can be a process because you've got to help

them rearrange their schedule.

And I think as parents are also really busy, they don't necessarily recognize

that their child is too busy and they may not realize that the lifestyle.

Influencing their hormone balance, their skin, their acne, and

also their attitudes as well.

And I noticed this with my, my son, who's now 14.

You know, if he doesn't get enough sleep, all of a sudden I'm

getting this cranky eye-rolling teenager and I'm like, who are you?

And then he gets enough sleep and he's back to his normal

happy teenagers to health.

So it's really important.

So watch for the eye-rolling eye.

Rolling might be more.

That's good to know.

You've really been working with kids a while.

I mean, you've written one of the books.

I'm curious to know what are some things that you've learned about treating

kids that you might not find in a book?

Well, I didn't find in the books and what I had to figure out for myself

in the beginning was the actual process of working with them, that

dynamic of working with somebody else's child, that, you know, you're

trying to do something unusual.

To put acupuncture needles in them.

And you're also working with a parent who may be afraid or

scared or worried, or have all kinds of emotional stuff going on.

Really, what I think is so important is building that trust and rapport

with both the child and the parent, and always remembering that the child

is your patient, not the parent.

So you need to remember that there may be difficult, you know, situations

coming up where the parent is maybe.

Part of the problem and remembering that the child is your patient is

really important, but that trust is more important than anything else.

If that child trusts that you're never going to trick them, you're never going

to, you know, distract them and suddenly put a needle in them that they didn't

want once they know that they can trust.

There are a lot more willing to do whatever it is that you want them to do.

And the other thing about kids is you really want to go with the flow.

Um, like I was talking about earlier with a toddler, who's a wind type.

You need to be able to be flexible.

The treatment is not going to always look like an adult treatment.

Sometimes I treat on the floor.

There was one little girl I treated underneath the table.

You know, sometimes there'll be on the table.

Sometimes there'll be on mom's lap.

Sometimes I have easy chairs in my office because it makes it easier for the parents

to hold their child and in their lap.

And sometimes we treat there.

So being very flexible is important and also being patient and

grounded with what's happening.

So it's really important that your own energy has really grounded.

And that you're not afraid of what might happen in the treatment.

In other words, if a child cries during a treatment, it doesn't

cause me to be upset or I'm not worried about that child crying.

It happens.

Children cry.

Sometimes children spontaneously cry about something that hasn't even happened.

Just being very patient with the process and being sort of unflappable, I think

is one of the most important things you can be when you're working with

kids to not let anything get to you.

Cause it's just, it, there's never a dull moment.

That's for sure.

Yeah.

It sounds like there's never a dull moment.

And it seems to me too, that if you're unflappable, the parent

is probably going to settle down.

If they've got anxiety.

Absolutely.

I think that that sense of that trust that I always believe there's hope for healing.

And I will tell the parents that we may not know exactly how it's all going to

resolve, but I have hope that it will.

And.

You know, unflappability of like, if they get worse one day or things, aren't

going, as well as we had hoped or some other illness comes in and the process

of healing that disrupts everything, it's just knowing, being grounded and

not letting that distract or let you not trust what's going to happen or let that

the child will heal in their own time.

It's just, that's a really important part.

Yeah, this is such a powerful thing.

I mean, often whether they're kids or adults, people come to us because

they've already been to see conventional doctors and the conventional doctors

say there's nothing wrong with you.

Or the conventional doctors say, well, we don't know.

And I don't know from a Western doctor means the end, right.

Nothing to be done.

And I don't know.

From an acupuncturist.

It's not the end.

It's a statement of, well, this is where we are.

We don't know that can actually build some trust.

I don't know.

As a beginning, it's not an ending.

That's where we starts.

That is such a beautiful point.

It's so true.

And I, and I think that we have to embrace the mystery of not knowing and

knowing that it's okay to not know.

I have, I never know when I'm working with a new client.

Exactly.

How things are going to unfold for them.

I only know what I, what I see happening in the moment and embracing

that mystery and, and trusting that it'll all work out is, is just

sort of the beauty of the medicine.

We are so lucky to have these kinds of tools that let us

navigate in the dark like this.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

Well, Robin, is there anything else that you'd like to say

before we wind this thing?

You know, I would just like to encourage practitioners to get a

little bit of training, to treat kids.

You don't need to treat every condition under the sun, or even

be a pediatric specialist to help the kids in your community.

Even if you just learned the basics of how to treat kids and knew how

to treat a few conditions, when that parent comes to you, desperate for a

solution for their child's problem.

You know, it would be so beautiful for, to have more practitioners

helping kids, because there are, there are like millions upon millions

of children with problems like ADHD, asthma allergies, and eczema that could

certainly benefit from Chinese medicine.

And there just aren't enough practitioners around to help them.

That would be my, my request.

Go, go get a little pediatric training and help kids in your area.

You know, that's, that's nice to hear and it's helpful to hear because so

often it's easy to think we need a certification or we need to spend, you

know, two years becoming a specialist and, you know, the, the tools and

the perspectives of Chinese medicine.

If we can just get started with some fundamentals that can take

us a long way, we can do a lot.

We really can't.

I think really you have everything you need to treat kids already.

It's just that little bit of training on how to deal with some of the dynamics

of working with kids that can go a long way to making practitioners feel

comfortable treating that population.

That's great to know Robin, thanks again so much for taking

some time to be on Sheila.

Thank you so much for having me.

And I really hope your listeners enjoyed this podcast.