Learning and or behavioural problems – ‘try OBD approach’

Chad Stolper

My son David, who was born in England, was diagnosed dyslexic when he was 11. In his late twenties he was diagnosed bipolar and he died tragically in 2009 in South Africa. My daughters and I decided to write a book about him called “Too Difficult to Explain – a bipolar conundrum”.

Belling wrote a review of the book for Jewish Report last year; dyslexia occupies a small fraction of the book. Nevertheless, I think it is worthwhile to quote part of what my daughter Lalitte wrote: “David is diagnosed with dyslexia. Mum, in a typical refusal to accept easy labels, tracks down the most ground-breaking research on the subject.

“She discovers that David has a particular form of dyslexia – as defined by the Peter Blythe Clinic. Peter Blythe is an authority on Organic Brain Dysfunction (OBD), an off-putting term for learning difficulties, whose roots are neurological, not psychological.

“The theory is that learning difficulties occur when certain primitive reflexes are not suppressed but retained past childhood and the reflexes interrupt the proper functioning of certain cerebral tasks, depending on which reflexes are concerned.

“The cure is entirely non-medicinal, for it entails only physical exercises that ‘work through’ the stubborn reflexes until they disappear. Once cleared of the unwanted reflexes, the subject is also freed from the complicated strategies the brain has used to compensate for the learning difficulty – and from the inability to cope with challenges and stress that OBD, in its various manifestations, usually causes.

“David is resistant. He hates the term Organic Brain Dysfunction because it appears to label him as mentally deficient, and it is a job to get him to do the exercises regularly and properly.” 

I do not wish to guess whether OBD treatment would have avoided David’s tragic end. What is certain is that the same degree of success that others have enjoyed, would have resulted in a very different life path for David.

I do not know if Peter Blythe’s methods (or similar approaches) are available in South Africa. I advise any of your readers, whose children are facing learning and/or behavioural problems, to investigate the OBD approach. 

A good way to start is to Google “peter blythe organic brain dysfunction” and, thereafter, contact the Blythe Clinic to establish if there are any OBD experts living in South Africa.

Sea Point, Cape Town