Hi all,

Our beautiful daughter, Liberty, needs your help.

We have always donated to GoFundMe campaigns never thinking that one day we might need help ourselves. So it is very humbling to ask now.

A little backstory:

Libby has always been a challenging child since she was born. She has always been defiant, controlling and has meltdowns of absolute panic and hysteria. Anyone who knows our family knows this. Up until now we didn't know what was wrong, but assumed it was something she would grow out of. 7 1/2 years later our family has been in survival mode as we face nonstop problems. Now that she is in school (currently 1st grade) it has become even more obvious that something isn't right. She is not okay. She is unable to focus in class, can't hold still and has frequent meltdowns that disrupts the entire class. She isn't learning and she's falling behind.

At her recent parent/teacher conference with her teacher, principal and school counselor we were told that we should consider medicating Libby. This is not something we want to do. We do not want her to lose her spark that makes her so special because, despite her issues, she is unbelievably creative, expressive and intelligent. She's a very unique character that, on her good days, people really love.

Another consequence of her behavioral issues that is concerning is that she is now having a hard time making friends. It has been heartbreaking to see her sad that she isn't being invited to birthday parties. She constantly tells us that nobody likes her. It's affecting her self esteem, which just amplifies the bad behavior because now she's being labeled as "the bad kid" and feels that's her role now. We know that her future is at stake because if she cannot make friends with the good kids then she'll eventually get into the wrong crowd as she gets older. We need to try to fix this now while she is still young. Unfortunately, she is rapidly losing the cover of being a little kid that doesn't know any better.

Here's where your help comes in:

We have been referred to a wholistic doctor that specializes in brain integration therapy. What we learned about Libby was shocking. We always knew that Libby was behaving in a way that people with severe trauma behave. But this perplexed us because Libby has had a great life with loving parents and family. It never made sense. However, what we learned was that Libby suffered severe birth trauma, something we had no idea could be such a big deal. To not go into horrific details, Libby's birth was very traumatic for all of us. Her mother almost died and the environment was one of panic and terror. This imprinted onto Libby and it's no surprise.

The day Libby was born the trauma rewired her corpus callosum, the part of the brain that links the two hemispheres together. To oversimplify, her wires are crossed and information is being sent to the wrong side of the brain. Signals that are suppose to go to the right side of her brain are going to the left side of her brain, the logic side. This is causing her to develop learning disabilities. Some examples are that she has no sense of time. She is 7 1/2 and doesn't know what yesterday, today and tomorrow are. She can spell and read phonetically (logic side), but struggles with sight words (right side). Her comprehension is also far behind. Information is simply not being sent to the correct parts of her brain.

All of this said, her suite of behavioral patterns are akin to ADHD, ODD, and OCD. To make matters worse, because of how much attention and energy she requires, we have little time and energy to put into our 4 year old son. The whole family is suffering and we are at our wits end.

The silver lining, if there is one, is that this specialist told us that Libby must have a very high IQ for her to have been able to learn anything so far. So our child is extremely bright but her disability makes it very hard for her to focus and learn. The good news is we can fix it!

The specialist has worked with countless children like Libby and has had amazing success. With brain integration she can reverse the damage of the trauma and rewire her brain so that it is functioning, but it's not cheap and insurance won't cover it. The treatment is an intensive 2 full days of therapy that cost's $5,000, money we just don't have. She has been kind enough to get Libby scheduled right away, as early as December 7th & 8th, and workout the payment later because she sees the need and urgency. The treatment can take effect within 6 weeks. So with any luck Libby could be healed by Christmas. I cannot think of a better gift and blessing this holiday season. The amount of stress this has put on us is unmeasuarble.

We humbly ask for your help to make this dream come true for our little girl.

We will keep you all posted with updates on how it goes.

Thank you all so much in advance,

The Lathrop Family