024 – Peter Morici, sight impaired dad, talks of life with an autistic child and another with ADHD.

Transcript:

Dad To Dad 24 – Peter Morici, sight impaired dad, talks of life with an autistic child and another with ADHD. 

Tom Couch: This is the Special Fathers Network podcast. The Special Fathers Network is a dad to dad mentoring program for fathers raising children with special needs. Through our personalized matching process, new fathers with special needs children connect with mentor fathers in a similar situation. It’s a great way for fathers to support fathers.

Sometimes the mentor father is just there to answer a few questions. Sometimes they become good friends. It’s a proven support system for new fathers with special needs kids. If you’re a father looking for support, or if you’re a dad who’d like to offer support, go to 21stcenturydads.org.

David Hirsch: Hi, I’m David Hirsch. This is the Special Fathers Network podcast stories of fathers helping father.

Tom Couch: And I’m Tom Couch. Today, David talks to special father Peter Morici. He’s got two children and he’s been visually disabled for the past several years.

Peter Morici: You can’t depend on other people to tell you what’s best for your child.

Tom Couch: Peter and his wife Elena had been married for 13 years. Their two kids are Alex, who’s 11 and autistic, and Jenny, who’s eight and who has a form of ADHD. Peter has spent a lot of time over the year searching for alternative forms of treatment for his children.

Peter Morici: You have to kind of take control. You have to do your own research, as you’re the best advocate for your child.

Tom Couch: And after a lot of hard work, he took matters into his own hands and with great success.

Peter Morici: We could see improvement within the first day. Amazing. And with my daughter as well.

Tom Couch: Also recently, Peter Morici was selected as one of three Fathers of the Year by the Illinois Fatherhood Initiative, after his son Alex delivered an incredible speech at a recent dinner.

It’s a great story and a great listen. And it’s all in this Special Fathers Network podcast. Here’s David Hirsch.

David Hirsch: Being a father is very important to me. Being a good father means being a successful role model for your child, helping them be happier, more fulfilled and productive members of society. I’ve started a number of charitable organizations designed to increase the role of fathers.

One of them, the Special Fathers Network, is a dad to dad mentoring program for fathers raising children with special needs. We’ve been interviewing some exceptional fathers of special needs kids, and we want to share their stories with them.

Tom Couch: So let’s get to David’s conversation with special father Peter Morici.

David Hirsch: I’m thrilled to be talking today with my friend Peter Morici in Barrington, Illinois, a father of two, who has been visually disabled for seven years. Peter, thank you for taking the time to do a podcast interview for the Special Fathers Network.

Peter Morici: Thank you David for having me.

David Hirsch: You and your wife Elena have been married for 13 years and are the proud parents of two children, Jenny, eight, and Alex, 11, who was diagnosed with autism. Let’s start with some background. Where did you grow up? Tell me something about your family, including your siblings.

Peter Morici: I was born and raised in Illinois initially, then moved to Cleveland and Columbus and Pennsylvania. So I grew up in many different places, getting to know new kids and making new friends.

David Hirsch: Was that because of your dad’s career?

Peter Morici: Yes.

David Hirsch: Okay. And do you have siblings?

Peter Morici: I have an older sister who lives in Downers Grove. She has two kids and is about to be a grandmother. And my older brother is retired after 35 years and he runs the Kairos program, which is bringing God into prisons, state prisons, counseling, and giving seminars and talks. I have a younger brother who’s an aerospace engineer for Northrop Grumman in Baltimore, and he has two kids. One of them is an Eagle Scout.

David Hirsch: So you’re a number three of four.

Peter Morici I am one of the middle children.

David Hirsch: Okay. And how would you describe your relationship with your dad?

Peter Morici: My father was president of the little league in Richmond Heights. He was a baseball player himself. He played softball for over 50 years until his 70s. He’s very well educated and education was most important to him. All of my siblings have degrees and some advanced degrees.

David Hirsch: So what does your dad do as a career?

Peter Morici: He was chief financial officer and was also a teacher at the University of Illinois, Chicago, and University of Pittsburgh.

David Hirsch: What is it that he taught?

Peter Morici: Finance taxes.

David Hirsch: Okay. As you think about one thing that your dad said or did, what is it that are your main takeaways?

Peter Morici: It’s work hard, don’t get into any trouble, and also just behave.

David Hirsch: So he had some high expectations for you. I’m thinking about other role models. What role did your grandpas play, on your mom’s side and then on your dad’s side?

Peter Morici:  My mother’s father was a World War I veteran. He then bought a farm out in Roselle on ten acres of land, which was unincorporated at the time. Now it’s a huge population center. He was a farmer. He had 20 grandchildren, and we used to all meet at the farm and play on the tractors and run around the property. And now it’s a four-lane highway, eight lanes across, Roselle Road.

On my father’s side, his father was an Italian from Sicily. He came over here in 1913 and raised three kids. My dad grew up in Chicago literally in what would be considered a slum now. It was a very close knit family.

David Hirsch: So did you have a chance to know your grandparents, your grandfathers?

Peter Morici: Very well. They lived into their eighties.

David Hirsch: That’s fabulous. Not everybody has a chance to meet their grandparents.

You went to school at Penn State, where you got a bachelor’s degree, and you went to George Washington University to get an MBA. When you graduated, what were you thinking about from a career standpoint?

Peter Morici: Initially I graduated in accounting and thought that’s what I was going to be, because my father was that. Then I ended up getting into the computer field. I thought that was where the growth was going to be, and that was a good move at the time. Twenty, thirty years later, that’s been the case.

I went and got my MBA after working with EDS and Ross Perot’s company for a few years. And then doing a lot of consulting work here in Chicago and Washington, DC. And then I got involved in networks as a consultant, a product management professional.

David Hirsch: Was there any particular type of work that you do in that area that is something you’re proud of?

Peter Morici: I worked for the Federal Bank of Chicago as a project manager. That was one of the more exciting things, working in their building in downtown Chicago.

David Hirsch: So let’s talk about special needs and your connection to the special needs community. Before Alex was born, did you and Elena have any connection to the special needs community?

Peter Morici: Absolutely not. Zero.

David Hirsch: Zero. Wow. So what was your first reaction upon learning about Alex’s diagnosis then?

Peter Morici: Well, initially we were told he had PDD-NOS, which is pervasive developmental delay not otherwise specific. We found out years later after we got the records that the doctor wrote down autism, but he didn’t tell us that.

David Hirsch: And what age would Alex have been at that point in time?

Peter Morici: Two years and four months.

David Hirsch: Okay. And you didn’t learn about the actual diagnosis until when?

Peter Morici: Well, I knew that’s what it basically was. But unless you go through a formal process and pay somebody thousands of dollars, you won’t get that label. But there’s no benefit to that label really when you’re two, three years old. So I was more interested in finding out the cause and the solution rather than a label.

David Hirsch: So what type of advice did you get early on?

Peter Morici: Not much other than early intervention at 18 months, special ed starting at three years old. He was then moved to a different classroom. It’s in the best school district in United States, Fairfax County, Virginia. And he was moved to probably one of the lowest functioning classes that they have.

Most of the kids in the picture that I have from that year, most of the kids didn’t even realize that picture was being taken and were not looking at the camera. So he started at the bottom of the barrel.

David Hirsch: I think you shared some statistics with me in a prior conversation. What was that, as far as what his score was?

Peter Morici: He was in the low one percentile. No communication, no eye contact, headbanging, running into walls, spinning, just not eating either. He would only eat soft foods. He wouldn’t eat anything hard. So he had a lot of feeding issues. He would drink like a gallon of milk a day almost, because that’s what he liked to drink.

And it turned out that was the wrong thing to do, because milk is actually for baby cows. And that’s where it was marketed for kids, through Kellogg and other companies for cereal, but it’s really not for kids. A lot of people have milk allergies, and that’s one of the first things they recommend you do is remove milk from the diet. And that improves people dramatically, because a lot of people have allergies, just like peanuts and other common type allergies.

David Hirsch: So how old would Alex have been at this point in time?

Peter Morici: Four years old.

David Hirsch: So he was nonverbal, no eye contact and a lot of issues.

Peter Morici: Behavior issues. Banging, hitting, running into walls.

David Hirsch: It sounds like a very, very challenging situation.

Peter Morici: It certainly was, especially with my wife. I was working and she was a new mother in a new country and it was difficult situation for her to accept. I spent a lot of research, using just Facebook and other online sources, about how to help kids recover from autism.

And I then determined that essentially it was heavy metal toxicity. She had had dental work done. Most people don’t realize that mercury is half the filling in your silver teeth. When you have work done, you get vapors, you inhale those, they get into your system, they get into your brain. And it’s a huge factor that people don’t realize.

David Hirsch: And so Elena must have had a lot of dental work done as a young person.

Peter Morici: As a child in Russia. They had socialized medicine, and they’d go in there and just put in more fillings and more fillings and more fillings, multiple times a year.

David Hirsch: And that happened not only in Russia, but that happened here in the US, because just as a point of reference, I thought I brushed my teeth, but every time I went to the dentist, as young person was, “Oh, he’s got another cavity or two.”

And they’re just filling all these cavities. And I must’ve had at least a dozen, if not more, amalgam fillings. And that was not a positive thing.

Peter Morici: No, because over time, what happens is that wears down, people have root canals, and those metals eventually leak. You’re brushing your teeth, you’re drinking hot water, you’re eating hot food, cold food, cold water….

David Hirsch: Just rubbing your teeth together.

Peter Morici: And these were not meant to be in for 50, 60 years. I think that’s one of the causes of the high rise in Alzheimer’s, because most of the people who are in their seventies and eighties, they’ve had these fillings in there since the 1950s.

David Hirsch: So what was it that drew your attention to heavy metals? Was it just research?

Peter Morici: I went to a seminar that some a lady gave who was recovering her son and was there with 15 people. And her son was actually working the mouse, and he had recovered, and it was very fascinating. And then I did my research, got a hair test. You do a hair test analysis, which costs under a hundred dollars. You order a kit. No doctor necessary. And it gives you 20 different levels of metals and minerals in your hair. Andrew Cutler is a PhD from Princeton who actually himself was suffering from this, and then he worked out a protocol to remove the metals.

David Hirsch: So Andrew Cutler is the PhD’s name. What’s the protocol referred to as?

Peter Morici: Andrew Cutler chelation protocol. Essentially you’re getting a dose every four hours for 64 hours minimum. So you’re getting up in the middle of the night, giving this dose, through a dropper or whatever, but you only want to do it for about three days because the body needs to recover.

David Hirsch: So is that the process that you went through with Alex?

Peter Morici: Exactly.

David Hirsch: And over what period of time, how many of those protocols, three days at a time, did you have to go through with Alex?

Peter Morici: That’s one round, about 25 doses, which every three, four hours, which works out to about 70 hours. And usually you do it over the weekend. That’s one round. You continually do one round every month. So maybe 25, 30 rounds you can get in in a year. I did over 150 with my son over the course of five years. You basically had to plan your life around it. You wanted to go someplace, you had to take some of it with you. Because you have to set that alarm. After three hours, you’ve got to give them that dose.

You could be late about an hour, but you don’t want to be. If you’re late two hours, then you have to kind of stop the round. So it’s something takes constant attention. You start on a very low dose, high frequency, so it’s safe because it’s a very low dose. But we get the proof when you do a urinalysis test. My son’s first urinalysis test had 11 different metals coming out of it, and he was three years old.

David Hirsch: So he started out at a very high level of these metal contents at age three. He now is 13. So we’re 10 years into this, and are you still doing these protocols?

Peter Morici: Now I’ve stopped doing them a couple of years ago. We noticed within the first day we could see improvement. Within the first day. And with my daughter as well. Also, one of the big factors was B₁₂. With a lot of kids, the problem is B₁₂ is not orally ingested or processed correctly. So people get B₁₂ shots. So we did this with Dr. Usman, who’s a world renown autism expert. When I first met her, in fact, and I told her I did a hundred rounds with my son, she sat there and told me, “You saved your son’s life.” And this happened when he was maybe seven years old. So that was a huge conviction of my work.

David Hirsch: So Dr. Usman is here in the Chicago area?

Peter Morici: Yeah, she’s in Naperville. I’ve seen her speak several times. She has a lot of YouTube broadcasts, and she is considered one of the world’s experts on autism and other children’s behaviors.

One out of five kids these days is diagnosed with something, which is just amazing. Because when I was young, there were not any of the special needs classes and these diagnoses. But you would think it would be less, not more. And it’s an epidemic. So autism now is one out of 60 kids and one out of 25 boys.

We had an old book from the 1990s that I picked up when my son was young, and it said the autism rate was one out of 2,500. And that’s how infrequently it was diagnosed just about 25 years ago.

David Hirsch: That’s remarkable. It’s referred to as an epidemic.

Peter Morici: It is, and there’s a lot of people making a good living off that. Because essentially what the mainstream doctors will do is refer you to occupational therapy and speech therapy. My son went through speech therapy when he couldn’t speak. They would basically kind of almost torture him, put toys under a blanket. He was curious to see the toys, and he would have to try and say something. And it was kind of a disaster, almost torture essentially.

After about a year with the chelation, Dr. Neubrander from New Jersey discovered by accident that methyl B₁₂ was spurring language in a lot of the kids that were formerly mute. Dr. Neubrander had a protocol of methyl B₁₂ shots. We went through Dr. Usman and got a prescription for that, and did the shots twice a week for three years.

And you think it’s easy to give a child a shot? It’s not. It’s not easy to give one. You have needles that are preloaded, but you have to give it to him while he’s sleeping. My wife did that for the next couple of years after I had vision problems and cataracts and I couldn’t see. I had no depth perception.

So I ended up finding out about a doctor, a PhD in Australia, who invented B₁₂ oils, b12oils.com. It’s a spray-on oil that replaces the shots. And this was a game changer for us, because I didn’t have to go see the doctor once a year to get a prescription. I didn’t have to put the needles in the refrigerator and dispose of the needles, and you couldn’t travel with these needles. So the oil spray, when it was sprayed on your skin, rub it in, you can use it every day or every other day, and it works great.

David Hirsch: And you can get it online?

Peter Morici: And you can get it online. It’s from Australia, but you can get it anywhere in the world.

David Hirsch: Wow. And, what’s that referred to? You said it was b12oils.com.

Peter Morici: Yeah.

David Hirsch: Okay. So what are some of the biggest challenges that you’ve encountered? I mean, not that you haven’t mentioned some of them.

Peter Morici: Well, some of the challenges are that you go to the mainstream doctors, and they don’t really have many answers. They want to run their CBC test, blood count and other standardized tests that don’t really tell you much. They don’t believe in hair metal testing, because they never studied it in medical school. So it was completely foreign to them. “Hey, if I didn’t learn in medical school, it’s not important.”

And the school, they do have the special ed classes, but my biggest frustration is that a lot of the doctors, they just want to send you to another therapist and just refer you out to somebody else. And those people just treat the symptoms.

The child is not paying attention. “Well, let’s put them on a medication.” And those medications are sometimes—in fact, a lot of times, it’s just like, “Oh, that medication didn’t work. Let’s try another medication. Let’s try another medication.” It’s just trial and error. And meanwhile, these medications have a lot of side effects like the loss of appetite.

David Hirsch: And a lot of times when prescriptions are given, there are multiple prescriptions, and they don’t know the interactions between certain drugs. So there’s the unintended consequences in a lot of situations.

Peter Morici: Correct.

David Hirsch: So what impact has Alex’s situation had on Jenny, and the rest of your family for that matter?

Peter Morici: My daughter also had major delays. We didn’t find out until later that she’s diagnosed with moderate ADHD and has some mild intellectual disability. But she’s very verbal. So my daughter’s speech initially was just babbling. At four years old, she’d be on the bus and the bus driver would come back and say, “Oh, your daughter talked the whole way back in the bus, but I couldn’t understand a word she’s saying.”

Well, after many rounds of chelation, her speech is as clear as a bell. She can sing, she remembers songs, and all that. But right now she’s unable to read at eight and a half years old, after six years of special education. And we’re going to have her tested for vision therapy. We’ve had MRIs, we’ve had EEGs, other things to rule out.

But if you saw her, you wouldn’t think there was anything wrong with her. She’s very social and very active, but she has a lot of educational issues.

David Hirsch: Sounds like she’s way behind from a reading standpoint.

Peter Morici: Yeah. She’s at a kindergarten level in third grade. Basically, you have to kind of take control. You just can’t go to a doctor and have them try. You have to do your own research. It’s the most important thing, because you’re going to be the best advocate for your child. No one’s going to know your child better than you. These doctors see 50 patients a day, and you’re a number to them, for the most part.

You have to do your own research. And fortunately now with the internet, there’s tons of research out there. There are a lot of Facebook groups specializing in all these different categories, and they’re extremely helpful and they reach a great audience worldwide.

David Hirsch: So I’m just reflecting on what you were saying. Originally, I had asked what impact has Alex’s situation had on Jenny and the rest of your family. And as it turns out, Jenny has a number of issues of her own.

Peter Morici: Yes.

David Hirsch: Right.

Peter Morici: And she’s actually helped Alex, because she got him talking more and getting him more engaged and playing with him. She’s a little less than three years younger than him. And her social skills have helped his social skills. It’s been an interesting scenario to see play out over the years, but it’s great to have them interact and play together, whereas years ago I thought, “This is never going to happen.”

David Hirsch: So it’s gotten better.

Peter Morici: It’s gotten much, much better.

David Hirsch: I was also thinking about your situation, being visually impaired like you have been, and unable to work in what would be considered a traditional job, nine to five, five days a week. You’ve had this time that you could allocate to be that advocate, so that both you and Elena could be more involved in the children’s lives.

Peter Morici: Yeah, that’s actually turned out to be a blessing in disguise. I ended up having a corneal transplant and had some complications with that. I’ve had eye problems in the past. I’ve had over ten eye surgeries. I got disability. So I was able to dedicate a lot of my time, that would have been spent at work and away from the kids and the family, to be there. You have to order the supplements. So you have to find out what supplements they need. You have to give the supplements, sometimes morning and night, make appointments and then educate yourself.

Really, that’s the biggest factor, that you can’t depend on other people to tell you what’s best for your child. They’re not going to do what needs to be done. A lot of times they don’t know. And a lot of people are doing their own biomedical treatments, because the doctors are not really helping. “Treat the symptoms. Treat the symptoms.” Let’s find out the problem. That’s the key is to find out what’s really causing the problem, not treating symptoms. You’ll be treating symptoms for the rest of your life.

David Hirsch: Yeah. Well, it’s remarkable that you’ve had the tenacity and the focus on doing that as opposed to being more passive, I think like most parents, and just following the doctor’s orders, if you will.

And I think the proof is in the pudding, at least partially from what little I know of your family as we’ve gotten to know each other the last couple of years, is that Alex wrote this essay about you through the Illinois Fatherhood Initiative’s “What my father means to me” program. Do you want to talk about that?

Peter Morici: Yeah, we were so grateful last year to be invited to the event, and I ended up sitting next to Mike Singletary just by circumstance. I needed to sit down on one side of the table to see the stage, because I only see with my right eye. And it turned out Mike Singletary sat next to me.

I was extremely impressed by the organization. It was the 20th anniversary of the organization. And I thought, “Well, next year we’ll enter this contest.” And I thought, “That’ll be interesting. My son can write very well. He types as fast as anybody I’ve ever seen.”

David Hirsch: And he was just one of many students at Roslyn Road that participated.

Peter Morici: Yeah. So we got several local children, mostly kids from Catholic schools in the city, entering the contest. But there were 5,000 plus entries. And after we made the semifinals, we went to the White Sox game. The suite was awesome. My son loved it, because they had three stories of games and things you could do, with running the bases and swinging the bat and whatnot.

Then I had to answer eight in-depth questions, and then through the answers to those questions we were narrowed down to the final 12. And then I was selected Father of the Year. So my son then was asked if he could give a speech and read part of his essay. He originally wrote a thousand words before I realized that the maximum was about 250.

So then we cut it down to 400 words. But I said, “Let’s just make it one page.” So he read part of that essay in front of 250 people. And I would have been very nervous, and the other three kids that read their speeches were more nervous than he was.

David Hirsch: So he did a remarkable job. I was like, “Oh my gosh.”

Alex Morici: Hi. My name is Alex Morici. My dad got me into Cub Scouts because my cousin Mitchell made Eagle Scouts.

Peter Morici: One of the lines was how my son took a standardized test in third grade. He had a 38 percentile the first time he took it, and then went to 51 in the spring of that third grade year, and in fourth grade went to 74. And then finally the 93 percentile.

David Hirsch: Alex is standing up there in front of 250 people reading his essay, and you’re standing there. I can only imagine what it must’ve felt like for you.

Peter Morici: It was surreal. Essentially it was something I would never have imagined. So it was quite a shock, and I was more nervous than he was.

David Hirsch: Yeah, well, I’m just glad that I could be there and witness that. And I was very proud of him and very proud of you as well.

Peter Morici: It’s is testament to your organization that gives him the opportunity to do that. Because you don’t normally get that opportunity. I have never spoken in front of a large group.

David Hirsch: So let’s talk about supporting organizations that you’ve relied on for Alex. So I know that Special Olympics and Cub Scouts play a role.

Peter Morici: Yeah. I enrolled my son in Cub Scouts, and I recommend this to everybody. Cub Scouts accepts everyone. In fact, I was at Michigan Owasippe, which is the largest Boy Scout camp in the United States, the oldest. And there was a child there in a wheelchair, and I think quadriplegic, and he was Cub Scout camping.

A lot of parents enroll their kids in Cub Scouts for socialization. That’s what I did. I was wanting to see him interact with other kids and learning stuff in a very controlled environment. They teach them how to be quiet. They teach them how to do things. And you’re actively participating with your child several times a month. My brother’s son’s mother passed away from breast cancer. My brother got him into Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts, and he became an Eagle Scout. And then on top of that, through the skills he gained, when he went to college he started his own fraternity.

So you can see the benefits. And Cub Scouts is inexpensive. It’s very inexpensive. It doesn’t require that much time, but it’s quality time. And the Cub Scouts accept everybody. They don’t say, “Oh, well, your son can’t talk, or your son has some sort of condition—we can’t get him in.” No, no. They accept everybody.

David Hirsch: So is Alex still involved in Scouting?

Peter Morici: Yeah. He crossed over to Boy Scouts. So he’s just starting Boy Scouts this year. That will be interesting.

Special Olympics is another thing where obviously most kids can do something. My son couldn’t throw much, but he could run, and he loved running. Fortunately Barrington has one of the few Special Olympics soccer teams. It’s called “unified soccer,” where they match up neuro-typical kids, usually brothers or cousins, with of some of the kids that have Down syndrome that are playing or autism or other maladies.

And the kids that are neuro-typical can’t score, they can only set up the other kids to play. And it’s fascinating to watch these games. I think it’s eight to 14-years-old as the age group, and then they’re 16 to 21 or something like that.

But one day they were in a scrimmage against another local team. A much larger kid just pushed my son over, and he hit the ground pretty hard. And I don’t think he’s ever been pushed over like that. I thought, “Oh my God, what’s going to happen. Is he going to get up and hit him?”

The referee blew the whistle, which got my son’s attention. Because at one time he was very hearing sensitive. He would have headphones on. He would hold his hands over his ears. No loud noises. That’s very typical, especially kids with metals, because it’s like a tin ear type of thing.

But the wisdom whistle blew, and my son got up and was kind of shocked, but I whistled. The coach took the other kid out. And I was worried about my son. But the other kid came over and laid next to me and pounded his fist on the ground, because he was upset that he got taken out of me. So my son ended up handling it perfectly. The other kid had a meltdown.

David Hirsch: That’s wild.

Peter Morici: The season starts next month, and it will be his third or fourth season. And that’s just a great, great opportunity for the interaction. They practice a lot. They don’t have that many teams that are playing, but it’s great for the kids. And it’s a lot like Special Olympics. If you haven’t been to a Special Olympics track meet, I would encourage people to go.

You would see things you’ve never seen before. I would see my son in the 50 yard dash—no, the hundred yard dash he ran. But the kids would fall at the beginning of the race, get up, and end up winning that race. And you would never see that in any other sports. But you see these other kids that sometimes are blind, and they have a guidewire and they run down it. It’s really a fantastic organization.

David Hirsch: Well, thank you for making reference to Special Olympics, which coincidentally here on July of 2018 is celebrating their 50 year anniversary. It is an amazing organization that has had an impact, not only to people in the local community and around the country, but now around the world.

So what advice can you provide for dads who are raising a child with a physical or intellectual disability?

Peter Morici: Getting advice from other parents who’ve been in that same situation I think is the biggest key. Your Special Fathers Network has signed up over a hundred people. Plus there’s a lot of Facebook groups out there, and it’s like you’re never alone. Somebody else has been in your situation before. And I would rather listen to somebody who succeeded in that same situation than go to a doctor who is not living that life.

David Hirsch: That’s a great point, surround yourself with people that have been there and done that.

Peter Morici: And take their advice and see what’s worked. And there’s no one set answer for everything. Listening to people who’ve gone through it before is unbiased, because that person not making money off your situation. Other factors are some doctors are running up bills on people. I know people spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on treatments, STEM cell replacements, all kinds of stuff.

David Hirsch: If you’re a parent who’s concerned, you’ll do anything,

Peter Morici: You’ll do anything. And that’s what these people do. They’ll go into debt. They’ll fly their kids to this specialist or that specialist. And a lot of times these things can backfire, because sometimes they try too many things. Some will introduce zinc or vitamin B or whatever—you need to be on it for three days, see how it works. If you have a reaction to it, then that’s what’s causing it. If you give him all of a sudden 15 supplements and they have a reaction, you don’t know which is causing that reaction. So there’s a lot of things that are common sense, but common sense is not that common.

David Hirsch: As simple as that is. So why did you agree to be a mentor father as part of the Special Fathers Network?

Peter Morici: Well, I already have been with a mentor on line, and been part of a lot of groups, because that’s where I learned what I learned. I then would pass it on other people. In fact, I just got a text message from a doctor who’s nationally known last week, asking me a question about what I did when my son headbanging. What would solve that problem? Well, chelation solved that problem when he was banging his head.

David Hirsch: So is there anything else you’d like to say before we wrap up?

Peter Morici: Just that you can’t give up. A lot of people say, “Oh, this is the way my child’s going to be.” There are a lot of people who go into acceptance, acceptance, acceptance. I am not one of the people that accepts things. I want to really make a difference. There’s always a solution to a problem.

David Hirsch: Yeah. Well, you’re reminding me about somebody that we’ve met or spent some time with last month, Dick Hoyt, who is also a Special Fathers Network mentor father. And the Team Hoyt motto is, “Yes, you can.” Which is to say, “Never give up. Don’t settle.” Which is what you were just saying in another way.

Peter Morici: Yeah. I ended the pleasure of reading the Hoyt brothers. The father has been on “HBO Sports” and “60 Minutes.” I mean, he is phenomenal. It’s unbelievable. And this is a child with cerebral palsy, quadriplegic, and nonverbal, but he graduated from college. That’s extremely impressive. He talks through a computer. That’s the kind of thing where they didn’t give up. They didn’t accept his situation. They thought, “We can make this better.” And he’s a college graduate.

David Hirsch: Living proof.

Peter Morici: It’s a great example.

David Hirsch: So if somebody wants to get information on the chelation protocol or contact you, how would they go about doing that?

Peter Morici: My email is my initials, pwmcon2@yahoo.com. Always willing to help. I have time on my hands these days. I get a lot of text messages and sometimes some backers. I’m pretty well known. I really enjoy helping people, and people are very thankful.

All around the world, actually. That’s the key. It’s not just like the United States or locally here. It’s people emailing me from India or Australia or all over the world. One out of five children being diagnosed with something, it’s an epidemic, and it’s being caused by something, and it’s not getting any better.

David Hirsch: Well, Peter, thank you for taking the time and many insights. As a reminder, Peter’s just one of the dads who’s agreed to be a mentor father as part of the Special Fathers Network, a mentoring program for fathers raising a child with special needs. If you’d like to be a mentor father, or are seeking advice from a mentor father with a similar situation to your own, please go to 21stcenturydads.org.

Thanks again, Peter.

Peter Morici: Thank you, David. Thank you. And thank you for your organization. A superior group of people and volunteers that make this happen and that benefits many people all over.

Tom Couch: The Special Fathers Network is a dad to dad mentoring program for fathers raising children with special needs. Through our personalized matching process, new fathers with special needs children connect with mentor fathers in a similar situation.

It’s a great way for fathers to support fathers. Sometimes the mentor father is just there to answer a few questions. Sometimes they become good friends. It’s a proven support system for new fathers with special needs kids. If you’re a father looking for support, or if you’re a dad who’d like to offer support, go to 21stcenturydads.org.

The Special Fathers Network podcast was produced for 21st Century Dads by Couch Audio.