You are not
imagining it.
Something happened
to your child.
A clinical guide for parents who suspect something physiological
is happening to their child — and have not been able to get
anyone to take it seriously.
Authored by Dr. Zendi Moldenhauer, PhD, NP with the Arbor Health pediatric clinical team. Covers the symptom picture, why pediatrics misses it, the family-connection pattern, and a 18-question self-assessment that will tell you what to investigate next.
Arbor Health serves families across New York State — in person at our Rochester clinic, and by telehealth statewide.
There is a sentence on page 4 of this guide that
we'd want you to read first.
If you recognize three or more of these patterns in your child — especially if they appeared suddenly or worsened after an illness or possible tick exposure — your child deserves a real workup. This is not a behavioral problem. It is a clinical signal.
— From the guide, Section One
Sudden-onset OCD. Rage that doesn't match the child you know. Handwriting that deteriorated overnight. Tics that come and go in waves. A child who was fine in October and a different person by December.
These are often dismissed as anxiety, ADHD, oppositional behavior, or "a phase." In a meaningful percentage of cases we evaluate, they are driven by undiagnosed tick-borne infection — sometimes alongside strep or another immune trigger, sometimes inherited from a parent who didn't know they were carrying it. Most pediatricians are not trained to look for this. Most therapists aren't either. We are.
Five clinical sections,
one 18-question self-assessment.
The symptom picture that should make you investigate.
Twelve clinical patterns we look for — the markers most parents describe with the same phrase: my child changed overnight.
Why conventional pediatrics misses this.
Four structural reasons the workup never happens — from unreliable pediatric Lyme testing to behavioral symptoms getting routed into behavioral systems.
The family connection — and what gets passed down.
Congenital transmission of Borrelia, Bartonella, Babesia, and Mycoplasma, and the unrecognized pediatric cases we find inside households where a parent already has Lyme.
What an Arbor pediatric evaluation actually looks at.
The seven-layer workup — tick-borne panel, PANS/PANDAS clinical evaluation, autoimmune markers, immune function, gut, methylation, family history — built for children, not adapted from adult protocols.
The Arbor Healing Container — why sustainable care matters.
Why a twenty-minute visit cannot keep up with a twelve-month case, and the structure of continuity, coaching, and phased treatment that lets the right plan actually work.
Three-tier scoring with clear next steps.
After the 18-question self-assessment, your total maps to one of three bands — worth watching, comprehensive evaluation strongly recommended, or this is exactly what our pediatric program was built for.
The self-assessment at the back of the guide.
Eighteen statements organized into six groups — sudden behavior change, neurological and motor signs, anxiety and sleep, physical changes, timing and triggers, and family context. It will tell you whether what you are seeing in your child warrants a comprehensive workup.
If You Have Lyme
If you have Lyme and you have a child who isn't quite right, the question is not whether to evaluate. The question is when.
Get the guide & the self-assessment.
Free. PDF. Delivered to your inbox in under a minute.
Parents who suspect
something physiological
is happening to their child.
You've read more about PANS, PANDAS, or tick-borne illness than your child's pediatrician has. You've been told, in different ways, that you are overreading the situation. You have not been able to find a clinician who treats your observations as data instead of anxiety.
You've been handed a behavioral diagnosis without an immune workup, or a single infection test that came back negative and closed the case. Underneath all of it, you are certain something physiological happened to your child, and no one has been willing to look for it.
You are not imagining it.
If two or more of the patterns above sound familiar — or if you score in the middle or upper tier of the self-assessment — this guide will give you language for what is actually happening, and a frame for what to investigate next.
Tick-borne illness in Western New York doesn't only show up in adults. It shows up in their children, too — and it is consistently missed.
Arbor Health is a proud sponsor of the Lyme WNY 5K because the race exists to change that. We're glad you ran, and we're glad you're here.
The families we see at Arbor — and the patterns described in this guide — are the reason we built the pediatric program we built. If anything in here resonates with your child's case, the guide is yours to keep.
Send me the guide.
A clinical framework for parents. · Five sections. · One 18-question self-assessment that will tell you what to investigate next in your child's case.
