Re: Diet transition issues

January 28, 2007

Hi Aliane,

My son will be 9 next month and has been on Dr. G's protocol for a

little more than 4.5 years now. At 5 years old, transitions are

difficult for any child; for our children, it's much, much harder.

It's really in everyone's best interest to try to make it a little

easier for them if it's possible. Between the new diet AND the change

in lunch routine, it's probably just too much. The social stories at

school are a great help. He should probably hear the social story

every day before going to the lunch room. He should start accepting

the new routine in a couple of weeks.

My son would NEVER have accepted eliminating foods without a big

fight. It would have been total misery for everyone, so we did it

gradually and without saying anything about it to him. Like Dr. G

recommends in " Do's and Don'ts of Diet " : we " played dumb " . We

eliminated milk gradually: we started by mixing the new foods with the

old ones: one part milk with one part fortified milk substitute (we

used Rice Dream at the time) and gradually eliminated the milk and

increased the Rice Dream over the space of 5 days or so. Cheddar and

gouda cheese made from sheep's milk or goat's milk is allowed and can

be found in health food stores; if you have a Trader Joe's in your

area, they have a delicious, mild, gouda-like sheep cheese called

" Shepherd's Basque " . If he likes yogurt (my son was addicted!), you

can mix it with goat or soy yogurt and eliminate the regular yogurt in

a couple of days. Most other foods were easier to substitute.

HTH,

Donna

>

> We started the diet three days ago. He's PDD-NOS, and has pretty

> severe language delays. We figured cold turkey was best, as he

> doesn't understand why he can't have his favorite foods anymore -

> assumed that it would make more sense to him to have none, versus

> eliminating one by one. He's having real problems with the change in

> the lunch routine at school (kindergarten), which have escalated from

> crying inconsolably on Monday to a temper tantrum Tuesday to

> physically lashing out with the principal Wednesday. He is able to be

> eventually calmed once removed from the lunchroom. The school

> personnel have been wonderful - they've created a social story, and

> had him do a " run-through " of the new routine, which he did well

> with, so Wednesday's outburst was unexpected. Any tips, or info would

> be a huge help. We're assuming this is part frustration, part

> withdrawal, but wondering how others have handled it, and how

> long it lasts. He stayed home today due to a very loose (pretty much

> liquid) BM this morning.

>

> Thanks, in advance...

>

> Alaine

>

January 28, 2007

We chose not to go cold turkey (my son is a *very* picky and limited

eater) and simply started slowly replacing things to see what he

would notice and what he wouldn't. My son is not GFCF so all we had

to do was replace dairy. He still eats the same stuff, just with

other products. Now I have to make his pizza's for him and I use

goat mozarella from WF. He was never a huge milk drinker and he

never really liked chocolate milk much either. I decided to give

Silk Chocolate Soy Milk to him and look out! He drinks it like mad

and I'm actually thankful he likes it because of all the nutrients it

has. I know it has sugar in it but with the choice of no soy milk

(no, he doesn't like regular soy milk) or chocolate soy milk I choose

chocolate. I also get dairy free cookies, crackers, etc. Everything

else was pretty simple since his only other food choices are chicken

nuggets and fruit. He will eat a few other things but nothing that

was too hard, for example he likes popcorn so I just get dairy free

popcorn now.

I would continue with the social stories and do your best to try to

replace what you can with other options and let him know that it's

the same but without the ingredient that can make him feel yucky.

Cheryl

On Jan 25, 2007, at 8:40 AM, alaine0617 wrote: