Re: What should I look for when there's a diet infringement?

[Guest guest]

Give the diet a full 6 months. By that point, you should know if its

working or not. As far as the infringement goes, I would run to the store

and get some Pepcid AC and give it to him. I would also order some

digestive enzymes, just to have on hand. I use kirkmans. I think the fact

that he is craving bread and cheese is a good sign. There are several

things that would indicate that gluten or casein is a problem; cravings,

increase in stims after an infringement, poor behavior, poor attention span,

screaming, tantrums, etc...

Try to stick with it, and be sure that you haven't overlooked foods that may

still contain casein or gluten.

a

[Guest guest]

Hi Donna,

I think that if you haven't seen any change in behavior since you started

the diet you may not see any change in behavior for gluten infringements. I

think the only thing I've noticed with my son is that his BM's are much

looser - sometimes liquid - sorry gross talk. One thing my very determined

nutritionist has hammered into me is that since we haven't seen any major

improvements in behavior change with GFCF, there are additional foods we

need to pull from his diet. After casein and gluten came chocolate and

juice, fruit and most sugar. I have seen an increase in his appetite and

much less hyperactive behavior. I see noticeable hyperness right after he

gets a dose of sugar. I always thought that was a bunch of nonsense that

sugar could make kids hyper, but for my son it is true. I believe there are

some other foods we need to pull and experiment and see what happens. A

couple I have in mind are soy, corn, tomatoes and oranges.

If you are not trying any supplements, I would recommend starting them one

at a time and playing around with the doses to see if this has any positive

effect.

Keep a detailed food diary faithfully and go over it once a week to

determine patterns. You may be surprised to see a definite link to a

problem food.

My son too has regressed this year - much more stimmy, less focused, more

hyper. Very difficult to teach a kid like this and he hasn't made much

progress educationally this year. This is one reason I decided to bite the

bullet and try this diet. I wasn't expecting any miracles, but I had hoped

to get some of this behavior under control. I actually think my son is

stimming more since we started the diet, but as someone else pointed out,

maybe that's a soothing behavior to make up for the loss of all those

opioids. Maybe the further down the road we go, the less he'll need to stim

and the more open he'll be to learning new things...

Anyway don't give up hope just yet -- your miracle may be just around the

corner...

Donna S.

> that my son's behavior began to steadily regress since December. He

> has not lost or forgotten skills, just getting more stimmy, more

> talking to himself, rigid, easily upset and perseverative. This has

> not changed since starting the diet.

>

> Anyway, we had an infringement today. My son got hold of some

> pretzels at a party when I had my back turned (changing my other

> son's diaper). I don't know how much he had before I caught him.

>

> My question: what type of indication should we look for that this

> might cause a problem for him...especially since overall I don't

> really see the diet helping? Does it mean anything that in the early

> days of the diet, my son didn't seem to miss the stuff he couldn't

> have but now is asking for bread and almost pounced on a piece of

> cheese he saw? Does that mean he really is addicted to these foods

> or just that he likes them and misses them?

>

[Guest guest]

My son was very out of control the first few weeks on the diet. What I first

started to notice was that his language was improving. He was using words

and sentences that I didn't know that he knew and plus he used them

correctly. It took about 3 months for the behavior part of it which is

something you have to work on with them. It seems after we started the diet

it was much easier to direct my son and show him the rights and wrongs

instead of before when he could not comprehend and still do what he was doing.

As for diet infringement, I don't know what you'll see because every child is

different. My son would act like he was drunk or high and laugh at me

(especially when I was upset with him), he would throw things, talk very

loud, and have no focus. Remember every child is different and I would

definitely do the diet for 3 months and document everything into a journal

that way you can always look back and see if he is gradually getting better

because that might be the case. Good luck

MA

[Guest guest]

Donna, I have been off line since Friday but we did not notice much

difference with Evan at first with infringements but for a child that did

not care for bread, he decided that he wanted it after we put him on the

diet. he kept bringing me the bag of bread for me to give him some. Evan's

improvements have been slow but they have been steady.

Betty