Diet

Diet has been the focus of every day for a while now. About a year and a half ago we put my son on a GFCF diet. My daughter was only on it for dinner and snacks. Looking back it sounds crazy that we didn't do both but it seemed so overwhelming that I only went full force with my son. He was much worse and my daughter was making gains. I didn't know at the time that it is really an "all or nothing" diet. So by allowing my daughter to cheat-I wasn't really helping her at all. We did this for five months. My son was still nonverbal but doing well. So I decided maybe he didn't need the diet and went off it for an entire weekend. I gave him everything he wanted-crackers, cookies, bread, cheese, the works! On Monday when he went to school I still didn't see any changes. I was so excited!!! But then came Tuesday...He wasn't real happy in the morning but I thought he was just tired. Then before lunch I got a call from the school to come get him. In their words he was "miserable". The poor kid was truly miserable he was crying and probably in pain. It took weeks back on the diet to get him back to where he was and I felt terrible for giving him back the foods he had done so well without. But now at least I knew the diet was working.

Instead of going back to the GFCF diet I put him on the SCD diet. This was a tough one to wrap my head around. Now most of the foods he liked on GFCF were illegal. But to my amazement, after a day or two of eating next to nothing and feeling pretty bad he started to eat. And he liked it! I made Egg Bread with every veggie I thought would work-and he ate it. I made homemade apple and pear sauce. I steamed or boiled his meats and then started mixing the meats with veggies. And he was happy! The best part was he started to babble. Then he started making one word requests-eat,up. For the first time my son could tell me what he wanted with his voice! The only issue we had was sending snacks for reinforcers to the school. When other kids have cookies-egg bread doesn't cut it. I finally caved on giving him GFCF snacks when I got a note home that he went after a kid for his GF pretzels! I'll do another post tracking his speech but he is still making great gains. I am so proud of him!

Diet for my daughter was in a word-HUGE! I put her on the GFCF diet completely around mid April. At that point she could not tell you where she had gone during the day,even if she just got home. She had a lot of echolalia. And if she wanted juice she wouldn't ask for it. She would basically just yell "Juice!" to me. She was making gains but was still struggling with a lot of her issues. So on the diet she went. About a month and a half later the kids were off for Spring Break. My mother and I took the kids to the park. Her language was really good and we pointed out the animals and she loved the kites some kids were flying. It was a great day and I was so happy with her speech. Then we decided to go again two days later. In the car she asked if we were going to see the baby sheep again. And she talked about the kites. Wow! She had never talked like that before. My mother and I were looking at each other acknowledging this new skill. The echolalia seemed to gone as well. She was typical that day like every other kid there. From that point on she just got better and better. She potty trained without an issue after I had been trying for so long to train her. Before she never cared if she was wet or dirty. Now she announced she had to go and she was potty trained! The only signs that she still isn't 100% recovered are that she will sometimes flap if she is overtired or overexcited sometimes. And she still has some GI issues. She unfortunately has the autistic gut-diarrhea that was almost impossible to get under control. This was something that got worse as time went on. But as long as she is on the diet, she is okay. I hate to think where my kids would be if we hadn't started the diet.