Jenni/ GFCF Intro/ homeschooler here :) was OT- homeschooling support

[Guest guest]

Hi Jenni,

 

Thanks for your advice about my son's sensory issues and vegetarianism. I

appreciate the intention behind the suggestions. I don't want to start a whole

huge debate. I'll just say that I tried " gut healing " and the gluten-free,

casein-free diet and all it did was make my kid miserable and malnourished. And

it made me, a low-income single parent, nearly bankrupt and extremely stressed

out and unhappy. I followed it diligently for a year, meticulously monitored

everything that went into his mouth, poured over nutrition books and planned

every single meal with great care, and it in no way helped my child, in fact, it

gave him dark rings under his eyes and led to him losing weight. His tantrums

were actually worse at the end of the year than when we had started the diet.

 

I say I do not want to start a debate because when I said these things on

several autism and support lists, I was told repeatedly by GFCF devotees that I

was a bad, apathetic parent, that I was " poisoning " my child and that I was lazy

and wasn't trying hard enough, this despite the year of following the diet. A

lot (not all but a lot) of its devotees are extremely zealous about it and do

not see the added stress it can pile onto families.

 

What no one ever tells you is that kind of extreme, restricted diet is

exhausting, extremely socially restrictive (especially if you come from a

culture, like ours, that places great social emphasis on mealtimes) and most of

all, EXPENSIVE. DAN! doctors are also expensive, chelation therapy is also very

expensive, and none of it is usually covered by insurance, especially the

bare-bones one I can afford. In these tough times, it's going to get harder to

find people who can pay for these things out of pocket. Because of all these

reasons, I don't think anyone should follow the GFCF diet without an explicit

medical reason and without explicit medical guidance. I urge people to consider

that the kinds of treatments and help that are so readily suggested these days

for special kids as a default are actually accessible only past a certain level

of economic privilege. One that increasingly fewer Americans have.

 

I will say that vegetarianism has helped my son overcome his food OCD in one

regard: he love love loves animals, anything to do with animals, and having

explained to him animal-compassionate reasons for vegetarianism seems to have

inspired him to at least be a little more open minded. He is very logical, so in

the past few weeks, simply explaining to him the reasons for why we aren't

eating meat any more has seemed to help, and he is declining it on his own now,

and eating a much wider variety - and, more importantly, combination - of

veggies and foods. He even tried hummus, which is a paste made from a bean

(about which he is severely OCD), after I compared it to mayonnaise (which he

does like). I have hopes that this week I'll persuade him to try tomatoes. Maybe

next week I'll get him to try edamame. So I guess I answered my own question.

Patience and slow introduction of new varieties of food many times will get him

to expand his palate. I am learning a lot from this list though, and appreciate

everyone's thoughts.

 

Andrea