The Diet

After getting his school situation straightened out, I was able to focus on other issues that we could look into. So many people had raised the gluten-free, casein-free diet issue, I felt it bore some looking into. A client of mine had their child tested to discover a ton of food issues. While I couldn't afford to do that, I thought I'd see how far I could take my insurance.

I lucked out when I mentioned the issue to his play therapist. I hadn't been able to find anyone that could do anything about food allergies in the way I needed. She had found an ENT that did a ton of allergy things, and was able to diagnose her milk allergy. He was actually covered by insurance, so I gave it a whirl!

Covered by insurance - I should qualify that. While he was a covered provider, come to find out that our primary care doctor would not refer to him, so it ended up not being covered. The next PCP we tried didn't even believe in food allergies and wouldn't refer. Still working on this issue....

He had us take Em off milk from the get-go and recommended stool testing for a gluten allergy. That was a relief. Everyone else had counseled us to just try it and see if it helped. How can you "just try" something that's a major lifestyle change, expensive, and traumatic?? all this kid ate was bread or breaded!

So to be able to refer to test results that showed Yes, he has a gluten allergy, was just such a relief to me! I was able to use those to get the school to give him a gluten free diet there as well!

Within about 8 weeks on the diet, we noticed some big changes.

For the first time ever, he wrote a backwards letter and did NOT have a major meltdown over having done it wrong. He simply said "oops" and erased it and tried again. Minor though it seems, this was HUGE to us!

Oh, and his brother hit him (he's 3!) and Emerson did not immediately whack him back and start screaming and crying! Instead he ran to us and told us that Jamie had hit him. Wow!!

School reported that he was writing his name on papers! He wasn't having to trace a hi-liter in order to write anymore. His focus was sooo much better! Yay!!