New Plan

Recently it seems like Tyler has plateaued in his development. He had been steadily moving forward, but lately it has stopped and even seemed to go backwards a bit. I've even seen a few extra SI things happening. Things that I never noticed before now. I've been wondering lately if chiropractic care has done all that's it's going to do for the moment. I've also been somewhat questioning myself in going to a chiropractor who is not used to working with kids like Tyler. Maybe we should have tried to find someone who specializes in this kind of thing. Our chiropractor is great, but I tend to think that he has not been sure how to proceed at times and is too busy to spend a great deal of time searching it out.

About a month ago I had the opportunity to hear Dianne Craft speak on The Struggling Learner. Dianne covers many different types of learners on many different sides of the learning scale. She focuses on the smart kids who have to work extra hard. She focuses quite a bit on nutrition, but also goes beyond the basics and looks into our body chemistry. She has found that nearly all the kids she sees have, at one point in their lives, had large amounts of antibiotics. (insert her disclaimer that antibiotics have saved many lives, but we need to be aware of what it can do to the gut) She has laid out a 3 month program that kills yeast overgrowth, replaces it with good bacteria, then adds in large amounts of fish oil to help the brain. I learned that 95% of serotonin is produced in the gut. Lack of serotonin makes it very difficult for children to concentrate and relax. Tyler has many of the physical symptoms of low fatty acids. Everything that Dianne made sense and seemed to tie everything together that I've been reading and hearing for the past 2 years.

Here's the thing. When the psychologist evaluated Tyler there were many things that came out that seemed to be more genetics than anything else. At least that's the way I saw it, but to her it just tied everything together. Here's what I believe. Tyler takes after his dad and his uncle (my brother) in many things. Very organized. Sensitive hearing. Prefers to play alone. Very detailed oriented. None of these strike me as anything except things that I've seen all of my life. However, I also believe that there is something else that plugging into these traits and making it look like autism. So, in theory, remove that something and we'll have a child that is a mix of two boys in one.

Maybe I'm just in denial. It's possible. Yet, I found a blog the other day that is entitled, "Hoping, not Coping". That's how I see it. Finding the answer.

I've also read a bit on the Gluten Free/Casein Free diet and how that has helped many children. I have one friend that saw dramatic improvements in her son after putting him on this diet. I have another friend that saw the diet help one of her children and not do a thing for the other. I have hesitated about GF/CF because it overwhelms me. I had heard that it is best to only start one at a time that way you know which one is helping.

Having said all of this is the background for the next three months of our lives. We will be placing Tyler on a casein free diet in conjunction with following Dianne Craft's plan to rid his body of excess yeast while adding in fatty acid. After three months of that we'll evaluate on whether or not we want to add gluten free into his life. It takes the body 6 weeks to rid itself of casein but 6 months to rid itself of gluten. Taking out gluten seems like such a daunting task that I'm glad to have a few months to get ready for it!

Maybe it will help. Maybe it won't. But in the meantime I don't think that we'll be losing anything. If nothing else we'll have more answers and know what didn't work. Hopefully we'll see improvement and know what did work.