same old story

I'm wondering if the food dyes have slipped in for various reasons. Hmm, maybe it was the 5 times my 3 year old woke me up last night (a child who normally sleeps through the night every night) or the spitting, hitting, kicking and constant whining all day. All the classic signs are there, including a conversation about having chocolate cake at preschool. I'm temped to go back through old posts and check how many of the "3 year old high on dye" posts were the day after being at preschool. Praying for patience again!

Sometimes I wish I could go back to food just being food and not having to know every ingredient of everything we eat. I also finally have conclusive food allergy results back on my son. It appears that milk and soy are major problems, but not so much the wheat as we had expected. Unfortunately, watermelon and lemons are also moderate on the allergy scale, so there go a few more fun foods. So I'm in the process of re-evaluating everything on the menu. So besides my family taking up a second residence in the dug-out at the Little League field, I'm spending a lot of time just figuring out how to cook without any form of soy. I'll probably be back to posting more regularly when I come up for air in mid-June.

TGIF

I probably will not be posting as much during Little League season as my boys have games Mon-Thurs and again on Saturday. Since they alternate days and my husband is coaching 2 teams, we are really living on the go right now. I kind of wonder sometimes if it is worth all the insanity and portable dinners, but then Ben pitched 3 strike outs in a row in one inning and Alex got his first 3 hits all in one game and we can't help but celebrate.

The down sides of Little League: concession stand full of red candy, just about every kid on the team has a brightly color sport drink, and my kids sit back and watch all the other kids have their food coloring fiesta for 2 1/2 hours every night. I have stocked up on safe gum, candy, treats, and other drinks, but sometimes it gets to be a pain. At least I think we have finally seen the last of the effects of that dixie cup of Crystal Light the other night.

I'm not sure how I would survive if my son were that irritable, whiny, demanding and over-reactive on a regular basis. It makes me all the more thankful I've been able to see his REAL personality without the food dyes for the past 2 years. The contrast is so "Jekkyl and Hyde" it is hard to describe. Imagine watching your calm, loving, affectionate, smart, considerate, polite, responsible boy turn into a sobbing, cranky mess over little things like, "I can't find a ruler to do my math homework." So, here's hoping for a better dye free weekend.

Happy Mother's day to all the moms who follow.

I can only imagine..

...what my life would be like if I had not figured out the connection between food and behavior. We used to have tantrums over nothing, defiance over the basics, and all out war over the biggies like homework and chores. My children used to have wound up, hyperactive, crazy days where their ears were blocked to the sound of my voice and their engines burned at full tilt from dawn til after dusk. I used to naturally try to raise the sound of my voice to be heard over all the buzzing chaos and wound up frustrated and hoarse without any better results than if I had sat on the couch doing nothing. My oldest often hated my guts and had no qualms about telling me to my face.

Then, I started taking away the food dyes, and it got better. Now I have completely removed food dyes and I also keep 2 of my kids off apples and grapes. The salicylates (chemically similar to aspirin) seem to wire them. Now, we have an unbelievably different picture. Life is smooth. My oldest is polite, helpful, cooperative and affectionate. I can't remember the last tantrum. He appreciates little things and thanks me for them. He will hug me spontaneously and say "thanks of buying the granola bars I like" or something similarly sweet.

So in choosing the title of this post, I was absolutely thinking of the song by Casting Crowns. Freedom from food dyes is a gift from God, a kind of redemption, for my family. We live in light and peace now. No, we're not perfect, but things are soooo much better. And I really do think food dyes are a direct work of evil trying to erode families everywhere. What you do with the information is up to you. Dismiss me as crazy if you need to. I know it probably sounds too good and simple to be true. If you are skeptical, click on my links to the right. Check out the research or the other parent testimonies. Sometimes the truth is simple. If you have not tried avoiding food dyes, then you can't even imagine how much better things can be.

can food dyes make your child look bipolar?

Well, it sure did for my son. There aren't any studies that have looked at this issue, so I'm kind of going out on a limb here. But I got to thinking seriously about this after listening to Dr. Greg Keck speak at a dinner conference last night. He said how much it bothers him that people think their kids are Bipolar or ADHD when they are really still behaving normally for their age. It made me decide it's time to share more specifics about what effect food dyes really had on my son, Ben.

Ben has always been a smart, friendly, creative child. Teachers love him, he makes friends easily, and he really is an all around great kid. But he used to have a much darker side too. He used to have unpredictable bouts of anger, tantrums, rages, insults, defiance, the list went on and on. His behavior used to get really ugly some days, but only at home, never at school or anywhere with other people. He even once shouted that he wanted to blow up the house with me in it. It was really scary, even for me, and I'm trained to work with explosive children. It's a whole different thing when it's your own child going nuts.

Then I started limiting the dyes because I thought they made his brother hyper. Well, here's where it gets interesting. Ben's rages, tantrums and all that yuck, it just stopped happening. He's been off dyes completely for more than a year. Guess when the only tantrums have happened... when he's eaten food dyes. I'm serious about this. The only major outbursts (and I can count them on one hand) happened when he ate something at school or when we slipped and didn't realize there was a food dye.

The worst one was when he ate a whole plate of banana peppers. He even thought he was seeing things. I still am putting that one in the category of over-active imagination for Ben, because his "make believe" world is very real to him. I realize that's a serious psychiatric symptom, but how bizarre is it that the only 2 times he has ever complained of that, he has had big doses of food dye within 24 hours?! I've seen articles about food dyes having a neuro-toxic affect on the brain. Well there you go. I don't want to go any further down that kind of path if changing my diet is all it takes to avoid it.

I don't want to minimize Bipolar Disorder and the fact that it is a real disorder. I've worked with truly bipolar children. I think when there is a clear family history of such a disorder, that is something that needs to be assessed by a professional.

I also encourage parents to consider their child's trauma history. (I feel compelled to mention that as I'm spending 2 days at a conference on trauma and attachment.) If anything scary or dangerous has ever happened to your child, whether they remember it or not, it can affect their later behavior for years.

Ben had pieces of this too. He had too many babysitters when he as 0-2 years old. My friends kept moving and then military families were moving left and right after 911. It meant I had to keep finding new sitters for my part time work schedule. It took it's toll on Ben as an abandonment issue, even though he only went to those sitters once a week. A big part of his problem was that when I put him in his room, he freaked out because he felt like I was leaving him again. After reading Beyond Consequences by Bryan Post and Heather Forbes, I started talking to Ben and explaining what was happening. I would say things like, "I think you get scared that I'm going to leave you again and that's what makes you get so upset." This approach helped him tremendously. He really gained insight into why his feelings got overwhelming and can talk about it better without freaking out. But I still think the main freak out was food dye related, and the progress we made is largely because he is no longer experiencing toxic effects of petrochemicals. Here's a good artificial on that: How food companies fool consumers with food coloring ingredients made from petrochemicals

But the bottom line is, I feel like I rescued the great kid that Ben is, and got rid of the screaming, demon defiant mess, all by getting food dyes out of the diet. You don't have to believe me. You don't have to try it yourself. If you would rather get prescription for a stimulant, mood stabilizer, or anti-psychotic there are plenty of doctors who will oblige you in 5 minutes or less. But if it really is the fake foods we feed our kids that contribute to this, don't our children deserve to have their parents figure it out and fix it?

Please share your own stories if you have seen anything similar.