Birthday's can be hard on the gluten, casein free folk in our family! Cake is the one of the yummiest inventions I have every discovered and I haven't met too many kids who don't love cake too!! So what happens when you go gluten and casein free? Well I have done some experimenting as the problem comes up more often than you would realize. Not only do you need an option for your own kids birthdays, you also need a solution when they go to other kids birthday parties!!
I tried baking my own cakes from scratch, but they just didn't cut it, nothing horrific, just not that great. OK so even my chocolate crazed kids wouldn't even finish the cake! Then we tried a Bob's Red Mills gluten, dairy free chocolate cake mix, home run with everyone in the family!! OK, it is not the cheapest cake mix out there, but sometimes it just doesn't matter. When it is your child's birthday you want to be able to give them a yummy cake! The really funny part is how much the regular folk love this cake too! I did get a little smarter this year with Chase's party, I made a regular cake and his cake. The other boys all had the regular cake so then there was lots of left overs after the party for my guys and I saved some $$$.
Next time I will share how to make the best chocolates and chocolate icing so no one feels deprived!
Pamela
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Sunday, June 7, 2009
Living with a sugar junkie!
Living with a sugar junkie can be very scary! I know because I am a reformed sugar junkie myself! Anything sweet was my weakness, didn't matter what form it came in I loved it!! I drank coke and ate candy whenever I could! Every time I would start to crash I would be searching for my candy or coke or ice cream or .... (the list is endless). I recently gave up processed sugar and I was shocked at how much better I felt! It was even easier to quit than I thought it would be. My moods very quickly evened out and I wasn't getting wild energy swings anymore!
My problem is that Chase is an even bigger sugar junkie than I ever was! This boy takes the quest for sugar to a whole new level. Yesterday we all went to the town fair for his birthday. He started the day with an energy drink, then went on to downing 3 Arizona's! As I am lecturing him on self-control he informs me that they are simply a fruit juice drink so it is OK. He doesn't seem to care that they have 24 grams of sugar each (only half what is in a can of coke but still a lot of sugar). Then there was the birthday cake and who knows what else that I didn't see.
We do try very hard to limit his junk intake but he goes out of his way to sneak anything he can get his hands on. He even resorts to eating straight out of the sugar bowl when he can't find anything else (yuck)! Just what an ADHD kid needs, straight sugar! All we can do at this point is fill him full of probiotics (we take Theralac) so we stop the massive yeast growth that must be happening in his body with all that sugar. The probiotics are brilliant since the yeast overgrowth can cause so many symptoms like...
abdominal gas
headaches
migraines
excessive fatigue
cravings for alcohol
anxiety
cravings for sweets
inability to think clearly or concentrate
hyperactivity
mood swings
diarrhea
constipation
hyperactivity
itching
acne
eczema
depression
sinus inflammation
dizziness
poor memory
persistent cough
earaches
low sex drive
muscle weakness
irritability
learning difficulties
sensitivity to fragrances and/or other chemicals
cognitive impairment
thrush
athletes foot
sore throat
indigestion
acid reflux
chronic pain
Pretty frightening list! The problem starts with these kids when they end up taking antibiotics, due to ear or throat infections and then the sugar just gives the yeast a happy place to grow.
Maybe a sugar intervention will be in our future.
Pamela
My problem is that Chase is an even bigger sugar junkie than I ever was! This boy takes the quest for sugar to a whole new level. Yesterday we all went to the town fair for his birthday. He started the day with an energy drink, then went on to downing 3 Arizona's! As I am lecturing him on self-control he informs me that they are simply a fruit juice drink so it is OK. He doesn't seem to care that they have 24 grams of sugar each (only half what is in a can of coke but still a lot of sugar). Then there was the birthday cake and who knows what else that I didn't see.
We do try very hard to limit his junk intake but he goes out of his way to sneak anything he can get his hands on. He even resorts to eating straight out of the sugar bowl when he can't find anything else (yuck)! Just what an ADHD kid needs, straight sugar! All we can do at this point is fill him full of probiotics (we take Theralac) so we stop the massive yeast growth that must be happening in his body with all that sugar. The probiotics are brilliant since the yeast overgrowth can cause so many symptoms like...
abdominal gas
headaches
migraines
excessive fatigue
cravings for alcohol
anxiety
cravings for sweets
inability to think clearly or concentrate
hyperactivity
mood swings
diarrhea
constipation
hyperactivity
itching
acne
eczema
depression
sinus inflammation
dizziness
poor memory
persistent cough
earaches
low sex drive
muscle weakness
irritability
learning difficulties
sensitivity to fragrances and/or other chemicals
cognitive impairment
thrush
athletes foot
sore throat
indigestion
acid reflux
chronic pain
Pretty frightening list! The problem starts with these kids when they end up taking antibiotics, due to ear or throat infections and then the sugar just gives the yeast a happy place to grow.
Maybe a sugar intervention will be in our future.
Pamela
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
The Challenges of Being Organization
Organization is not my strong suit to say the least!! I can honestly say that I am organizationally challenged! Now how does the organizationally challenged manage to teach her ADD and ADHD kids to be organized?! It is like a toddler trying to teach adults to drive a tractor trailer!! I really do try hard to be organized and I start off well, but it goes rapidly downhill. Then there is also the fact that when I do achieve some sort of organization, others in this house declare war on it and wreck any progress we have made!
Well imagine my shock last night when I happened upon Ashlynn's planner for school and it was perfectly organized!! She had all her homework listed, she had her extra stuff in there and she had her workout schedule there too!! I just about cried. I know how hard this is to do for me let alone for her with her ADD!! Maybe I can learn from her!
Pamela
Well imagine my shock last night when I happened upon Ashlynn's planner for school and it was perfectly organized!! She had all her homework listed, she had her extra stuff in there and she had her workout schedule there too!! I just about cried. I know how hard this is to do for me let alone for her with her ADD!! Maybe I can learn from her!
Pamela
Monday, June 1, 2009
I am getting to spend the day with Kolton who is home sick today! We are snuggling on the couch and watching "Bolt" (again)! Kolton gets sick a lot, which always freaks me out. Ash and Chase were sick when they were small, all the normal stuff like ear infections and throat infections. Luckily they grew out of it and have been very healthy. Kolton since birth will suddenly spike a fever of 104 to 105 completely out of the blue. There usually aren't any other symptoms to go with the fever. When he got so sick at 3 it scared us to death! He was in hospital for over a month, they took out his appendix and he had another procedure to put a pick line in to feed him. He had a rare thing called HSP (couldn't possibly spell the full name). It was his body's autoimmune reaction to something. His head swelled so much he couldn't see, he couldn't walk, his intestines shut down. The doctor's at Sick Kids told us that normally when a child gets HSP they get 1 or 2 symptoms, are sick for a few days and then they are fine. Kolton got every symptom to the max, they said they never see such a severe case.
The reason I am sharing this is because it seems like he has a very strange immune system which I believe is somehow related to his Asperger's. I believe that all of these kids with ADD, ADHD and Autism have sensitive systems and they can't handle all of the crap in our environment, our food etc... I don't have a degree in anything that would qualify me to know what the heck I am talking about, but sometimes common sense can tell us so much more!
Well back to snuggling and "Bolt"!
Pamela
The reason I am sharing this is because it seems like he has a very strange immune system which I believe is somehow related to his Asperger's. I believe that all of these kids with ADD, ADHD and Autism have sensitive systems and they can't handle all of the crap in our environment, our food etc... I don't have a degree in anything that would qualify me to know what the heck I am talking about, but sometimes common sense can tell us so much more!
Well back to snuggling and "Bolt"!
Pamela
Friday, May 29, 2009
Life with Asperger's
Wow I had no idea that living with a child with Asperger's could be so interesting! Kolton is so smart about certain things. He has such an engineer's brain and can think things through 20 years down the road. Then he shocks you with the fact that he doesn't even know what the kitchen sink is, he calls it the cleaning bin!
His anxiety is the hardest part for me to deal with. He is so anxious about everything!! Whenever it is windy he thinks it is a tornado, when the fire alarm goes off when I am cooking he stands outside (with the dog, maybe the dog has asperger's). He is convinced that there are ghosts in our house and that someone will come and kidnap him. He is terrified of bees/wasps and can run like the wind when he sees one, yet he gets stung every year at least 6 times.
The social part of life is difficult for him! I remember taking him and his best friend Shannon to a baby reading and singing group when they were 2, what a shock. Every child in the room was listening to the stories and singing the songs and dancing. Kolton sat on my lap doing nothing except looking like I was torturing him. When he joined Beavers I watched while he just did his own thing, he would not actually talk to anyone or participate. He does have some friends, so long as they are willing to do what he wants to do. He seems to find the other kids who have the same obsessions as he does.
Then there is the obsessions! Kolton's first obsession was anythings to do with trains, this one lasted for the first 3 years. Then daddy introduced him to Star Wars!! The obsession was all consuming for the next 3 years, our whole life revolved around Star Wars. That was all he talked about, played with and watched. He would even hum Star Wars theme music in his sleep!! For Halloween when he was 4 I had got him a cool Buzz Lightyear costume (pre Star Wars). I insisted that he had to use the costume we had once he got obsessed with Star Wars much to his dismay. During the school Halloween parade people would go "there's Buzz Lightyear" and he would reply "I'm Luke Skywalker"!! These days his obsessions change but they are intense. His current obsession is Webkinz, there are 30 Webkinz now living with him in his bedroom!
Kolton's other Asperger trait is the non-stop talking about what he wants to talk about! He can't seem to grasp that he just talks over others. He has no interest in talking about what anyone else wants to talk about. He just doesn't pick up the social cues that people are giving him. He even talks all night long while he sleeps every night! This is definitely and area that we are focusing on with him!
Routine is so important to him! If the teacher changes anything at school it throws him off for the whole day! And if we do things differently at home he gets so upset. If we go on vacation he is fine for about 2 days and then he wants to come home and see his stuff, even if we are at Disney World!
I have learned so much from living with Kolton, patience being the main one! All of my kids are teaching me so many life lessons! I certainly can't talk to them about how great these life challenges are for teaching them and then get upset when life challenges me!!
Pamela
His anxiety is the hardest part for me to deal with. He is so anxious about everything!! Whenever it is windy he thinks it is a tornado, when the fire alarm goes off when I am cooking he stands outside (with the dog, maybe the dog has asperger's). He is convinced that there are ghosts in our house and that someone will come and kidnap him. He is terrified of bees/wasps and can run like the wind when he sees one, yet he gets stung every year at least 6 times.
The social part of life is difficult for him! I remember taking him and his best friend Shannon to a baby reading and singing group when they were 2, what a shock. Every child in the room was listening to the stories and singing the songs and dancing. Kolton sat on my lap doing nothing except looking like I was torturing him. When he joined Beavers I watched while he just did his own thing, he would not actually talk to anyone or participate. He does have some friends, so long as they are willing to do what he wants to do. He seems to find the other kids who have the same obsessions as he does.
Then there is the obsessions! Kolton's first obsession was anythings to do with trains, this one lasted for the first 3 years. Then daddy introduced him to Star Wars!! The obsession was all consuming for the next 3 years, our whole life revolved around Star Wars. That was all he talked about, played with and watched. He would even hum Star Wars theme music in his sleep!! For Halloween when he was 4 I had got him a cool Buzz Lightyear costume (pre Star Wars). I insisted that he had to use the costume we had once he got obsessed with Star Wars much to his dismay. During the school Halloween parade people would go "there's Buzz Lightyear" and he would reply "I'm Luke Skywalker"!! These days his obsessions change but they are intense. His current obsession is Webkinz, there are 30 Webkinz now living with him in his bedroom!
Kolton's other Asperger trait is the non-stop talking about what he wants to talk about! He can't seem to grasp that he just talks over others. He has no interest in talking about what anyone else wants to talk about. He just doesn't pick up the social cues that people are giving him. He even talks all night long while he sleeps every night! This is definitely and area that we are focusing on with him!
Routine is so important to him! If the teacher changes anything at school it throws him off for the whole day! And if we do things differently at home he gets so upset. If we go on vacation he is fine for about 2 days and then he wants to come home and see his stuff, even if we are at Disney World!
I have learned so much from living with Kolton, patience being the main one! All of my kids are teaching me so many life lessons! I certainly can't talk to them about how great these life challenges are for teaching them and then get upset when life challenges me!!
Pamela
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Gulten Free, Casein Free
So how do completely change the eating habits of a whole family without total mutiny?! Let me tell you, they were not thrilled with the changes I wanted to make and I was not thrilled with the idea of making the changes. In fact I was completely overwhelmed with the whole concept. I had no idea that gluten was in just about everything, even things like make-up, glue on envelopes, play-doh, it goes on and on and on!! Starting with one meal at a time was a sanity saver for me and it is not good to go cold turkey as it is too hard on the kids! Going to our local health food store was easy as they have a whole gluten free section and most large grocery chains have a health food aisle.
We started with changing breakfast for a week then adding in dinner and then lunches and then snacks. I did find some cool cook books for cooking gluten and casein free. Also Clean Eating and the Looney Spoon series also have a lot of great recipes without gluten or dairy. Larry and I also decided to eat the same diet so that we weren't eating forbidden foods in front of the kids.
Of course there was some very unhappy kids in our house to begin with, actually Kolton told me I was ruining his life. Chase was cheating whenever he got the chance and of course his friends at school thought I was torturing him and kept giving him the forbidden foods. His teacher could tell when he had cheated at lunch as he came back to class and just sat with his head on his desk! The easiest way to get the teenagers on board was to take advantage of the cheating. Whenever they cheated they usually felt horrible afterwards! Pretty soon they put two and two together and realized that cheating was not worth how it made them feel. Now they tell others how great the diet is and suggest that they should try it. Of course there are still temptations, but overall they stick to the diet.
As hard as it was to get this going, it got easier quickly. I also am thrilled when one of the kids teachers or activity leaders comes to us and tells us what a huge positive difference they see in my kids! I think it is worth a try, if it doesn't work then you simply go back to eating the way you did before!
Pamela
We started with changing breakfast for a week then adding in dinner and then lunches and then snacks. I did find some cool cook books for cooking gluten and casein free. Also Clean Eating and the Looney Spoon series also have a lot of great recipes without gluten or dairy. Larry and I also decided to eat the same diet so that we weren't eating forbidden foods in front of the kids.
Of course there was some very unhappy kids in our house to begin with, actually Kolton told me I was ruining his life. Chase was cheating whenever he got the chance and of course his friends at school thought I was torturing him and kept giving him the forbidden foods. His teacher could tell when he had cheated at lunch as he came back to class and just sat with his head on his desk! The easiest way to get the teenagers on board was to take advantage of the cheating. Whenever they cheated they usually felt horrible afterwards! Pretty soon they put two and two together and realized that cheating was not worth how it made them feel. Now they tell others how great the diet is and suggest that they should try it. Of course there are still temptations, but overall they stick to the diet.
As hard as it was to get this going, it got easier quickly. I also am thrilled when one of the kids teachers or activity leaders comes to us and tells us what a huge positive difference they see in my kids! I think it is worth a try, if it doesn't work then you simply go back to eating the way you did before!
Pamela
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Research shockers
So where do I go from here, the Internet of course!! I started surfing anything I could find on the Internet and reading any books I could get my hands on. I was mainly researching Autism/Asperger's since I had the other 2 well managed, but I knew very little about Autism. During my reading though I noticed a pattern of talking about ADAH and Autism together. I also noticed there was a fair amount of overlap of symptoms. I started to realize that whatever I tried for Kolton I could try for the other 2 as well.
An easy first step was to add quality supplements. We take so many supplements we look like a bunch of 90 year old's with our pill cases. The one thing that kept popping up during my research was about diet changes. I dismissed it right off top because taking all gluten and casein (dairy) out of their diet seemed impossible. I also knew that with 2 teenagers, there would be a huge challenge to get them to cooperate. I also doubted that I could get Kolton to go along with the diet as he is one of the world's pickiest eaters!! However the more I read the more the diet changes kept coming up. I decided that we needed to give it a try but I didn't know how to start. The best information I found on changing the diet was on a website called www.talkingaboutcuringautism.org . There is a whole section on changing the diet slowly, it would have been hard to do it all at once. So we started our changes one meal at a time, breakfast was the easiest and supper wasn't too hard. Lunch was a challenge and of course the biggest challenge was getting Chase to not cheat whenever he could. Kolton wasn't as difficult as I thought since he must follow all rules and the diet was a new rule!!
Despite almost hoping that the diet wouldn't work so I wouldn't have to keep doing it, it was a huge success!! Each one had a different positive reaction which surprised me. I always thought Kolton had bad rough skin, but with the diet change his skin went smooth and he stopped itching all the time. The dark circles under his eyes disappeared and the biggest change was that he started looking us in the eye for the first time!! Ashlynn used to have headaches almost daily and they disappeared! The biggest shock for me was that Chase came back from space and now he talks constantly and he is completely present. We also were able to get him down to the lowest dose possible of his medications!!
We have been on the diet for over a year now and it is just a part of our life. I'll tell you more later on how the teenagers got on board with our restrictions! They even tell others now about the diet and suggest that they should try it too!
Pamela
An easy first step was to add quality supplements. We take so many supplements we look like a bunch of 90 year old's with our pill cases. The one thing that kept popping up during my research was about diet changes. I dismissed it right off top because taking all gluten and casein (dairy) out of their diet seemed impossible. I also knew that with 2 teenagers, there would be a huge challenge to get them to cooperate. I also doubted that I could get Kolton to go along with the diet as he is one of the world's pickiest eaters!! However the more I read the more the diet changes kept coming up. I decided that we needed to give it a try but I didn't know how to start. The best information I found on changing the diet was on a website called www.talkingaboutcuringautism.org . There is a whole section on changing the diet slowly, it would have been hard to do it all at once. So we started our changes one meal at a time, breakfast was the easiest and supper wasn't too hard. Lunch was a challenge and of course the biggest challenge was getting Chase to not cheat whenever he could. Kolton wasn't as difficult as I thought since he must follow all rules and the diet was a new rule!!
Despite almost hoping that the diet wouldn't work so I wouldn't have to keep doing it, it was a huge success!! Each one had a different positive reaction which surprised me. I always thought Kolton had bad rough skin, but with the diet change his skin went smooth and he stopped itching all the time. The dark circles under his eyes disappeared and the biggest change was that he started looking us in the eye for the first time!! Ashlynn used to have headaches almost daily and they disappeared! The biggest shock for me was that Chase came back from space and now he talks constantly and he is completely present. We also were able to get him down to the lowest dose possible of his medications!!
We have been on the diet for over a year now and it is just a part of our life. I'll tell you more later on how the teenagers got on board with our restrictions! They even tell others now about the diet and suggest that they should try it too!
Pamela
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