Food Additives

How do they effect our children????

Here is a small story about WHY and HOW we changed our eating habits!

Our 3rd child Shayla is a very beautiful little girl, She is tall and thin with long dark hair and beautiful blue eyes. But for many months starting around the time she was 3 1/2.... She was NOT so beautiful at times, and I am not talking LOOKS! She was un-managable alot of the time (and I am not talking spirited child here, we have one of those and she was not like that!) By the time she was alittle over 4 yrs old, I couldn't take it anymore... she was mean to not only me and my husband, but other adults too, which does not fly very well in my house! I started reading more on oppositional defiant disorder. (I had in the recent past worked with several children as a PCA who had been diagnosed with ODD and had already done alot of reading and such) The Symptoms Shayla most showed were....
*Losing Temper (don't most kids...LOL!)
*Arguing with adults (ok even the spirited ones do this, but they refer to adults other than their own parents... Shayla was even hitting and being abusive to adults in our lives)
*Refusing adults requests and defying rules (I know..... lots of kids do this, but she was going beyond the norm!)
*Blaming others for own mistakes (she would trip on her own feet 5 feet away from you and turn around and punch you because it was YOUR FAULT)
*Deliberately annoying other people (OH, how she LOVED to piss of the other kids in our family)

AND our top concern was that my brother was Diagnosed with ADHD when he was 6 yrs old... He also had ODD and becaues my parents didn't do much (like when he got EXPELLED from school in 2nd grade for 'kicking the crap' out of a teacher) they just sent him to a school that dealt with ADHD.... NOT A GOOD IDEA!) His ODD slowly turned into conduct disorder which leads to getting introuble with the law.... THIS, I do NOT want for my daughter!!!!!!

OK, soooo where is this story going???????

In January we had alot of testing done at our school district. It showed her to be emotionally reactive, and have aggressive behavior. It also showed her to be VERY MILD Pervasive Developmental Problems (the VERY bottom of the Autism Specturm), and Oppositional Defiant problems. (NOTE: I have worked with special need children for 15+ years.... I don't like labels and won't allow her to be labeled until further test is/would be done)

After all of her testing, I decided to try a small diet change with her... I removed RED #40 from her diet..... it was hard at first with EASTER coming and all.... but slowly we made the change and quickly her behavior changed..... SOOOO after more and more research online, we decided to TRY very hard and cut out things like HFCS, all dyes, Preservatives, etc....
I started baking ALL of our own breads (I did this often anyways, but still bought the SANDWICH bread) We stopped buying the REG. cearals (so sad for my kids, LOL!) and only bought organic because it is the only ones to have NO crap in it!), We then moved to taking out all TRANS FAT STUFF
****SIDE NOTE**** even if it says 0grams per serving, if it says Hydrogenated oil in the ingre. THERE is TRANS FAT in it!
OK, so after months of the diet change, we are all happier, EVEN our SPIRITED #2 child Lucas is much better to be around (he hasn't thrown himself around on the floor like a limp noodle sinch school go out and we have been in charge of his diet!)
BUT the best news of all.... SHAYLA is doing much better, she still argues, but she doesn't hit and kick anymore..... She hasn't ripped her blinds off the walll since the big change of diet (thank goodness!), and She just seems happier! She is still alittle off (as some say) and alittle different than our other kids.... She talks to herself ALL THE TIME, laughs at inappropriate times, and still does some self stimming hand flapping... BUT over all, we are very happy with what a diet change did for our family!

SOOO, you want to know where to start..... here are a few small changes to try!
~Switch to preservative-free bread
~Avoid artificial colors
~Avoid High Fructose Corn Syrup

Try it for just a few weeks and keep a journal of things you find different! Then test the waters and give your child something with RED #40 in it.... (this has the biggest effect on our Shayla, I liked to test it when my husband didn't know I did it.... after she would go to bed he would say "WHAT THE HECK DID YOU FEED HER TODAY???"

If you want to read more, this is a great website to start with!
http://www.fedupwithfoodadditives.info/

If you have any questions, feel free to leave it in the comment section!