Food and developmental delays
My twin boy are now 5 years old and when they were around the age of 3 we were told they had global developmental delay. Along with them being developmental delayed (speech being the biggest issue) they also have extreme anxiety issues, zero impulse control and sensory processing disorder. We have done countless things to help them over the past few years but the thing that has made the biggest difference was changing their diet.
A year into taking my kids to occupational Therapy, speech therapy, special education classes, chiropractors, and ENT doctors and audiologists, we took my boys to a behavioral psychologist. I picked this behavioral psychologist because her practice was to find the root cause of the problem and not just put a diagnosis on a child and then try and treat them for that diagnosis. After meeting with her for about an hour and her seeing my boys she looks to me and says, “those dark circles under their eyes and them being so thin, they aren’t healthy. Have you thought about changing their diet?” I was kind of taken aback thinking my kids were not well and something was more wrong than just them being delayed. The psychologist let me know that the delays could because they are malnourished and that just about broke my heart. How could my kids be malnourished when I thought I was feeding them what I thought to be healthy food? My boys had always been good eaters and I had always tried to avoid giving them overly processed foods. I myself have already been gluten free for over a year since I was reacting so poorly to it, you would have thought I would have figured maybe food would be an issue for my kids as well. However, because I do have an issue with gluten, the psychologist let me know that my kids probably also have an issue with it and we should try removing for at least a month. She advised that removing dairy and anything with food dyes in them would also be a good idea as well since both items can cause a reaction in many children.
We removed gluten, dairy, and food dyes the next day after I had met with the psychologist. The first few weeks of eliminating these items from their diet were tough. No more goldfish, peanut butter sandwiches, string cheese, and yogurt did not go well. They were going through withdrawals and it was not pretty! About 3 weeks into the new diet, we realized that they also started reacting to peanut butter and things with corn in them so those items are now gone from their diet as well. So if you are trying to keep track of what my kids can eat, it’s not much….We are basically on the Paleo diet over here!
As challenging as it is to have such a limited diet, here is the changes we have seen from removing gluten, dairy, food dyes, corn and peanut butter from their diet:
Sleeping through the night
Before changing their diet, my boys were taking turns waking in the night. They would wake several times in the night or wake up at 2am and never go back to sleep. Many times when they would wake up they would seem to be in pain or almost hyper. They would do things like thrash around and couldn’t be still or they would just be screaming and nothing I could do would calm them down. It was terrible. As a parent watching your kid go through that and then know it was food that was causing that just kills me.
Most nights now, my boys will go to bed like champs and sleep through the night 80% of the time. If they wake now, it’s because they pooped in their pull up (still working on night potty training here), they need water, or because they share a room and they are being brothers and playing and goofing around when they shouldn’t be. No one is waking up and screaming in pain anymore and that is amazing!
Potty Trained
I worked on getting my boys potty trained for about 1.5 years. They refused to do it. You would have thought the potty chair was made of hot lava and it was going to kill them if they used it! I stopped pushing it on them and figured they would do it when they were ready since you can’t force anyone to go to the bathroom if they aren’t willing.
It was about 10 weeks into their diet change that all the sudden something clicked and they decided they were going to go potty on the toilet. There was very little effort that I had to do from that point on to train them to use the bathroom. They just seemed to know when they should go and would go. I couldn’t believe it!
Gained Weight
My little guys were just that, little guys. They were so incredibly skinny. I figured for the longest time that they were just so thin because they were so active all the time. You could see their ribs and and their faces were thinner than what they should be for a 4 year old.
Once we changed their diet, their bodies started healing are now taking in nutrients. Both of their faces are fuller, have cute little buddha bellies and are able to keep their pants up better! I still have very slender little guys, but they look less like little skeletons. I would even go as far to say that they have little muffin tops when I see them just chilling in their little underwear!
Dark circles under eyes disminished
The sad dark circles that haunted my boys face were the dead give away to our psychologist that something was wrong with them. I too have always been plagued with terrible darks circles under my eyes as far as I can remember and chalked their dark circles to unfortunate genetics. Well, the genetic factor probably was me passing my gluten intolerance onto my kids and I really shouldn’t have such dark circles under my eyes either. Fortunately kids are more resilient than adults and once their diet was changed those dark circles mostly disappeared (Mine on the other hand are being a little more stubborn on sticking around incase you were wondering!).
So much more aware
Their awareness that came with changing their diet was nothing short of amazing. My boys used just kind of be in their own little world most of the time before. They would have this glaze over their eyes that made you wonder where their mind was at and if they even cared what their surroundings were. So many people that see my kids now say they seem to have come out of haze! And honestly , that’s the best way to put it…they have come out of the haze. All the brain fog they were experiencing from the food they were eating is gone and they are realizing there is a whole new world around them!
Speech increased
Speech has been my boys biggest issue. Before changing their diet both their receptive and expressive language were severely delayed. Since changing their diet, their receptive language has increased dramatically. Their expressive language has increased as well, especially for one of my boys but that is coming along a little more slowly. Rome wasn’t built in a day, so I can’t expect my boys to develop their language skills over night. Any progress is progress and I am happy with that. I also think they have gotten away with not needing to talk for some many years that it is a struggle for them to understand why they need to use words, especially when you have an identical twin brother that you have a secret language with!
Calmed down
I still have 5 year old boys so I am not saying my kids turned into calm little angels after adjusting what they ate, but my kids were CRAZY before I changed what food they were getting. They constantly were needing to move and destroy anything that was in their path…I was basically living with 2 little tornados! I don’t even know if I was ever able to get them to sit for more than 20 mins before I changed their diet. I was so tired and I was constantly in fear for their lives since they were always getting into something! Shortly after I cleaned up their diet they were less like tornados and more like a gentle thunderstorm. They will actually sit and watch a whole 90 minute movie, they don’t feel like they need to destroy everything they come in contact with and will play with a certain toy or activity for at least 30 minutes now!
I have learned so much over the past year on how much food can affect a child’s mood, behavior and development. Processed foods and my kids do not get along and I am doing my best to repair the damage that they have done. I am so glad we are making some significant improvements in so many areas of their lives by cleaning up their diet but it pains me a little to know a lot of their delays could be caused by something as simple as food they were given. I feel my boys are a more extreme case of how food intolerances can affect your child, but if you feel your child has a behavior or learning issues maybe look at the food they are getting….some common culprits are dairy, gluten, soy, food dyes, and high fructose syrup.
I encourage anyone to try adjusting their child’s diet if you are seeing any types of behavior or learning issues. Obviously, I am not a doctor so I would check with your child’s doctor first before making any drastic changes to make sure it is a safe healthy choice for your family.
Have you ever made any changes to the foods your kids were getting? If so, what kind of results do you see?