Food Dyes, Preservatives, and High Fructose Corn Syrup

One of these, or all of them, are causing my child distress, and it makes me both angry and sad. I have talked about this before, but Sofia is starting to figure out the connection herself. She was over at a friend's house the other day, ate a lot of conventional sweets, which I'm sure had all three of the aforementioned items in them, and had a HORRIBLE evening. Crying, extremely anxious, horrible stomachache, her legs hurt...but she knew why. She said through her tears, "I don't think I should eat food anywhere but at home."

I'm going to have to start being more proactive about packing food for her when she goes places. I've always done that for Mikaela with her food allergies, but it looks like it is a necessity for Sofia as well. I'm glad that she sees the connection between bad food and feeling badly, though. It will help her have the confidence and courage to say, "No thanks!"

The Anxiety is Driving Me Mad

I came back here a few days ago to see where we were exactly a year ago, and the memories of awfulness came flooding back. What is it with the change of seasons?? Sofia is just a big anxious mess and has been for a few weeks now. She has tummy aches all the time, cries over little things or for no reason at all, is constantly worried about things she doesn't usually get worried about, and doesn't want me to leave her sight. I'm so grateful that it's *just* anxiety and not clothing issues as well, though. Last year was nightmarish. This is definitely hard, but we're muddling through.

And, I'm Back!

I had closed down due to not being able to post much but I've had a few requests for access so here I am again.

We are doing really well from a sensory standpoint. There are certainly moments, and sometimes days that aren't that great, particularly for Sofia, but overall things are much, much better than they have been.

Our biggest issues continue to be socks and shoes! Imagine that.

Hopefully my archives will be helpful to people looking for info and support. Please let me know if you have any specific questions.

Thanks!

Shutting This Down

Hey All! Thanks for reading and commenting over the last year and a half. I've decided I'm going to close this blog for now. I have just started working part time and feel I have very limited time to keep this up. You can still visit me at my healthy eating blog: The B.E.T.H. Approach, or at my "random thoughts on random stuff" blog at: Beth's Boring Blog.

It's been great being a part of the SPD blogger community, and I will continue reading all of your blogs. If you have a blog that is not currently on my sidebar please leave the address in a comment below and I will be sure to bookmark/follow all of them before I close this.

The support I've received on our SPD journey from you all has been amazing. Thanks so much!

~Beth

Miracle of Miracles

My child (the older one) is wearing jeans!! I was at Gap a couple of weeks ago and they had jeans on sale for $6.99 and they had slims. I thought, "I'm probably going to end up returning these, but for that price it's worth a shot." So I brought them home, casually mentioned, "Hey, there are some jeans in that bag if you want to try them on." So she did, and she LIKES them. She hasn't been able to wear jeans since she was really little, and even then she didn't like them and much preferred to wear leggings or sweats.

So I went back to Gap and bought one more pair for now and the next size up for next year. I can hardly believe the changes that have happened in a few short months. I have ideas about what has precipitated the change. I think it's partly getting older and wanting to fit in, which I have mixed feelings about. We all want our children to just be able to be themselves, but I certainly feel and cave into societal pressure on a fairly regular basis, so who am I to say that my child shouldn't?

I also think that the dietary changes we have made over the last year and a half are having a very positive impact on both my children, with their overall health and SPD. This time last year was HELL with Sofia, and this year we've just seen a touch of SPD symptoms and anxiety. Granted, the weather has been staying really warm so we haven't had to fully make the switch to closed shoes and warmer clothes, but she's been dressing appropriately for coolish weather with little complaints. And when there are complaints, I can almost always tie it to what she ate that day or the day before. Too much sugar and/or artificial colorings lead to breakdowns.

We have cleaned up our diet so much that when the kids have something really processed it manifests almost immediately in their behavior and their ability to tolerate their clothes. Twice in the last few months Sofia has had a really hard night where she got really rowdy and then grumpy, cried for no apparent reason, couldn't fall asleep, and then woke up during the night with bad leg pains. This used to happen far more often, and the two times recently have been on days when she consumed a little junk food.

I wrote more on my other blog about how we limit sugar around here.

It's really exciting to go through the fall season without any major issues. Fall and spring are usually our toughest times.