The Week One Evaluation

I know that many of you following this blog just want to know, "So, did you see any changes? Is it helping?" As my husband would say, "We need more data." It was both a good week and a difficult one. I feel like the beginning of the week I began to see some pretty dramatic improvement in some areas and then later in the week some of the "old" patterns of behavior returned, perhaps even being worse. I had a long talk with his teacher on Friday and realized that some of the problems at school are more disruptive than I thought. I rememebered breezing through some of the posts on the Feingold members forum about "detox" and ignored it until Friday when I wondered what happened to my little boy! Now, there could be a variety of factors to both the positive and negative behaviors. (After all, he doesn't seem to have problems in other places such as the YMCA childcare or Sunday School). Trust me, I realize this diet is not going to solve all of my child's behavior problems. He has to grow in character and let God change his heart in many things. I also don't want to just say that positive behaviors are just because of a new diet plan. Both are absurd viewpoints and warned against in the Feingold materials. I am not trying to find an excuse for his behavior, but perhaps a reason why. Anyway, back to detox. It seems that the pattern I saw is not uncommon...for children to show improvement and then have a period of what some moms call "detox" for lack of a better word when their bodies have to adjust to the dietary changes. In addition, I also noted that in the middle of the week, he had some grapes (non-Feingold, stage one because of high salicylates) as a snack at school because a classmate brought them in to share with the class. All that to say, the jury is still out on whether this has "worked," but I will leave you with some highlights of the week.
1) Overall, he seems to be getting along better with his three year old brother...even offering to read to him, tuck him in for a nap and play swords "appropriately" for a while.
2) We had some fun making some homemade, Feingold approved foods together. Typically, he doesn't really like to help out in the kitchen.
3)One evening at the beginning of the week, my husband commented, "He actually showed some signs of self-control tonight!" We were not even on the topic of the diet at the time.
4)He was self-directed in making a really cool dragon art project for Chinese New Year, evening getting up one morning and working on it before school instead of asking to watch PBS.
5)He chose to wear jeans to school--twice This may seem little, but for a year he has refused to wear anything but elastic wasted, sporty type pants.

Stay tuned. I am excited and anxious about what this week will bring! I have so many more topics that I want to cover, too!