The Diet

As soon as we got the official diagnosis- Dad (Rob) dove into getting the services through the school district.He talked to teachers in the special ed department at the school he works at. The lucky thing for us is Rob is a special ed teacher- which means he has attended many IEP meetings. ( IEP- stands for Individual Education Plan) He knew we could ask for anything and neogiate the details. They offered 2 - 30 minutes speech sessions at our house for the summer. We got 3 - 1 hour sessions at our house. For Robbie , this has been extremely important. Getting and keeping his attention is a struggle- so the hour really makes a difference. ABA has offered 4 - 2 hour sessions a week. This helps with following direction and not being so rigid. For example- Robbie loves to play with beads. His fine motor skills have always been very good. However he would string only 1 color together. The round blue beads- or the spiked pink beads. If you mixed them, he would become upset. 2 weeks ago Robbie was playing with the beads and stringing multiple colors and a few different shapes- in no order. While this may sound trivial to most people, for us it is a huge step toward "recovery".
While Rob has been busy getting all the services Robbie needs I have been working on changing his diet. Most people by now have heard that diet is a huge factor for children with ASD. We have eliminated artificial colors, (ex- red dye #22- what on earth is that?) high fructose corn syrup, gluten ( wheat) and casein (dairy). This is an on going challenge - especially if you want to go out to eat- but we are lucky there are a lot of alternatives. My biggest accomplishment this week has been finding an alternative to rice crispies- (after 3 tries.) Who knew rice crispies had high fructose corn syrup in them?? Needless to say- a lot of this trial and error- because some of the foods are horrible-( there is NO alternative for mac n cheese) but we're figuring it out.