This is a great success story from Christina on the yahoo Feingold group.
My son is in 1st grade (barely 6 and the youngest in his class). He testes above
grade level in all subjects and reads as well as his 8 year old sister.
However, we had him tested at the teachers request for autism and they
officially placed him on the autism spectrum. He has a slightly modified
schedule where he gets to leave class for 30 min. and take his work to a smaller
classroom to work on it without the classroom distractions. He also has
permission to do his work laying on the carpet when he needs to.
He has been a very extreme child. He gets upset easily and cries easily about
the smallest things. He is socially immature and groups have a tendency to
completely overwhelm him. He has always loved trains and when we filled in the
aspergers questionaire I was convinced Aspergers was our diagnosis. We also have
tourettes on my side of my family (my father and brother) and have seen the
beginning of what we believe to be TS.
Back on 2 months....we started him with chelation the middle of October. Within
2 weeks, we had eye contact (where previously we had had NONE ever...), he was
calmer, able to read for content, left his trains behind and joined friends and
his sister in almost any game. He started falling asleep quickly instead of
kicking the wall for an hour each night to calm himself down. We rarely have any
temper tantrums, although he is still easily upset, he now calms down quickly.
We started soccer this year and the first couple of games resulted in him
melting down in only a few minutes and sitting out the rest of the game. You
could sometime hear him screaming 2 fields away. It was the end of soccer
season, and we had a 2 week break due to rain, and on his tenth game (the last
one of the season) it was a NEW kid. We had started "watching" artificial colors
and flavors at this point but had not started Feingold at that time. He ran when
he needed to, walked and waited for the ball to come toward him. Previously he
had never been able to slow down and would exhaust himself within 5 min chasing
the ball...and then meltdown. He played 2 quarters with NO time outs or
complaints. When it was his turn to sit out, he said "Oh man, I want to help my
team!" and then did the 4th quarter perfectly. He stopped midplay to ask a
little boy if he was okay when he fell. Usually he would leap over the hurt
child, or be oblivious to them, or worse step on them. We had never seen empathy
on the field and had only noticed some recently at home. Needless to say we were
totally amazed. The assistant coach's wife and several team moms came over after
the game and said that if they hadn't seen it themselves, they wouldn't have
believed it. They wanted to know what in the world we had done differently. I
told them about chelation and removing the artificial junk from his diet.
We went for another IEP meeting at the school last week, and although there have
been many many improvements he is still somewhat overwhelmed in group situations
school. He has difficulty sitting in his chair for more than a few min. at a
time, and interacts with most of the kids in an immature way. He is frequently
LOUD and blurts out answers instead of raising his hand. He is clumsy and most
things he picks up he drops. His handwriting is the poorest in his class. Large
motor skills he's great. He learned to ride a bike with no training wheels at 4
and is really good at soccer (now:), but small motor skills are severely
lacking. He has also suffered from eczema on his legs and arms, since he was a
baby.
He has come soooo far, but we still have more to do. I bought a copy of "Why
can't my child behave" and was furious by the end of it. I believe now that the
FDA is not on our side, but is in allegience with the food and chemical
companies! We started Feingold officially last month with Stage II...but I
wasn't seeing as much difference as I would like so 3 days ago we backed up to
Stage One. Basically we took out his grapes, raisins, apples etc. The last two
days have been intermittently HARD. He has alternated between the sweet little
boy we have come to know and being very grumpy and defiant. I am thinking that
maybe this is a salicylate withdrawal period.
I am not much of a cook but have been making most everything for him by scratch.
Luckily, he is not a picky eater and except for missing his grapes and chili, he
is doing fine. I am hoping that on this site there is a recipe list for kid safe
recipes. Changing brands has been pretty easy but we have easily spent upwards
of 500.00 switching out our foods to FG safe brands. I went a little fanatical
and just this week started eliminating detergents and toothpaste etc. I even
bought a natural bristle toothbrush!
I looked back at the Aspergers booklet I filled in, and where I checked him off
as being "highly probable Aspergers", his answers now qualify him as "not
likely". I really can't say that any of his behaviors at this point are autistic
at all. His counselor called me last week and asked what was different. He was
demonstrating eye contact and empathy and appropriate responses to most every
social scenario she tested him on. The beginning of the year he tested "little
to no eye contact" and last week he tested "normal eye contact".
I attribute his success so far to REMOVING the toxic heavy metals from his
system as well as removing all the Artificial colors, flavors and preservatives
from his diet. I expect to see more changes as we continue with Stage I. I am
looking forward to the day when they ask to remove the label of "autism" from
his classification at school.
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