mozafamily

My son will be 6 next week and he went through a time from about 4
1/2 to 5 when we went to a "very highly recommended" private
preschool, WRONG - this teacher had all these ideas that just
because my child refused to do exactly what the other kids were
doing or what she told them to do, or sat in his seat properly, or
his eyes wondered off his page, etc etc etc that he most definately
HAD to be ADD and I should get him professional treatment(ie drugs
or reconditioning) for his own benefit, of course. That was a
nightmare for me but in the end it was also one of my biggest
eyeopeners about how the public system mostly works. Now I am lucky
enough to know that my child is wonderful healthy and as normal as
need be!
Unschooling (or whatever you want to call it) seems to deminish most
of the qualities of this ADD/ADHD disease, and now I truely believe
that it is only another label or excuse or money-making idea and not
something that truely deserves our taking hold of it as a real
thing. That being said I do believe that allergies are real and if
you have concern with a certain food you could try and remove that
food from your child's diet and see if the situation improves for
you. I don't recommend the feingold diet because it will drive
everyone more insane than needs be. I believe also that what may be
seen as an alergy is actually a deficiency of something needed to
properly digest the food in question (like needing lactace to digest
the milk sugar lactose, like in the suppliment lactaid I believe) So
sometimes a well balanced diet can make a difference. It is very big
debate because allergy people say that you crave things that you are
allergic to, but some people also say that you crave things that
give you the vitamins and minerals your body naturally need. I let
my son eat what he wants and I try to give him as healthy of options
as possible, but he also does help me do the shopping as well.
We did several horrible weeks of allergy trials with no difference
in behavior, other than being grouchier than normal because he
couldn't eat the foods that he preferred. I wouldn't really
recommend it to anyone, they do have professional allergy tests that
I think would be less excrutiating. We also tried some of
the "Natural suppliments" some of them made him sick or "wired" and
a couple of them perhaps helped a tiny bit but were hard to get him
to take because he still refuses to take tablets and notices the
taste of drops in anything! I believe the protein suppliments did
the most good and I still do make sure breakfast is a high protein
meal, but otherwise we didn't get any "miracle" results, and we
tried a lot of different things, spending a lot of $ and lots of
time reading books on the subject.
I think that "letting go" of my perfect parental expectaions of my
son has helped me the most to get past the ADD thing. If he needs to
run or be active then try and find a way for him to do that in an
acceptable way, like sports or jogging together, walking the dog,
etc. I now am really starting to believe that most of the time my
son does know what he needs and I simply need to help him get it, or
stay out of his way while he gets it himself.

J & D Fields

I agree that Feingold can turn kids into neurotic eaters! It happened to my
dd!

However, when it comes to the allergies/ food sensitivities I think
eliminating the allergen can help a lot (I'm not specifically referring to
ADD). I saw my dd's behavoiur get so explosive that people's reactions to
her were affecting her self-esteem. This really concerned me. Also she was
so HIGHLY sensitive to sounds and textures that it was really affecting her
daily life. Since being off soy she is no longer covering her ears half the
day and freaking out because the seam of her sock is off by half a
millimeter.

I don't think its the answer for all kids but when your child seems *angry*
most of the time its possible its something in their environment.

:)
Jessie