Last year, with Slim struggling in the first grade and before we went on the Daytrana patch, I hit the ol' world wide web to search for some ideas. I hit on the Feingold Diet Program and wham! It all seemed to make sense. I mean THESE PEOPLE UNDERSTOOD! I quickly joined and when my Shopper's Guide came in the mail, I began to clean out the pantry.
The Feingold Program eliminates many nasty bad boys from the diet. Most of these things are artificial colors, artificial preservatives, artificial sweeteners, and artificial flavorings. It is an excellent program with a wonderful support network and I am not doing it justice here. So please, if you are interested, go take a look around their website. Watch the videos, read the overviews, and give it a shot. They are really wonderful and I would not be where I am now or have the courage to try these things myself without them.
We had pretty good success on Feingold. We were slapping the Daytrana on his ass every morning and packing the lunchbox with approved breads, sandwich meats, cheeses, and chips. An approved cookie would dunk into organic milk on the occasional evening. We did well enough that his after school program commented on how wonderful he was acting. Slowly, as summer came on us and trouble eased, we slipped away from the program. One. Meal. At. A. Time. Oh, it's so easy to do.
We never tried to cut back Slim's medication on the Feingold Diet. We were just too afraid. I also never pushed the gluten-free/casein-free option. And things were okay so we kind of cruised along the denial highway.
The little voice inside my head had a few issues with Feingold. My biggest complaint is that the Shopper's Guide is full of processed food and sugar. I can remember gagging my little voice, wrapping her in a rug, and tossing her in a dark closet.
The denial highway dumped us out behind the portable buildings that housed a whole lot of don't give a damn second grade teachers. In the cactus. We're all still picking prickles out of our asses.
