- My own realization that Dana Laake's recommendations seem haphazard compared to the Yasko approach. (See "Yasko" in my 6/30 post.)
- The consequences of sending Dana an overly long list of questions. (See "Rebuked" in my 6/30 post.)
- My husband suddenly refusing to consider any part of the DAN approach.
However, I am slowly recovering.
Back in '99, when my boss at the time gave me a choice between quitting or being fired, he told me that I'm tenacious. You bet I am. I don't like to give up on any challenge until I have run out of ideas. And that rarely happens.
Today we will give JF some cow's milk as a dietary challenge and see what happens over the course of a day. If nothing happens, my husband will insist that we give up the dairy-free diet. I'm worried that my husband won't see an effect that I see. I'm worried that I don't know enough about the potential physical and behavioral effects of cow's milk to adequately fight this right now.
Then, if and when JF is back on cow's milk, my husband will insist that we give up the probiotics that Dana Laake recommended and use yogurt instead. I know that yogurt, by definition, has at least two probiotics in it. (In Wikipedia's Yoghurt article, search for "probiotics".) Most yogurts have maybe one or two additional probiotics. The Kirkman ProBio Gold that we've been giving to JF has many more types of probiotics and at higher amounts. I believe that antibiotics cause or aggravate problems for JF and I believe the ProBio Gold has helped JF to recover from or avoid these problems. My husband doesn't agree on either point.
Most of my research so far has been from sources that my husband doesn't trust (such as DAN and Generation Rescue). I need to start researching each aspect of the DAN approach, using sources like Medline Plus, Medscape, PubMed, and Google Scholar.
I also concede that I have been somewhat daring about trying things on JF. I could argue that it comes from trusting Dana, and trusting her is no different than trusting our pediatrician, neurologist, or allergist. But perhaps we trust all of our doctors too much. We need to educate ourselves about the things that our doctors are recommending and we need to thoroughly question those recommendations.
My husband wants to use only behavioral therapies on our son. He talks about erring on the side of caution, but either way, we're taking a risk. If we don't try the biomedical approach, we're taking the risk that behavioral therapies aren't enough. If we try it, we're taking the risk that JF will miss out on social interactions because he can't eat the same foods, will lose weight from the dietary restrictions, or will otherwise suffer from something going wrong.
Pizza is a big issue here. Pizza is everywhere, and it breaks my husband's heart to remove pizza from JF's diet. I'm not kidding. He honestly believes that JF missing out on eating pizza with his peers is worse than any effect of the casein and gluten in the pizza. I've tried telling him that we can get or make a GFCF pizza, and bring it with us whenever JF goes to a pizza party, but this statement didn't seem to make any difference. I need to start looking for GFCF pizza in my local stores.
As I said to MWAM in the comments of my previous post, I know that my husband isn't fighting this just to piss me off. He is doing this because he loves our son as much as I do. We've had a lot of tension in the house lately because of this disagreement, but we still love each other. I hope my persistence doesn't sabotage that.
8 comments:
It's so hard to decide which interventions to try!
Neither my husband or I think we could pull off the GFCF diet well enough for it to make a difference. But we are trying a few things which our pediatrician says wouldn't be harmful.
I hope you and your husband can work out a compromise.
Hang in there!
Thank you!
As always I am impressed with how thorough you are in your research. There is nothing wrong with doing behavioral therapies. The ABLLS program we have used has been very important in JP's progress.
In my opinion the biomedical healed his internal issues so he could concentrate on the behavioral therapies more. But we did do both in an attempt to cover our butts.
Unfortunately, there is no cure all. Even ABA is not effective on all kids. We hedged our bets. The good and the bad about dabbling in both is that I can't pinpoint and say what has made the BIGGEST difference! But anything you do is something! Keep at it!
If it is any consolation, JP isn't following the diet and he still won't eat pizza. Usually he'll eat the cheese off the top and that is it!
I still feel that we never quite get the balance right.
best wishes
Bugga can't eat pizza either. He can't see someone else eating it either. If there's a string of cheese gooping off of it, it's all over with. :-)
I'm sorry your husband isn't on board with something that you want to try. That's really tough. While I don't have experience with DAN diets or anything like that, I do readily remember the struggles we had with getting on the same page when Bugga was first showing signs of developmental delays. Your family is in my thoughts.
It is so hard to find the right answer isn't it? there are no rights or wrongs... just different opinions and options... my husband and i have faced similar issues with my daughter and it goes without saying that we BOTH want what is best for her.
Thank you all for your supportive comments.
How is it going? What was the outcome of the milk?
It is awful with Josh and I disagree about something KayTar related. He generally defers to me, since KayTar is my full-time "job"...but occasionally he feels strongly about something and presses the issue. At those times, I always feel like he doesn't quite get the whole picture. Usually he is pushing for something that she isn't developmentally ready for (like potty training) but HE is ready for. The most difficult part of fighting for these kids is when we have to fight the fight in our own homes, you know? Ack.
Wishing you lots of luck and a system that works for JF.
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