Thanks. His problem behaviors only occur at home, though. Is it possible for him to compensate for these things in other environments? It seems if it were a food sensitivity, he'd have behavior issues across the board. If you've read some of my other posts, you know I'm totally grasping at straws here.
My 10 year old dd has a huge number of food allergies and sensitivities, and yes, they did impact her behavior when she was young and we hadn't fully figured out the full list of what she needed to avoid. However, there would have been no way she coud have held it together during a school day and then fallen apart at home..... and she has other very real and obvious social/medical symptoms. OTOH.... Just a small gotcha.... a food reaction that typically occurs, for instance 20 minutes after a chil eats when the food hits the stomach.. might not ever occur at school if the food that's the issue isn't being eaten at school.
We untangled her food issues through several years of testing through doctors as well as paying close attention to what she ate and her reactions at home. If you have any concerns about possible food sensitivities, I'd recommend simplifying your child's diet (which is different than an elimination diet) and keeping a very close diary of foods eaten, behaviors noted and physical symptoms noted (hives, stomach pain, lethargy, coughing, throat feeling swollen, swollen facial features, odd bowel movements, stomach pain, constipation etc) PLUS the day/time OSHA eats and the day/time the reactions/behaviors occur. You also need to keep track of ingredients in things like toothpaste and inert ingredients in medicines etc. IF there is a food allergy or sensitivity, you'll eventually see patterns in the reactions.
Re simplifying her diet, what I am referring to is not withholding any foods at first, but limiting the number of ingredients at each meal and limiting the amount of processed foods so that you can really see track and know what foods she's eating.
I also want to add.... every food we saw a pattern with and were concerned about we followed up with allergy testing, which was without a doubt positive for our dd. In following online while wading through the years we spent testing and trialling foods I have read lots of stories of parents who were so desperately hoping for any kind of help with behavior that they easily fell into thinking it had to be food issues. I do think it's worth a close look through a food journal for anyone who has concerns, but I also think there is a lot of hype out there too so unless I was seeing some kind of correlation I wouldnt pursue it.
Last thing I'll add... my dd also has a seizure disorder, and the first indication was in behavior. It was several years and only after her symptoms accelerated that we realized she was having seizures. There were indications of that in her food diaries but the issue wasn't related to food so we didn't catch it from the journals.... But I do think that keeping a detailed behavior journal might be helpful even if it's not food but something else driving the behaviors, when you're seeing differences in behavior at different times.
Hope that helped a little bit, and made some sense!
polarbear
