An experiment

I am a mother of four very fun, noisy, typical children with a supportive husband that puts up with many of my crazy ideas.  Thanks Sheldon J.   I tend to have great intentions but not always so great follow through and consistency.  I am about to attempt a change in my families diet.  With picky eaters and a man in the house I thought it might be fun to blog about my experience and track how successful we are.  Besides, the program suggests keeping a daily log of your children’s behavior so you will notice the changes.  Not like no longer pounding your sister for looking at you is a big enough change that you might miss it.  So I need to log things.  To keep me awake.     

I am using the Feingold diet in hopes to help my children focus more at school and create more peace and harmony in the home.  This diet is based on the idea that food dyes, artificial flavors, preservatives and food chemicals create allergic reactions in sensitive children and therefore cause many of the learning difficulties, ADD, Autism, mood disorders that we are seeing in so many of our children today.  This diet eliminates all of the such to create a more peaceful focused child.  We’ve tried the whole scripture study and family prayer every night with not much success at the peace so maybe it is what my children are pumped up on that is causing the lack of sit still ability.  I sure hope so because at this point most of my prayers and meditations are about how to create a more peaceful atmosphere so my children can feel the Spirit and be guided to knowing their life's purposes.  (This is true. I’m not being facetious) 

Along with diet changes, we have been on a movement as a family, for a few years now, to get back to nature and back to basics.  We moved to a home with more land to grow more of our own food.  We have a neighborhood pond with fish that we catch and eat  and chickens for the farm fresh eggs.  Sounds charming I know (and most of the time it is) but truly something has been missing. 

My oldest son Isaac (9yrs) has many symptoms of Aspergers Syndrome.  He struggles with many things and is incredible at many things.  One night in a personal quiet moment after one of his meltdowns I was praying.  My prayer went something like this: “Heavenly Father, what can I do to help Isaac be happy?”  A very clear answer came “Change his diet”. This was about a year ago.  I have dabbled in a few diet changes but missed the part about many children being sensitive to food chemicals and dyes.  I have continued to search for answers and dabbled in many alternative methods for help with my children.  I have a good feeling about this one.J