tried Feingold or gluten-free diets?

[mom@home]

I have a 6 yo son with Aspergers/pdd. Has anyone tried the Feingold or gluten free diets? Did it have any effect? I am considering trying these diets this summer when he is out of school and I can control his food intake and closely monitor his behavior. Any help or advice or expirience would be welcome. Thanks.

[apmomto4]

My son has autism/asperger's, too and he'll be 9 next month.

We tried a gluten-free diet with him, but didn't see any change. And it's something you'd have to try for quite awhile. Most folks will tell you that you need at least three months gluten-free before discarding the diet as ineffective.

Right now, we're trying the Fiengold diet, but it's too early to tell if it's working! I see a little improvement, but we just started it on Friday so it's too soon to make a pronouncement.

My belief is, it doesn't hurt to try a diet and see what happens. If it doesn't work, you can always resume a normal diet.

Good luck!

[mom@home]

I notice that your signature says you homeschool your kids. Has your son always been at home or has he ever been in the public school system. Do you receive any services or have an IEP? My son struggles so much at school that I am considering homeschooling.

[khrisday]

Hi, we have a 7 yr old with Asperger's. We did the gluten and cassein free diet for almost a year. I don't think it really helped, but what did help was finding out that there were other foods that were bothering him. We stopped all of the offensive foods for a period, then rotated them back in. Now as long as he doesn't get too much of any of them he's fine. We also homeschool our son- since K. We don't have an IEP or any services through the school, and honestly, we don't miss them. Fell free to PM me.

[apmomto4]

We've always homeschooled our children. (July will be the start of our 8th year)

We did consider services with the county school, and went through the IEP testing process, but they wanted to put Jonathan into a special education classroom and he'd only receive 1 1/2 hours of therapy per WEEK, and we refused.

So we're doing everything on our own, which we don't regret at all!!!

[willibug]

Just in case you haven't seen it yet, there is an article in the new(May/June) issue of Mothering magazine. It's called "Kids Are What They Eat." It has some good info on the Feingold diet you may be interested in.

[mom@home]

Thanks. Just finished the article yesterday. Very interesting. My son is such a cool little guy, I hate to see him struggling and getting stuck. I want to be able to say that I have tried EVERYTHING for him. Maybe he could have some sensitivity that could be causing his hyperactivity, perseverations, temper tandrums ect. An Aspergerian who attended our local as/asd support group said that those who were most helped by altered diets were those people(kids) with what most would call profound or classic austism. So that didn't give me much hope, but ,whatever, I gotta try it.... Do whatever I can to make his path easier.

[Delilah]

Have six year old with PDD/Autism

Tried gluten free and Feingold. Gluten free did nothing but stress me out.

I don't remember that Feingold helped that much. What I do is try to watch ingredients and try to avoid certain things like BHT and lots of food colors, but I don't force the issue any more. Now, if companies want to provide better alternatives at a good price, good taste, I'll go for it, but I can't stress myself and my dh out over every ingredient going in.