Autism. Ugh! One year ago I had trouble saying, typing or even thinking of that word. It was my enemy. When my friend said that she thought Aidan had Autism, I decided at that moment that I wanted nothing to do with her. How could she even think of that word when describing Aidan? There was no way he had Autism!
The word Autism swam around inside my brain from the moment she said it. I couldn’t sleep for months. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t think straight. I needed to know what was going on with Aidan, and I was determined to prove her wrong.
I made an appointment with early childhood intervention to do a full evaluation. When we went in for the appointment, Aidan couldn’t do anything they asked him to do. Things that I KNEW he could do, and things that he had done when he was 12 months old and 18 months old. When we left the appointment, I remember trying to hold back the tears until I got to my car, but I couldn’t. I broke down sobbing into my husband’s chest as we stood in the parking lot. He thought I was crazy. I still remember him giving me the look, like, why are you so upset!? He had no idea how serious this was and what was coming, but I knew.
At that point, I KNEW that something was wrong, and that for months I had been trying to make too many excuses for all of his odd behaviors and developmental lags. I was done with living in denial. I just wanted to know what I needed to do to help our son. I was finished listening to everyone tell me that my son was perfectly fine and that everything was ok. I felt like no one was listening to me. My husband, my parents, my brother, my friends…everyone was down playing my feelings. I was just the crazy overreacting Mother, and Aidan was going to be fine. The only person who would listen to my concerns was my friend who had mentioned the word Autism to begin with, and I was still irritated with her. Even when I knew it was Autism, I didn’t want anyone else to know. I know that sounds ridiculous and crazy, but I felt like if no one was there to know about it, and say it out loud, then it wasn’t real.
I started searching the internet, and looking at symptoms of Autism. There were definitely things that caught my attention, like, “Does not respond to his/her own name”, “Does not play with peers”, “language delay” but all of the symptoms like “head banging”, “does not play with toys appropriately”, “spins wheels”, “flaps arms”, “toe walking”, “does not engage in imaginative play”, “lack of eye contact,” etc. were not symptoms my son had ever exhibited.
Then, a friend confided in me that her son had been diagnosed with Pervasive Development Disorder (PDD), and she thought that Aidan showed some of the characteristics of PDD (which is an Autism Spectrum disorder). She gave me a few books to look through. One of the books was by Jenny McCarthy and Dr. Jerry Kartzinel, Healing and Preventing Autism Spectrum Disorders. When I picked up the book, I thought, “healing? How do they do that” So I read a chapter on diet, and how the gluten free casein free diet seems to help a lot of children with ASD. The explanation made so much sense to me- the proteins in gluten and casein are not fully broken down by people with gut issues, and this can create opiates in their blood stream. Ok, there is a much longer explanation than this, but that is the short and sweet of why so many people try this diet.
That night I told my husband that we were going to put Aidan on the diet. No one could tell me no! The very next day I put Aidan on a gluten free casein free diet. He hated it, of course, but I didn’t care. If this would help, we were going to give it a fair try.
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