Diet/Lifestyle Change

Daily vitamins and probiotics are essential to having a balanced gut which ultimately helps things flow easier in the brain.

 

Dairy is very harsh on the stomach of a child on the spectrum (on most people in general, honestly) and is one of the culprits when your child is very agitated, high-strung, not sleeping well or all around uncomfortable/upset and sensitive to noises and sounds. Eliminate dairy.

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I added probiotics to Alijah's daily diet with yogurt drinks. She Drank two 8oz. bottles of Califia Farms Dairy Free Plain Unsweetened Probiotic yogurt drink mixed with a bit of (Hemp) Milk daily. When she was drinking cow's milk she was often constipated and therefore agitated.

(her yogurt can be found on Amazon and at Target. --you don't have to use Hemp Milk.. ANY dairy free milk works!)

I also added enzymes to 1 or 2 of her bottles throughout the day if I ever felt like she wasn't having enough fruits or veggies.

 

In a nutshell, Alijah ate a lot --if not all -- of the same things all kids eat however, she had them in a manner that was suitable for her body without it causing a mental or physical reaction. She ate: any and all kinds of meat, usually grilled. If ever i used oil, I'd use organic oil. Either Coconut, Avocado or even Sunflower oil. Just not "Canola" (what even is a Canola, ya'll?) She ate veggies, she ate fruits, she ate dairy free/gluten free crackers and cookies. 

She ate mac & cheese just gluten/dairy free mac&cheese, you name it- they make it. There's SO MANY options out there you don't even have to go to specialty stores for these things anymore guys. Healthier options are out there we're just not looking. Of course here and there we'd slip and get her a chicken nugget happy meal from Mcdonald's but for the most part if ever she ate "junk" we made it as healthy as possible by buying organic and gluten free options at home and cooking them in our oils. 

She drank only juices that had real ingredients in them. When you look at the ingredients at the back of anything your child is consuming it should say the name of the food you thought it was and nothing else. For example: Apple Juice.."Ingredients: apples." that's it. Not "Ingredients: sugar, maltodextrin, corn syrup..etc" if you catch my drift. She ate bread but paleo bread (gluten free bread is also not as harsh on their tums as regular bread). She ate ice cream but dairy free ice cream, she ate pancakes but paleo pancakes, she ate candy but sugar free dairy free candy. She even had gluten/ dairy free pizza! 

*She wasn't deprived of anything-- I made sure of that. But it isn't as hard as you may think to change things up. Or maybe you think there's not much truth to what I'm saying. What could it hurt to change things up for a bit, give it a chance for a month or 2. Everything will still be there for sell should you ever want to go back to it! But.. TRY. 

Unless you make it completely obvious or tell them blatantly, I doubt they'll even notice the difference but trust me when I  say.. YOU WILL!! And so will your children's therapist or anyone who spends any real one on one time with your child. Diet is everything for EVERYONE, our little ones on the spectrum are just more sensitive.

 

*There's so much more- I'm just rambling at this point. Please reach out to me if you have any questions. This is the first time I've added to the site since I posted our original message "Our Story." I'm sure I'll add more. I was asked to add some "basics" to the site. There they are. I hoped I could give even just one person some insight. Research the things I'm saying.