LiamLiam1965 wrote:Very interesting topic. My wife and I have five children, two of whom are on the autism spectrum. The older one is 12 and has Aspergers. I have a good friend named Mark who also has it, and so he's been instrumental in understanding how Dagny sees the world.
The younger one is my 3 year old son, who was diagnosed with more classic autism. We tried him on a milk and wheat free diet (and a few other supplements, like probiotics and cod liver oil) and his symptoms went almost completely away.
The problem is that as far as I can tell, "autism" isn't a disease but a collection of symptoms, which can have many causes. At heart, it seems to be a sensory disorder, which is why the milk and wheat thing affects my son, the milk protein particularly seems to behave almost like an opiate to his system.
Interestingly, we tried our daughter on dairy and wheat free and it had no effect... but she's got an odd digestive thing going on where she doesn't seem to digest carbs very well. She's like jekyll and hyde if she doesn't get enough protein or if she gets too much sugar.
But there's so much guess work and so little hard science, it's really quite frustrating to deal with.
Liam, talking for the second time today about a disease other than apnea on an apnea forum. Kinda takes your breath away.
You have my sympathy in that you have a collection
Most of us have enough to cope with when there is one.
My saddest feelings are when I see & know our daughter is trying to understand why she is different & why some people would avoid her. There were times when even well meaning friends may play jokes on her e.g. one son-in-law of mine who is a psychologist would half knowingly tease Anne by moving objects he knew she had placed in particular places in her room - Anne would know instantly someone had moved the item & she would return it to its rightful position. I could often see that Anne was upset at why putting objects in their right place was the object of humor to others. My approach with Anne has always been that what she did was fine & if I could, i'd help do her arrangements. She was by far the tidiest child of the 5 in the family.
As a little child, we had a bucket of lego parts for all 5 to play with. While the other 4 would build things Anne would make the prettiest colored patterns from the bits.
So having multiple children in the Autism spectrum means you have so much more to cope with.
Good luck.
DSM
