A New Discovery

Most of his life, my son has seemed oblivious to whether he was in control or not.  I think getting in trouble, or being in his own world was just normal for him.  Even while on medication, because of the side effects he was still being disciplined constantly for his violent behavior, instead of his crazy behavior.  Now that he has experienced what it is like to be what he calls "normal",  since eliminating the foods that trigger the symptoms (for almost a year now), and being off the medication, he has just experienced another new feeling:

Just recently he recognized the feeling of going out of control as it was coming on, before totally "losing it".  It was just a few weeks ago when we had decided to eat at a pizza place that has a gluten-free crust.  It was the first time we had eaten there and I double checked about the gluten, it was safe, and we all thoroughly enjoyed the service and the pizza.  It was delicious.  My son loved the gluten-free pizza, he was starving so he ate a lot...  this kid is only about 80 lbs at 11yrs old but he can put away some food!  About 15 minutes after finishing pizza, we were walking in a store, and he looked at me and said, "I think there was something in that pizza that was bad.  I feel it..  it's starting to come up to my head."  I tried to have him explain exactly what he meant and he said it was like he was starting to get shaky, but in his head, not really his body. Sure enough!  Just a few minutes after that, he was totally out of control!  Just absolutely crazy, and it lasted until into the next day sometime.  So I doubled checked the ingredients again in the crust...  it had eggs in it!  That was most likely the culprit!  (Although, you never know, there could have been some cross-contamination occurring with the wheat flour. I did read the reviews on their gluten-free pizza ahead of time and everyone that reviewed it said they had to problems...)

So far, this has only happened once.  Most of the time, my husband and I notice that he is very "wound up", hyper, and just can't seem to control himself.  In these cases, he doesn't realize it until we say something to him about it.  Then together we try and pinpoint what it is that is making this happen.  I am not sure yet, if it needs to be a big quantity of the allergen for him to notice the onset of the symptoms, or if he will simply gain awareness of the feelings over time. 

Either way,  I took this as a new step in his life..  hoping that as he grows and matures, he will become a responsible, healthy eater, being very aware of the consequences of eating the wrong foods, and thus, not having to rely on his parents as being the "food police".  Don't get me wrong, he still gets in trouble (like "normal" kids do, for "normal" kids stuff), he is still a high-energy kid, and constantly talks unless he is sleeping (this runs in the family... just ask my husband *laughing*) but he is becoming more aware of the world around him and the effects he has on it.  It still seems like a slow process at times, but other times we have days that "go down in family history".