My daughter hits me, throws things at me, and breaks my stuff

[Second Time Around]

My wife told me that the last school blow up was because I had fed her donuts and starbucks banana nut bread. I can see that it contributed, but really, honestly, I was fine with her and only started to get mad because she was taking as long as she could to get ready. Then locked herself in my bedroom.

DTH, your sentence about the blow up following eating donuts and banana bread jumped out at me. Sometimes children with neurological differences have sensitivities to foods or pollen or chemicals in the air that can cause mood changes. Doris Rapp is a pediatric allergist who has found that allergens can trigger other kinds of reactions, such as rage, lack of focus, and reduced coordination anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours after exposure. These are usually not recognized as an allergic reaction because the symptoms are delayed and are not typical, but it causes inflammation in the brain. You might want to consider eliminating things like gluten, dairy, sugar and artificial coloring from her diet for a few weeks to see if that makes a difference, or keep a diary to see if she becomes angry after eating certain foods.

My step-son has many environmental and food allergies. When he was younger, there was a week when I was on crutches and couldn't cook for my family. He started becoming super irritable and violent, banging his head on the wall. I noticed that my husband had been feeding him peanut butter sandwiches for every meal. When I realized what was going on, we stopped giving him peanut butter and his irritability began to be reduced immediately. Within two days he was back to normal. We try to keep him away from peanuts, sugar and food dyes, but now that he's a teenager, it's impossible as he goes to the store and buys junk food while we are still at work. However, it did help reduce his moodiness when he was younger.