On the bright side, we did figure out what the real problem was. My daughter has food intolerances to gluten and dairy. When she eliminated those foods from her diet (every trace), she is a different child. A pleasure to be around, even, at age 13.
A good point on a number of levels. Here in sydney, Australia, there is a research team working specifically on any link between dietary sensitivities and autism. They have found in about 30% of Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD) cases, that there is an underlying food sensitivity which, if managed, makes the child much nicer to be around. It's not a cure for the autism, of course, but a child with Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD) who also has food sensitivity problems will be finding it much more difficult to cope.
In our case with difficult child 3, we were unable to find a food sensitivity which was causing any of his problems. It also was a long-drawn-out process and it had to be done under the careful supervision of dietician and pediaitrician both experienced in this. Mistakes happen, the child eats something he shouldn't while he's still supposed to be on the elimination phase and the clock gets re-set again. I had difficult child 3 very compliant, he was checking all the labels on his food, but occasionally something would slip through, often due to manufacturers not labelling things properly.
I also vouch for the amazing difference it can make, if you have a child with a food sensitivity problem. It happened very obviously, with easy child when she was an infant.
With easy child, my first darling treasure, I took all precautions for her health. I had also attended a medical seminar where the doctor claimed that some children had problems with lack of Vitamin C - in these children, when their bodies were put under stress (with the immune system, as in catching a virus or being imunised) their bodies' need for Vitamin C would dramatically increase. In some kids, he found that this sudden demand for Vitamin C caused what he called acute infantile scurvy, which if untreated, could look like SIDS (and was often diagnosed as such). The initial phase of this was some sort of cerebral irritability which would progress rapidly to coma. So he began treating these kids with a Vitamin C infusion, and the rate of SIDS deaths in his hospital dropped to almost zero. He also stressed that you shouldn't bother with Vitamin C in liquid form, since it degrades too rapidly (sometimes in a matter of hours or days). There was a hospital near him which took up his advice but they didn't have a drop in SIDS deaths, so he went over to talk to them - and found that they were mixing up a Vitamin C drink a week or more ahead, and giving the kids this. He showed them with his test sticks, that the measurable Vitamin C in their drink was negligible.
While I wasn't thinking in terms of constant prevention of this SIDS-like condition, I was working on the hypothesis that if I took extra Vitamin C while breastfeeding my baby, then she would be better able to handle immunological stress.
So I took a powdered form of Vitamin C (very sour!) mixed in with my orange juice.
Then one day I ran out of orange juice. No way could I take the stuff in water, I needed something to kill the sour taste, so t the back of the cupboard I found a commercial powdered, orange-flavoured Vitamin C drink. So I mixed that up, added my powdered white Vitamin C stuff and drank it.
Within a day, easy child had turned from an easy, placid baby to a screaming horror. She screamed all the time. And it wasn't the scream of a baby in pain, or a baby who was hungry. This was an angry sound. It took me another day to stop drinking the commercial orange-coloured drink (the only source of additives in my diet) and another two days for it to wash out of my body (and breast milk) and therefore out of the baby's. Her irritability faded.
I checked out the commercial stuff for additives and found two artificial colours - tartrazine (102), and sunset yellow (110).
No problems with easy child for months, I kept my diet healthy and additive-free. I went back to work, she began in a child care centre. Then when she was about 7 months old and had just started on solids (again, all natural, home-cooked) she developed thrush. It wasn't just in her mouth, it was right through and causing nappy rash, so the doctor prescribed oral infant drops of an antifungal. It was described as cherry flavoured, but it was bright yellow in colour. Now, commercial medications often MUST have specific colours because they are on record and used to identify the drug should it ever be found unlabelled. That was what I was told, when I complained to the manufacturer about colouring something designed for a baby to take.
So back to the baby with thrush - I gave her the medicine. Within an hour she was screaming in rage. Again, a perfect, easy-going but very active baby was now constantly raging. It was weird. It was extreme. I stopped giving her the thrush treatment and went back to the doctor - I'm not sure in which order, but he did witness the raging baby. He scratched his head, finally said, "the only form of the anti-fungal available that doesn't have this particular colour in it, is the adult treatment. It's a spearmint-flavoured lozenge. You'll have to grind it up and feed it to her with her baby cereal."
So I did. Sure, she carried on as if I was trying to poison her, but I only had to fight to get the medications into her, not fight her all day every day. She was now only an angry baby while she took her medications, for the five minutes or so it took me to get it into her. I suspect she hated the taste and the texture.
We had identified the culprit - for easy child, the problem was tartrazine. Additive 102. The behavioural change in her was remarkable.
Over the years we avoided giving her tartrazine but as she reached her teens and began going to parties at friends' houses, she began testing herself and found her tolerance to it had increased. This was not an allergic reaction, it was a sensitivity reaction. It's not mediated through the immune system, it's more direct.
Now she's an adult she doesn't seem to have this problem. Maybe it's dose-related, and the small baby who only weighed 10 Kg couldn't tolerate the dose, where a woman who weighs 90 Kg doesn't have a problem.
But it is something to consider in all this.
With Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD) and food sensitivity, I repeat - the Sydney research team found about 30% of Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD) kids had a food sensitivity which was clouding things and making their behaviour or some other symptom, much worse. But difficult child 3 is in the 70% for whom diet is making no difference. He has an allergy to a particular artificial colour (red, this time) but it's a known problem and we're finding it's not used in most foods these days. And all it does is give him urticaria.
This is another reason for keeping a diary. When there are problems, you often can't see the wood for the trees. It's later on when you read back over the diary, mybe weeks later, maye only days later, that it clicks for you. or for someone else reading the diary (maybe a teacher, maybe a doctor).
We used the diary as a communication book, we found it made a big difference to how the teacher coped at school. And if the teacher is coping, the child has a better chance. If the teacher is not coping, chances are this will cause big problems in the child's behaviour. Maybe not at school, but certainly at home. The kid has to break out somewhere...
Let us know how you get on.
Marg