How to Deal With a Child Who Has Food Intolerances

When I married my darling Jack he brought along all of his many wonderful qualities and attributes, but he also brought along two secrets hiding in his family history: milk and sugar intolerances. 

I’d heard stories about how his little brother Beau would go absolutely nuts whenever he was given sugar, and I knew that Jack himself had been milk intolerant as a small child, but in the bliss of young love I never dreamed that someday I might have to deal with those issues.  My family, after all, didn’t have any of those kinds of issues… except for ADHD, I guess…

So, in case you haven’t guessed, we have come to the conclusion that Sarah has both sugar and milk intolerances, and we think she has ADHD which, cutely enough, can be set off, if you will, when the afflicted one partakes of one of the many yummy things made with milk. 

We suspected the sugar allergy about a year ago, but just taking her off sugar didn’t quite do it.  Once I gave in and admitted that my contribution to the DNA mix might have been contaminated as well we started looking into natural ways to control ADHD.  It just made too much sense that perhaps she’d gotten a bit of Jack’s inability to drink milk which exacerbates the wee bit of ADHD she may, or may not, have received from my end of things.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, this combination works like a charm.  It’s wonderful because I now have a four year old girl who is helpful, kind, caring and just plain nice.  We don’t have meltdowns anymore, she shares her toys, I haven’t seen her hit anyone for a while, and instead of joining Evee in destroying the house she comes and tells me when her delightful sister is emptying the bookshelves with abandon (which happened this morning). 

The negative side of it is actually having to stick with this diet.  My fabulous mother in law told me it took a year or two of being completely off sugar to cure Beau of it, and I am sure not looking forward to two years of policing everything she eats.  I’ve even been dreaming lately of stealing cookies from her hands and swiping goldfish crackers out of her mouth like she’s a baby about to choke on them.  Another downer is that this may cure her so well of bad behavior I might not have any more stories to write about for my blog…

So what kind of changes have we had to make to do this, you ask?  The major things are easy enough.  We buy rice/almond/coconut milk instead of real milk, but we have to make sure they’re the sugar free kind.  I was making all our bread at home for a while, but honestly it’s just too stinking hot outside.  But we found a great bread at Costco that fits the bill.  It’s actually been really easy to alter the recipes I make most often for our meals.

Where we’ve been running into trouble is in the snack department.  If you go down the cracker isle at the grocery store every single cracker has either milk or sugar in it.  I know, I’ve checked.  I have found a few in specialty stores that are milk and sugar free, but in all honesty they’re pretty gross.  The only snacks we’ve been able to find are fruit leathers and dried fruit, but it turns out small children get bored of those after a couple weeks. 

So what’s the answer?  Make my own!  It turns out that’s going to be the answer most of the time.  So far I’ve made passable chocolate cake, graham crackers, and wheat thins.  It’s pretty fun now while I’m still experimenting with it, and I hope that enthusiasm holds.

One thing I do have to be enormously grateful for is that Sarah is completely on board.  It turns out she doesn’t like being unhappy and restless all the time.  She has been absolutely fantastic whenever we tell her she can’t have something because it has sugar in it and she’s been getting better at asking us if something has sugar in it before she eats it.  It’s been really nice getting to know the real Sarah.  She really is a sweetheart.  But if I ever miss my little monster all it would take is a single goldfish cracker to bring her back for a full four days until the sugar and milk fully pass out of her system.  Joy.

Here's my first attempts at graham crackers and wheat thins: