Our Story of the Evils of Wheat

Just over a year ago our four year old son morphed from the sweetest little boy in the world to a demon child. I semi-say this in jest, but the fact of the matter is that it was, unfortunately, quite true. No one in our family believed us, or thought we were over exaggerating when we told our tales of woe; how the sweet little one was always on edge, couldn't focus, started having tremendous tantrums and eventually turning quite violent. He would oftentimes punch me in the face if I asked him to pick up his toys or bite my arm if I told him that he couldn't have a treat, or pinch me to the point of drawing blood if I did not comply with his every whim. Sometimes these episodes would last for hours, almost always ending with him crying hysterically but apologetically. After weeks of this and me calling several doctors only to be told that he was just going through a phase or that “kids have tantrums” and it was “normal” (clearly this was NOT normal but it's difficult to convey the gravity of a situation when speaking of your precious little boy in a far from precious manner), we reached a boiling point. Our little guy had presented us with his most severe outburst ever, telling us that he wanted to kill us and move away and a host of other horrible, unmentionable things. After nearly three hours of having to hold him down gently to keep him from hurting himself or us with his flying limbs and gnashing teeth, he finally calmed down and quietly started to sob. He told me “mama, I don't know why I get so mean. Sometimes I feel like I just lose control of my body and I can't help myself. I love you and papa and never want to hurt you – I just do and I don't know why.” Those were some seriously huge things for a four year old to come up with on his own and I quickly (finally) made an appointment with a child psychologist.


Over the course of several appointments with a small handful of doctors, psychologist, counselors and a child psychiatrist, our son was diagnose and un-diagnosed with ADD, ADHD, Bi-Polar Disorder, PTSD (???!! -- I suppose coming down the birth canal could be treacherous, but otherwise that was a crack diagnosis), Oppositional Defiance Disorder (I think that's what it's called – I had never heard of that prior to that moment), etc. They wished us to “try” this med and that med and I refused. I wanted to find the root of the problem and fix that, not mask whatever was going on while “experimenting” with several baby drugs.


During the same stint of time, our little man mentioned that he was having tummy issues (the doctor's claimed this was a cry for attention which I thought was another crock of crap as he always had our constant attention). I decided to make some adjustments to his diet as he'd had issues with milk and dairy products in his earlier childhood (I'll share that story later) and first opted to remove wheat from his diet. That, I thought, would be the easiest on our list of things to try in order to help his sweet tummy. After only three days of a completely wheat free diet, our son morphed back into his sweet little self like a light switch. Suddenly “he who freaks out for an hour when it's time to come inside from playing” says, “okay mama and pops” and walks right inside past us on the porch. We were dumbfounded. He was suddenly so polite – we hadn't seen that is months. The days went on like this and we played and snuggled and enjoyed each other again so very much. I was sure it just had to be the removal of wheat from his diet but pretty much everyone scoffed at me for admitting such a “ridiculous” notion. My husband was half-sold – I mean he lived through both sides and saw the immediate and intense change that had just occurred. Little man's pre-school teacher was the first to criticize me. She had witnessed a couple of his outbursts (nothing like at home but disturbing none the less).


We were on our own for this one at that point so I decided to test things out by letting him have wheat one Sunday, about a week and a half from the day we initially removed it from his diet. To make a very long story short(er), he was at this point kicked out of his three-hour-per-day three-day-a-week pre-school for kicking a little boy in the face while playing in a tent, which was his “final chance”. When I told her that he'd had wheat the day before, she criticized my parenting skills, saying that we “must be abusive for him to be so aggressive” and a host of other ignorant things. Had she not told me not to bring him back I would not have anyway, but that is neither here nor there.


So, wheat equaled evil, no equaled angelic, wheat again equaled evil again. Seemed too good to be true to me at first in that he could change so much by a simple dietary change and I feared it was a huge coincidence. I started doing a large amount of research, spoke with naturopaths and dietitians, psychologists and other mamas and although most of them thought it rather “far fetched” many of them were quite impressed. I'll share some of my research later – pretty scary.


It's now been almost a year since we removed all wheat and gluten from our son's diet (he was mildly effected by spelt and other gluten containing foods – not as badly as wheat itself but we opted to remove all of it). He has his normal five-year-old attitude but he would never dream of screaming at us or becoming aggressive with us or other children. He has grown so focused (he literally went from just learning the sounds of small letter combination to reading at a 3rd+ grade level in less than a year, for example), so calm, or rather CAN be calm when necessary – he's still a perfectly healthy energetic five year old, and just so sweet. I missed my little boy so much and it saddens me to know that other families could be going through similar things that we went through with a solution so simple as a dietary change. Don't get me wrong – a totally gluten free diet takes work and patience and I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy but it's a very small price to pay to have my little bug back.


I've come up with a rather thick stack of gluten free, wheat free and dairy free recipes and yummy food creations and will post them over time in the hopes that you would like to try them with your little one.