ace’s blog

Bad attitude Aaron is 95% gone and the old Aaron is back. He hasn’t had casein in his diet since Friday (4/18/08) morning and his attitude has improved greatly. The only thing I still see missing is his attention span. He used to be able to do the 100 piece puzzles with me with no problem at all. Now, he is having issues paying attention for more than about five minutes.

We bought a new car! A mini-van actually; it is a slate metallic green Honda Odyssey. I heard a radio ad about “up to 30% off on clearance vehicles from a chain of local car dealerships and when I got home, I checked out the prices. I noted a Honda Pilot and the Odyssey. They had both listed for a very low price. I called, expecting they would be out-of-stock and sure enough, they were. I asked how much a base-line model of each vehicle would be and was told about $5,500 less than the MSRP on both vehicles. We went up there Saturday to look at both the Pilot and the Odyssey side-by-side and based on functionality (why did Honda shove an non-functional third row of seats into the Pilot?!), we bought the mini-van. I didn’t think we’d ever own one since Meri has been 100% against buying one since it would be her vehicle.

The Odyssey has the same gas-mileage rating as our old Jeep Liberty so there wasn’t a savings there. I feel like the Honda will be a longer-lasting vehicle (than the Jeep) and much safer for Meri and our boys. Plus, we now have even more room for more kids (hello Cadence – daddy’s little girl, someday I hope).

Aaron has been on a tear lately, since Monday (4/14/08) of this week. As of yesterday, 4/17/08, I have come home 3 of the last 4 days to him screaming at my wife. If you heard his screaming from out on the street (and you probably could), you would think this kid was completely out of control and he must have terrible parents. This is absolutely not the case. 95% of the time, Aaron is you typical happy child. He’s very fun to be around when he’s like this. He shows how smart he really is and how funny he can be. Sometimes though, seemingly from nowhere, his temper shows itself
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This past week has been about 100 times worse than it has ever been. Now, when he gets upset, his anger would be better described as a rage. He is out of control. Monday, Meri went grocery shopping with him and Eli. They walked by an area where Meri bought him some colored sand the last time they were shopping but this time, there wasn’t any sand there. Aaron flipped out!! He started yelling and screaming about the sand and how he wanted it and where was it and why wasn’t it there. Typically, when Aaron starts acting like that, I would say that he was over-tired and desperately needs to get home to either take a nap or just sit on the couch and relax to some Noggin. This shopping trip ended with Aaron screaming and yelling at Meri, pulling her hair, punching her, slapping her, and for the first time ever, biting her! He bit her three times – once on her cheek and that left a mark for about a day. When they got home, he decided that he would flip over Eli’s car seat – with Eli in it.

When they got in the car, Meri called me at work and asked me to come home. On my end of the phone, I hear my wife crying, asking me to come home, Aaron screaming/raging in the background and Eli was crying. So I picked up all my shit, told my team lead I had to leave and booked it out of here. It took me about 30 or 40 minutes to get home. I finally got there and, to my surprise, Aaron was STILL raging. This episode has been going on for over 90 minutes at this point.

This was been the single worst day with Aaron, ever. I hope that it remains the worst day in his childhood, forever. Since Monday, I’ve come home to Aaron screaming and raging at my wife two other times, every time with her and Eli being hit.

I worked from home the rest of Monday and Tuesday is my weekly work from home day. Meri and I talked about what we should do and how we should handle it and neither of us has a clue. Something has changed Aaron’s behaving dramatically in the past week. On Tuesday, I made an appointment to see a child psychiatrist! We are supposed to go next Wednesday, 4/23.

Meri and I have been thinking about what could cause such a degradation in Aaron’s attitude. The only thing that we can think of is the major increase in cow’s milk and casein in Aaron’s diet. Since we’ve discovered that Aaron is no longer allergic to milk and egg, we’ve been letting him try any- and everything he wants that he could never have before. He’s loved it. When he eats something that he could not eat before, he says “I’m not allergic anymore so I can have this”. It has been wonderful to let Aaron eat things that he couldn’t have before. He really seemed to love it. But now, we have decided to take out most of the milk from his diet. Our reason for this line of thinking revolves around the autism-diet.

Autistic kids should be on a very strict gluten- and casein-free diet. Casein is a protein found in milk and products containing milk, such as cheese, butter, yogurt, ice cream, whey and even some brands of margarine. It also may be added to non-milk products such as soy cheese and hot dogs in the form of caseinate. When the diet is followed correctly, an article that I just found says:

Some parents, doctors and researchers say that children have shown mild to dramatic improvements in speech and/or behavior after these substances were removed from their diet.

We are firm believers in how a child’s diet effects their attitude and behavior. We’re taking all of the casein out of his diet again and let his body “detox” for a while. We’ll re-introduce the casein at a very gradual pace this time. I don’t know if we’ll keep the appointment or not.