Anyway, even after he calmed down from the stupid yellow cheese incident, he still seemed slightly restless and grumpy, easily bored, a little hyper. We were outside a lot so the behavior wasn't too intolerable. But I just wasn't sure, was it because he was tired and out of his routine being on vacation, was it food, was it just him sick of spending 24 hours a day with his little sister during summer break?
When we got home, I decided to take away all Stage Two foods. You may remember that on the Feingold Program, you don't just eliminate artificial colors, flavors and preservatives - you also eliminate some natural food as well during Stage One. The foods you eliminate are mostly fruits and some veggies that contain higher levels of salicylates (sals), somewhat of a naturally occurring "pesticide" the way I understand it. Stage Two foods include berries, tomatoes, apples, oranges, bell peppers, paprika, grapes, almonds and more.
Every Feingold mom starts out convinced that her kid will be able to reintroduce Stage Two foods at some point with no problem. Yet most of us find out that our kids are super sensitive to Stage Two foods - although we have no idea why the connection that kids sensitive to artificials are also sensitive to sals. Because Ben was not diagnosed with Autism or Aspergers (and only seems to have the mild problem of ADHD) I thought for sure the artificials would be the only problem.
What we've found is quite the mixed bag. Ben can usually tolerate organic apples without skins, but strawberries cause reactions similar to eating artificials. He seems to tolerate tomatoes just fine (thank God because we eat a lot of pasta sauce around here) but can't handle the pectin in store bought vanilla yogurt. Sals cause what we call a build up reaction, in that typically one serving will not cause a reaction - but repeated servings over multiple days do cause reactions. I think this is what was happening on vacation.
On vacation Ben was eating at least one serving of a Stage Two item per day. So we pulled all Stage Two foods away last Saturday. By Monday he was calm, happy, busy. Yesterday he had a great day at daycare and was extremely helpful weeding the garden, brushed his teeth and even flossed with no arguments, and went right to bed. And he only fought with his sister once or twice.
I am sad that Ben can't enjoy a bowl of strawberries or have grapes everyday like other kids. Jelly will be a hard thing to ever enjoy, as well as fruit yogurt or smoothies. I'm sure at some point in his life he'll get tired of Stage One fruits like mango, bananas, watermelon and pears. But the Stage One Ben is so much better off than the Stage Two Ben, and hopefully he feels this difference too. Meanwhile we'll keep trying different combinations of Stage Two foods until we figure out just what works for Ben (and us!).
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