Seeking Advice - Smyrna,TN

I highly recommend you look at this site:

www.feingold.org

A lot of food/chemical links to ADHD. Hope this is helpful!

P

Hi B.! My friend has had A LOT of success with her 8 year old son. She totally changed his diet and put him on the best vitamins on the market today. After about a month she started noticing differences, and after 2 months his teacher was calling her in shock! Now a year later he is doing amazing. It took work, working out the diet, but it was well worth it. I helped her do it, and have actually started it with my own son, so if you would like info please let me know. Also vitamins are KEY with kids with ADD and ADHD, the brain needs enough of certain vitamins and minerals to function properly...and ADD/ADHD is just one was of the brain saying it isn't getting what it needs.
Hope this helps!

Hi B..
First I understand how hard it is to raise children and take care of a family and then have a dignosis of ADHD to add to the list is so very very stressful. God bless you. The good news is you are willing to reach out and ask questions. I am so proud of you. I did some searching around and I found this site. http://www.oneaddplace.com/adhd-diet.php
I hope it helps. Bless you B.. I will be glad to help anyway I can if you need anything.
W. from Indiana

http://www.feingold.org/

This is the "classic" ADHD diet. If you try making a food diary of what he eats, you'll probably be able to determine which foods he's reacting to, such as food colorings, sugar, wheat, yeast, etc.

I know people who've gone the length to use Feingold, and have had wonderful success. We don't realize how much our diets affect us - it's great that you're looking into it for him.

Hi B.,

I, too have a son, now 15, with ADHD who is a funky eater. Maybe just knowing another kind of "funk" will give you some perspective.

My son has not eaten breakfast for a couple years (THAT took some getting used to, and we both endured a lot of lecturing...others to me and me to him, but you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink...) When he got to high school, he became a vegetarian and decided not to eat lunch at school either!! At first I thought he would A) starve, B) be malnourished or at the very least C) perform poorly in school. Did I say he does not take vitamins and eats few fruits and veggies?!

Well, none of these have come to pass. He has a yearly check-up and is a healthy teen-ager and gets A-B's at school. He makes himself a big meal when he gets home from school (I stock the freezer w/ veggie entre's), I require him to sit with us at dinner (whether he eats or not), and then he eats another big meal before bed. He eats a LOT of cold cereal, but I'm sure a lot of teens do worse than "Banana Nut Crunch" and granola with fruit and nuts.

I finally decided that WHAT he is eating is reasonable (we have nutritious food at home, "junk" food only rarely and limited quantities), and as I said other teens have atrocious eating habits. He is healthy, doing well in school, and engages with the family at meals. It takes a LOT of deep breaths (on my part) and I admit I do break down and lecture him (even plead with him) to eat more NORMALLY. But, there are other bigger mountains to climb and he is holding his own.

Perhaps you could do some of what I do: keep healthy foods around so your son can eat when he's hungry (or can slow down enough to eat!); have him join you at meals, even if he doesn't eat much there (it may be too distracting to eat AND converse/be with others at the same time); teach him what he needs to keep his body healthy; and take deep breaths yourself. I have discovered that traditional parenting/expectations do not fit all kids and we have to be confident enough of our own intuition to do otherwise AS LONG AS the returns (health, growth, performance) prove our techniques are working.

Hang in there. As a parent of a kid with ADHD, you will have many challenges. I hope this can be a minor one. ---H.

You might want to check out a book called "Healing the New Childhood Epidemic: Autism, ADHD, Asthma, and Allergies," by Kenneth Bock. It has lots of good information about food and ADHD. My son has allergies and asthma and I have learned tons from it.

C.

feeding an adhd child can be a challenge, been there he is now 30 some foods cause adhd symtoms to flare read labels try eliminating things with red dye, adhd is a chemical imbalance and certain food trigger it, each child is different alot will be by process of elimination it after earing he becomes hyper eliminate that food and see if it helps my son couldn't tolerate red dye, whole wheat including whole wheat bread he still has to stay away from these foods they now give him headaches, it is like an allergy to that food or additive hope this helps meds are sometimes needed but diet can help to keep med dose lower good luck write meif ya have any questions

A few things that can make a huge difference. 1.Make meal times as routine as possible and sit with him at the table - as a family. Routine spells stability to a child with adhd. Be sure to reward staying in his seat, and give consequences for getting up. At the table, direct the conversation. We use to work at a boys' home - 8 boys lived with us, most of whom had adhd or bipolar. We would play a word game - 2 minute mysteries, brain teasers, riddles - anything that would guide the conversation and help them stay at the table without attention drawn to them personally. Made a huge difference! Put a time limit on mealtime. If he does not finish and it is important for him to finish a specific thing, tell him that if he does not eat it in the alloted him, you will simply wrap it up and serve it during snack time or he can eat it at the next meal. This really worked great with our boys! They did not appreciate eating meatloaf for breakfast. As long as they know you are not afraid to enforce it, they'll learn real quick to eat at the table. 2. Be careful of foods that trigger this: anything with red dye #5, yellow dye and blue: pop tarts, mac n cheese; orange cheeses; kool aid; too much of any juice. Get the book "Prescription for Nutritional Healing". There are lots of great suggestions for how to treat this nutritionally and they work! I have tried most of them! 3. A lot of our boys who had adhd liked board games that were geared toward strategy and critical thinking - Risk, Clue, Cranium, Blockus, etc. The biggest key is doing these things with him and use these as a teaching tool. Once our boys owned this for themselves, they eventually learned to help themselves achieve and overcome their own obstacles. I know you asked about meal time specifically, but the other habits help in the overall scheme of things. Good luck!

B.,
Does he ever help you make the food? Maybe getting him involved in helping make the meals that you put on the table will get him more involved in sitting down to eat them as well.
Jen

I have a stepson that I raised for 14 years. He was diagnoised around 7-8 yrs old with ADHD. We use to call him the energizer bunny. He is 21 now and really he still bounces off the wall sometimes. He can control himself now while he is in school and at work. Getting back to your question, he had trouble at the table too. He would sit and eat forever... was always very thin becuase of his matabolism. I would have to set a timer and give him so long to eat or he'd be sitting at the table for an hour and half. He would arrange his food on the plate and play with it. Even as old as 12 he would play with his food. I even made a behavior chart for him. It did help. I would place stickers on it for good behavoir and take away privaleges for not so good behavior.
I am remarried today and have two other stepsons with ADHD. The 18 yr old is very immature and struggles in school and the 20 year old went off his meds 2 yrs ago and has a hard time staying on task for work. They are both very thin and very good eaters. Funny thing is the 18 year old sometimes will play with his food at the table today.
Good luck, they can be a true challenge in the family especially when they have siblings. I often just redirect and tell the sisters to stay away when the brothers are aggitated.

A. B.

A little about me:
Mom of 5, 2 teenage daughters, 2 adult stepsons and 1 teen stepdaughter

If he is on the medication, it does tend to ruin their appetites. Some people take their kids off on the weekends to encourage eating.

My son has ADHD as well. Have you tried medication? It was a LAST resort for us after we tried diet changes, behavioral therapy (where he literally took classes on learning how to "fit in"), psychologist consults weekly, and every other remedy we read up on. Concerta is working for us, paired with an emphasis on healthy eating- particularly on getting enough protein especially for breakfast. I make an effort not to buy items that are heavily dyed (Kool Aid and such) and shopping at Trader Joe's helps- most prepared foods in normal grocery stores are loaded with preservatives and food colorings. My son still is challenged with organization and staying on task, but it is much improved. The few times we forgot to give him Concerta, we hear an earful from his teachers on how they just don't know what got into him that day.

We have an appointment with a Neuropsychiatrist for an evaluation. There is a non-medical treatment called Interactive Metronome that, after 12-15 treatments, can help some of the symptoms permanently! Here's a link to the website. http://www.interactivemetronome.com/IMPublic/Home.aspx

I read a book called Change Your Brain, Change Your Life (by Daniel Amen) that touched on ADHD. It was great and I am looking to get his book that is dedicated to the disorder. Once you see it is not just a behavioral problem (that you can control if you just try) you can understand your child better to help him work with his limitations. I remember wanting to put a seat belt on my son's dinner chair! It is frustrating as a parent, but consisent and loving discipline and consequences work the best. Good luck!

Hi B., I don't know if this will help ... but my four 1/2 year old who was not diagnosed with anything at this point is extremely distracted at dinner too. We constantly have to remind him to take a bite. But the main thing I wanted to mention was that when I was young I was a terrible eater. I just didn't like the taste of most foods and I would take a very long time. I would spend time picking out "transparent" onions and putting peas on a fork one at a time and then eating them one at a time.

When my stepmother and father married my stepmother was very relieved to hear that I did the same types of things with my food as her daughter did who had down syndrome.

These stories won't help you in figuring out how to keep your son on track while eating ... but maybe they will give you some peace in that its a behavior that could be described of many many kids.

I wish you the best of luck!

D.
www.BizForMomsOnline.com

Please look at www.feingold.org. Feingold is a 30yr old non-profit organization whose purpose is to inform the public about artificial petroleum-based ingredients in our food supply. These harmful additives cause ADD, ADHD, OCD and many other behavioral, emotional and physical side effects. Feingold is the leading authority on this subject. It was a Godsend for our family. Best wishes.

Are the foods that take longer to eat foods that he does not care for? My husbands family had the clean your plate philosophy at meal time. My family had the you have to try at least one bite of everything. If you like it you may have more, if you don't like it you don't have to eat any more unless you have served yourself a lot of something. We had to work through this as we learn to parent together. My husband has vivid memories of having to eat certain foods that he did not like but being forced to eat any way. He said that it always took him a long time to eat those foods. Could something like that be going? As far as the adhd we have found that certain foods make things worse. Milk was one of the things that made my oldest son worse. If he just had milk on his cereal that was okay but when he drank a glass of milk also,he had a very hard time focusing on anything. Good Luck

I also have a 9 yr old son with ADHD. He will only eat certain foods. When we asked the doctor about it, all he told was it was fine as long as he was eating. Don't worry about the fidgeting it comes with the territory. Sometimes my son will leave the table and say he's full but then 2 hours later, he'll come into the kitchen and finish his plate.