(02-17-2012, 11:26 PM)GCMom Wrote: Also, does your child switch back and forth from good days and bad days? That's the hardest part for us to cope with. You never know what you are going to get. And there is no trigger we can identify. Does anyone else experience this?

Thanks so much for sharing your experiences.

The difference for my son between good days and horrible days is diet. Under his neurologist's care, he's basically doing very well, except when he doesn't eat right. That means he gets protein 3 meals/day, especially at breakfast, no high sugar foods - especially not sweet cereal - but plenty of healthy carbs like lentils and beans. I can't ever let him get too hungry - if a meal is going to be late he has to have a snack while he's waiting. He also has food allergies and celiac disease, which means he's on a special diet, but even before we began that I saw a clear pattern between diet and behavior.

You might try keeping a food diary, listing not only everything your child eats for the day but roughly what was in it. Look for patterns, like reacting to food dyes (most cereals aimed at kids are loaded with dye), problems with high glycemic meals (simple sugar - rapidly digested and "burned off" followed by a crash when the blood sugar drops), etc. I kept a food diary for my son for about 5 years because of his medical problems, and it was a great tool for learning about him.