The "day one" miracle

At the time of my son's diagnosis he was 5 1/2 years old. At first I resisted the doctor's suggestion that any dietary change could help my son's anxiety, after all, I have been raised to believe my whole life that milk and wheat are good for you. How could this be possible?

Well, on Christmas day 2008 we had a particularly anguishing 7 hour drive from Saskatchewan to Alberta to visit family. We had let each of the kids pick out a drink at a gas station and my son's choice was a bottle of chocolate milk. I didn't make the connection at the time, but during that trip, he was so anxious and wired he was begging to stop the trip, begging to get out of the vehicle and crying out "I can't take it anymore" over and over, although we were constantly trying to appease and calm him, divert his thoughts with singing, movies, books and different activities. He was inconsolable.

At the end of that day, two weeks after the initial diagnosis, we finally decided we were desperate enough to try removing milk for a few days to see what would happen.

Well, what happened was a miracle. Literally overnight, the next day, there were drastic changes in my son. He was calm and happy, did not require constant consoling, and the biggest miracle of all was that he played happily and quietly (on his own!) with some little plastic animals at his grandparent's house, creatively pretending they were talking to each other and coming up with stories on his own. He did not pace at all.

My eyes were opened. Milk was the trigger for my son's anxiety.