My Glimpse Into Alternative Dieting

Below is a summary of my childhood experience of dieting in order to change behavior.

I am fairly sure a lot has changed since 2003. People are now much more used to diets, whether they be for food alergies or philosophical reasons. More kids are getting IEPs, and elementary schools are becoming individualized and flexible enough so that perfectly reasonable personalized requests from parents can be enacted without paperwork. I am also fairly sure that places such as Northwest Passage and Clinicare, places where the lines between kids with mental health problems, kids with developmental disorders, and kids with behavioral issues are blurred and forgotten by parents, "who just don't know what to do," who give up the chances of their child being more than a group home worker (most kids who get "admitted" are much higher-functioning), are slowly becoming unpopular.

However, back in 2003, autism and diets were just a little more esoteric, and while I was in one of the most experimental elementary schools of the state (commonly called "Lab School" for that very reason), I was somehow diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome (a now-somewhat-questioned diagnosis for those considered to be on the high-functioning end of the autism spectrum) when I was in kindergarten; this posed a threat to the quality of the rest of my life; and I was saved by dieting, as the story goes.

For whatever reason, I must have been a very "bad kid." I rembember being in the principal's office of the Lab School, having no idea of the situation I was in. After heading to the principal's office became routine, and after I may have even started to look forward to it, (this is 2003, not 1950), the principal asked me why I seemed to want to get "kicked out," the consequence that would arise if I continued to be too disruptive (such as sneaking into the teacher's lounge or hiding in the library, or not paying attention in class). I gigglingly told him that if I got kicked out here, I could go to another school, and if I got kicked out that place, I could go to another, and another, and another, until I didn't have to go to school! There were other "incidents" elsewhere. At a birthday party, I unplugged a bouncy castle while kids were in it. At church, I not only got into the sound room during service and messed with the pastor's microphone, but I was so continually disruptive in the children's choir that my mother was told that I was a bad kid, and that she was a bad mother. (A couple of weeks after my family quit attending, the pastor mailed us a carefully-worded letter ensuring us that we had not been kicked out.)

The "incidents" are easy to remember and cite, but I think the true reason for my Asperger Syndrome diagnosis was continual tantrums and considerable social awkwardness. For a good reason, adults would have picked up on this and seen it as a bad sign.

Whether or not that should have been considered possible normal behaviors of a five-year-old boy, the Lab School and other adults in my life did not classify them as such. As the chances of me continuing a normal education were slim, my parents began to evaluate my options. Did they want me to attend another place, and/or request a very restrictive IEP that would permanently alienate me from my peers and harm my chances of higher education? Did they want to hire a graduate student to professionally nag at me to alter my behavior? Did they want to take the route that many do: putting me on a series of overlapping expensive medications? My mother decided that we would try a seemingly fringe idea: the Gluten-free Casein-free Diet (GFCF).

For whatever reason, the adults around me said it worked, so it must have been a miracle. Because a week before the GFCF I had just scribbled, ignoring the lines on a coloring book sheet, and three days after the GFCF, I finally drew a picture drawing inside of the lines, my ability to behave must have improved! (Having been constantly reminded of those two pictures over the years, I remember what I was thinking when I drew them. For both, I wanted to draw between the lines. It's just that on the first one, when I made a tiny error, I decided I had ruined the image and gave up coloring in the lines, while coloring in the picture after the diet had started, I decided to ignore the small errors.)

Kindergarten, it was only the GFCF. First grade, I was told I had bad behavior again, and egg was removed from my diet (which was later re-added). Soy was removed quickly after corn. Artificial flavors and colors (by the way: there's not much of a difference between "natural flavors" and "artificial flavors") were removed the year after. The Lab School was completely on-board with all of it, and often a food removal would come after I turned home a sheet indicating bad behavior.

Soon, a detailed explanation about why I (and soon all of five my siblings) needed the diet developed in my family. I was the victim, and possibly because of a vaccination (in 2003, that was a more acceptable position), my small intestine was incapable of processing some proteins, the villi were being compromised, and some food was going unprocessed into my bloodstream that was interfering with brain function. About a year after artificial flavors and colors were removed (when switching to the specific carbohydrate diet), our family decided this was because of "bad bacteria" in the large intestines that were feeding on complex carbohydrates, and those destroyed the villi. Around five years later, in the diet's current form, processed foods threaten the body's entire microbiome, capable of messing with bacteria, fungi, and parasites, which can all affect the brain.

From third grade to ninth grade, I had become high-functioning enough that the IEP harmed me more than it helped me. In order to get rid of it, I had to go into a small room where all of my teachers, two psychologists, and my case manager reviewed my performance and analyzed me for hours. My parents had likewise disconnected from lots of the autism support groups. (If there is ever an alternative medicine that works, I doubt that breakthrough will send shockwaves through most support communities. Instead, those who find the answer (just as people who incorrectly think they find the answer) will quietly disconnect from those support groups before academia catches up because they feel that they're not being heard.)

According to my father, the price of food for six kids on this diet became so high that it inevitably caused bankrupcy and a divorce. The summer preceding the divorce, once most of my father's six-figure salary was being used to pay debt, most meals were navy beans (and sometimes green beans). Obviously, this diet made me not leave the house much during my teenage years. The idea of eating anywhere else but home was completely absurd, and I wonder if that permanently re-shaped some of my personality.

I write this because I am honestly no longer sure whether the diet worked. Now, I'm an adult in United States, so I have the legal right to believe anything I want at the expense of others or my wallet. There's a part of me that wants to be right, though. If any of you have something that has become a doctrine based only on your personal experiences, I encourage you to challenge that.