First off, let me say: I know it’s overwhelming. Believe me, I know. I cried in frustration every single day when we first started this adventure. In fact, I crashed and burned the first time, and gave him back gluten products after only 3 days. But we held on to being dairy-free, and after a few weeks I was ready to try gluten again. The second time around, I actually had a plan in place, and it made everything so much easier. Trust me, you want to have a plan.
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Step 1: Start keeping a food and behavior log. Start today, even if you’re not sure you’re ready to jump on board with this diet. You will see patterns that you never knew were there, but become so obvious when it’s written down day after day. Did your kid have an especially rotten day? Look at what he ate, and scan back to the other days he ate those foods. I pinned down the majority of my son’s food sensitivities long before we ever managed to get him in for blood tests to confirm them, just with simple but consistent note-taking.
You can lay it out to cover whatever information is pertinent to your child’s age and personality. Write down everything that goes in their mouth, including drinks and snacks. I rank behavior on a scale of 1-5 during several time periods: before breakfast, after breakfast, after lunch, after naptime, and after dinner, so it’s easy to see if he crashed at a specific time of the day. If your child is still in diapers, definitely make notes about the consistency of their bowel movements. You’ll find the bad behavior days are linked to the bad digestive days, and this fact will either help convince you to try the diet, or help you pin down lesser food sensitivities after you’ve successfully removed gluten and casein.
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Step 2: Buy this book. It lists over 15,000 brand name items that are GFCF, including generic store brands. I carry one in my bag at all times, and couldn’t even begin to tell you the number of times it has saved me when I was put on the spot about a certain food. In the meantime, here is a shorter list of standard GFCF grocery items from TACA.org to get you started.
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Step 3: Go through your current recipes and standard family meals, looking for the things that are already GFCF, or could be very easily adapted. Often it is just a question of switching out to a safe brand of ketchup, substituting GFCF margarine for butter, etc. Don’t try anything major yet, just get a sense of what you already have. Move the unsafe recipes to the back of the box for now, so you can look at altering them again after you’ve gotten settled in and the diet becomes a little more second-nature (and it will, I promise. I know it doesn’t feel like it, but it will.)
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Step 4: Recognize that good nutrition and square meals are not the goal right now. The goal is to get your kid through the withdrawal period with as little pain and suffering as possible for everyone involved. If necessary, find just one GFCF thing that your child will eat, and let them eat that at every meal for as long as it takes. For my son, it was Bush’s refried beans on corn tostadas, and canned peaches. He ate that for lunch and dinner, for I don’t know how many days. If you try to introduce a ton of new foods now, you will only frustrate yourself–this is exactly why I failed the first time I tried this diet. I thought I would just magically transfer him over to 50 new foods, including a dozen or so that I’d enthusiastically baked myself, and was utterly demoralized when he rejected every last one. Plus, I wasted a ton of money on specialty items that got thrown out. If the only thing they’ll eat at first are tortilla chips and bananas, then feed them that. Just make it through the first three weeks, any way you can.
The reason it’s so important not to let yourself get discouraged is because it is vital that you do not cheat, not even the slightest bit. There is no such thing as “just a little” gluten or casein. Even now, a single goldfish cracker can make my son a total nutball for a day or more. Remember, if they’re screaming and writhing on the floor begging for the food, that’s the best indication that they must not have it. You are literally detoxing a junkie from his drug habit, and they are not going to appreciate it one bit.
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Step 5: Plan a menu. The hardest part about all of this will be the psychological shift for you as a parent. Everyone has a certain set of foods that pop into your head when you consider what to serve, and it will take awhile before your brain quits suggesting dairy and bread products and naturally jumps to ideas that are GFCF instead. In the meantime, all you will be able to focus on is how many things there are that you can’t serve anymore, which only leads to resentment and frustration. Lay out everything in advance, so you aren’t burdened with trying to come up with safe foods spontaneously. Here are some sample dinner menus that might work for your family. If your child goes to school during the day, see A Week of Lunches and Another Week of Lunches for a huge variety of lunchbox ideas.
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Step 6: Replace the non-food items in your house, including your child’s shampoo/conditioner, body wash, lotion, laundry detergent, dishwashing detergent, toothpaste, sunscreen, and medicines (including diaper rash ointment.) If your child is young enough that your fingers or hair will end up in their mouth at some point, make sure your products are GFCF as well–makeup is an especially big culprit when it comes to gluten. It can be hard to imagine that such trace amounts can have an effect on your child, but countless parents have discovered the hard way that they do. Three weeks into the diet, I caught my son sucking on his shampoo bottle. Turns out it had milk derivatives in it as a moisturizer, and having deprived him of all other sources, he was hunting for his fix any way he could get it. If a kid wants something badly enough to drink shampoo, that’s a pretty good indication that there’s a chemical addiction going on, don’t you think?
Other non-food items to consider are school supplies like glue and playdough, and a dedicated GF toaster that hasn’t been filled with crumbs and grease from unsafe breads.
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Step 7: Slowly, slowly start trying new recipes, cooking your own chicken nuggets or waffles, finding suitable restaurants in your area, etc. Don’t move any faster than is comfortable for you and your child. This is not a race, nor is it a contest for SuperMom nomination. You already deserve highest honors just for committing to help your child in such a lifestyle-altering way. As I said, just make it through the first three weeks, any way you can. By then you will be feeling much more confident, and you should already be seeing improvements in your child as well, which will give you the motivation you need to keep going.
