Milk: It's What's for Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner

We planned a while back to let DuckyBoy go off the no-casein diet during Spring Break this week. (For those not in the know, casein is a protein in cow's milk, and also used to make a lot of lactose-free or "non-dairy" items, like cheeses, have a better mouthfeel. Allergy to casein, as well as gluten, are fairly common among children with autism, though much of the info is anecdotal.)

DuckyBoy certainly remembered and was clearly looking forward to it; I think it was Saturday morning when he said, "Hey, since it's Spring Break, can I have..." In fact it may even have been Friday night.

So, he's digging butter on his toast and popcorn, and pizza with real cheese. At first he couldn't taste the difference between the Earth Balance spread and the butter, but I knew from The Peanut Butter Issue that wouldn't last. Sure enough, halfway through the toast (he requested one slice with "our butter" and one slice with "Daddy's butter," as we call it) he'd decided he preferred the Daddy butter.

You know what he seems to be enjoying the most? Kid Cuisine (think TV dinners). They have a cute penguin character on the ads, and they ALL have cheese; mac and cheese, pizza, and a cheeseburger are the entrees. We made a special trip to the grocery store --the whole family -- to get some, and so far he's already had 2. And he's really eating them -- even trying the corn! Wow!

I know, I know: Getting a 5-year-old to eat macaroni and cheese, fruit gummies, and one-quarter of an already-small serving of corn should not be cause for celebration. All I can say is, Welcome to Jan's life. I'll move over to make room for you.

I like that some of his choices are still nondairy (he picked a Popsicle-type thing from the ice-cream truck, and he wanted chocolate almond milk instead of cow's-milk chocolate milk this morning).

So far, it seems as though the milk products shorten his frustration tolerance. By a lot. But then again, sometimes we all have better days than others. Today I didn't notice hardly anything that seemed out of the ordinary. He was a little more clingy to me, maybe. But that's normal for him on a day off when he spends it with me.

He has many more tools in his emotional arsenal for dealing with frustration than he did 2 years ago when we put him on this diet; he also has more experience calming down, and more (I hope) trust that we will help him make sure things work out.

If he continues to wig out more often on the cheese than off, I'll want to eliminate it again, but it sure was nice to order a pizza for the 3 of us for dinner. And to eat together at a diner this weekend without having to drag special margarine, soy milk for the coffee, worry about the scrambled eggs, etc. etc. He can eat the hot lunch (and the breakfast) at school if he can eat milk.

So at this point, there's a big upside to going off. I have my fingers crossed that the downside won't be too bad this week!