What are characteristics of Down Syndrome, and what are stereotypes? And there you have Micah.
Micah is so very smart, yet he takes hours to write his Bible verse. He only whispers when reading, so that if a mistake is made it is not heard. He will not even try math beyond counting.
He eats very slowly and rarely asks for seconds, yet he helps himself to any food he wants in the night. Too many times we have awakened to a melted carton of ice cream on the table, or a peanut butter jar with a spoon still in it on the counter.
Micah might get up in the night, but he also is hard to wake up in the morning, and will routinely try to put himself in bed for a nap during the day. We also would find him sleeping in the girls' room every morning, instead of in his own bed.
He still "leaks" and goes through several pair of pants a day. And his poop is yucky. (We'll leave it at that.)
So we decided to experiment with his diet. Starting on January 12th, we removed all flour from his diet. This meant removing all flour from the house, since he is the Midnight Raider. If he cannot have it, it cannot be lurking in the house.
In the last few weeks, there have been changes. It took a while to see them, and we have not been 100% flour free, but they are becoming more noticeable as time is progressing.
Micah has been found in the wrong bedroom only once!
He is going through fewer pairs of pants daily, so his incontinence is getting better. (I have yet to see a stool sample)
He is staying up during the day, interacting more, doing his writing faster, and is just happier and more cooperative. The other day he sang and danced to an entire song, from memory!
Something has most certainly changed in our boy.
I hesitate to say it is all the fault of flour. As a side effect of now flour products, there have been no processed foods in the house either. I have not been baking so there has been a drastically decreased processed sugar consumption. The snow and slow nights at work have effected my grocery budget, so there has been no ice cream in the house...so almost no dairy.
What made him essentially wake up? The lack of gluten, dairy, sugar, yeast, preservatives, or additives? I am not really sure. And unfortunately I did not even track his behaviors and diet daily, to look back and try to see a pattern.
So for now we will keep him, and all of us flour free. Eventually I will add back in freshly milled whole wheat flour bread with natural yeast, since it has been some time since we had natural bread instead of processed white flour bread, and I will watch for any changes in Micah. In a few months the goat will begin to give us milk again and we will have home made yogurt, I will watch to see if that addition of dairy changes anything. We will hopefully figure out if there can be days of cheating with sweet treats, or if we have to be strict with his diet.
I am just glad we are trying this "Micah experiment", and very pleased with our results so far. He is even asking for fruit to eat, instead of wanting only bread.
