GFCF, day 4

So far, so good with the diet. No problems with Ryan accepting it, although it is a bit more difficult to find him something to eat quickly. This morning I kept him home from school to take him to the doctor about his knee. It had a definite pocket of fluid on it last night, not so much this morning but I took him in anyway. The ped send us for an xray. All in all we were gone for over 3 hours, me and all three kids. Thank goodness for Leapsters with headphones. Ryan was really good the whole time. He even went back with the xray tech all by himself while I stayed in the waiting room with the twins. Anyway, GFCF waffle with maple syrup for breakfast. I didn't anticipate being gone so long, and we only had about 15 minutes to find a snack between the ped and the imaging place, so I got them all a hashbrown from McD's...and now I'm afraid to look it up to see if it's GFCF. I need to remember to stash some appropriate snacks in the car.

I had a horrendous migraine the whole time, and when I got home I turned on the TV for the kids and dozed in the recliner (with the twins on top of me, lol) for awhile. I got up to make them lunch...PB&J, raisins and potato chips (hey, they were Whole Foods brand and trans-fat free!!) and V8 Fusion juice. Then I dozed some more until around 3:30. That's 4 hours of TV, folks...way too much. I asked DH to bring home Arby's sandwiches for dinner, and just gave Ryan the roast beef. But just before dinner (5:00) he had the start of a humongous meltdown. Started with something at the dinner table between him and dad and he ended up hitting his dad, so dad took him to the recliner for a time out, needing to hold him down until he calmed enough to sit on his own. DH couldn't manage to get him settled, so I took him myself, got him calmed down and let him go only to have him explode again about 2 minutes later. Hold down again, calm again, went to dinner table and had a little spat with Max and DH took his plate away from him, and he went off again. I had to hold him down for 20+ minutes, then I couldn't take getting beat up with his head anymore so I hauled him up to his room and offered to lay down with him. Finally got him calm, he went back downstairs and got into it again because Max wouldn't give up the swing right at that moment. Held down again, got head butted a dozen times again, hauled him up to his room again and locked him in. Told him I'd come back in when he had his jammies on. He yelled and screamed for another 30 minutes while I had my own breakdown on the steps. All this time Lily was having a hissy fit too because her dad wouldn't get the play-doh down for her until she cleaned up her crayons and coloring books.

*Finally*, around 6:30, Ryan was calm enough and in his jammies that I went in to him and snuggled on the bed with him. I took him some juice with a couple droppers of valerian root. He was really sad, and I talked to him for a few minutes about how I knew all those feelings were pretty scary to him. And that I only held him down to keep him from hurting me and himself. I asked him what he wanted to eat, and he asked for popcorn and his vitamin. I gave him that and some books to keep him busy in his room until bed time, I didn't want him downstairs getting all riled up again.

So, I don't know what's going on with him. This meltdown could be from anything. Not enough exercise, etc. today. Withdrawal symptoms from gluten/casein. Yeast die-off. Coincidence.

You know, for the longest time I assumed Ryan's meltdowns were a symptom of a strong-willed personality, and of poor parenting methods. So I read book after book, and finally sought help, wanting ways to parent him that would keep this stuff to a minimum. You'd think that I would feel relieved to find out that it's not due to our parenting at all (well, I'm sure we could do better), but you know, I'm not relieved at all. Why? Because now I know I *can't fix it*. It's beyond MY control. And that scares the crap out of me, and it makes me angry and sad and so damn frustrated. I CAN'T FIX IT. And I want to so badly. It's so hard to get out of that mind-set that there's got to be something that we're not doing yet that we can do to make this all better. I'd so much rather have the power within me to fix this for him, rather than rely on a myriad of others who, while most of them have his best interests at heart, they don't know him heart and soul like I do. They're not the ones lying awake worrying every night, researching every single idea and method. I have support, but all the support in the world isn't going to fix this for him. And because we don't know for sure what's going on with him...does he maybe have some sort of emotional disability??...or is this just delayed emotional maturity???...I have no prognosis for him. I know there are kids out there who are much worse off than my son, I'm sure many would sell their souls to *only* have the problems that Ryan has. But this is my baby. MY BABY. And I can't make it all better for him. I feel like I'm slogging through all of this, trying this or that, no real plan, not knowing what's actually working and what isn't. It's not that I can't see the forest for the trees, I can't see the trees for the damn leaves.