Vegemite Vege-won't

We're coming to the end of day five on a lower salicylate diet for Pixie and I have to say it's not been as soul crushingly hard as I was expecting. We've been super pleased with his nursery as the P's daddy called them to let them know what we were up to, expecting to be asked to take in a pack up for Pix, but they've accommodated us entirely. The only problems we're finding are that he now has a very limited diet, especially in the fruit and veg department. Luckily he likes bananas, pears and golden delicious apples so he eats two of those a day. Unfortunately all the low salicylate veg are ones he doesn't like, like cabbage and peas. Bummer for him. I'm trying to get him to eat them but it's hard going - if anyone has any bright ideas on how to get kids to eat certain vegetables that'd be handy! The other problem is the range of food he can have while we're out. Partly this is because I'm being particularly cautious while I'm getting to grips with the diet, but partly there's plain crisps and, er, that's about it. He's still being so good about it all.

His symptoms may have seen a very, very mild improvement. It's hard to say with a lot of them as they wax and wane anyway, but his eyes are less red and angry looking; I've not heard him cough much in the last day or two; there's no eczema patches; I've not heard much whining about being huuuuuuuuuuuungrrrrrrrrrrrrrry; I've not noticed him bash his head a million times. His speech is going through a relatively 'good' patch at the minute but he's definitely still stammering, although the coherence of his words is quite good. So yeah, there's certainly not been a decline since we started this and if I squint a bit there may even be improvements!

Those Silly Salicylates

I mentioned in my last post that one of the things I was considering was a salicylate intolerance in Pixie. The list of symptoms associated with it are varied and numerous and a salicylate free diet is mooted by some to have positive affects on people with ADHD.

There are a number of things on the list that Pixie has. Obviously it may well be that he just 'happens' to have a multitude of unrelated, low-level health issues but equally there may be an all-encompassing reason for them. Having fibromyalgia myself, I know that a myriad of seemingly unrelated issues can (eventually!) be tracked back to an umbrella condition. With that in mind, we decided that cutting down on salicylates certainly wouldn't hurt.

The list of symptoms we're concerned about may be a mix of unrelated issues and the fact that Pixie is, y'know, three, , so I thought I'd track his progress here. The symptoms we think are related are these:

• eczema (mild, but we can never quite get rid of it)
• persistent cough
• slightly darker and slightly paler patches on his forearms, as though the skin pigmentation is going awry
• itchy, dry skin around his eyes, with red circles round them, that cream doesn't seem to get rid of
• constant hunger
• accident prone (honestly, I'm surprised he doesn't have brain damage by now, the amount of times he's walked into the same pieces of furniture!)
• hearing without comprehension
• slurred speech
• stammering

Obviously if the salicylate intolerance isn't the cause then the symptoms won't get better over time. However, even if he is intolerant I'm expecting the symptoms to wax and wane before going completely, especially while we get to grips with what is and isn't 'acceptable' under the new regime. So I'm going to track the progress here.

We're currently at the end of day two and he's being surprisingly agreeable about the entire situation. He's started asking if he's allowed to have something before he eats it (which is brilliant!). The worst part is limiting his fruit and veg as he's a big fruit fan and we obviously want to keep him having a fresh, healthy diet! Because he goes to nursery for 3 half days a week he has 6 meals a week outside the home. I don't want to mess about with what he eats there on what's unsubstantiated theory at the moment so we're not going to ask the nursery to alter his food in any way yet. However, we'll keep an eye on any reactions he has on those days and take steps if necessary. I'm slightly concerned about the website I linked to earlier saying that caution needs to be exercised on reintroducing salicylates as anaphylactic shock may occur....I don't think that they'll be removed so completely (we're not currently changing his toiletries, for example) that him eating 'normally' at nursery will result in that though! Um, if anyone thinks they know different please get in touch before Tuesday morning!

I wasn't expecting to see any results this quickly but what is a little bit galling is that this afternoon his eyes got really bad and red again and his behaviour deteriorated pretty quickly. How much of this is because we slipped up somewhere and how much is because the weekend was spent with his grandparents having attention lavished on him I don't know, but there were definitely tears before bedtime!

Tomorrow is another day, and one that we'll hopefully start to see signs of change.

Talk the Talk

Yesterday was quite a tear-filled day for me. The morning saw Pixie's first dysfluency speech therapy session (although it was parent only so he was off living it up with a friend!). 


I feel horrendously sad for him and guilty. I honestly thought his affected speech was a short-lived developmental phase but being there made me realise that his speech patterns are quite a bit more serious than I thought. As he's not been formally assessed yet I can only give my lay opinion but I believe he has a stammer (or stutter if you're from the US) and cluttered speech.


The stammer has presented perfectly typically. He's 3, he's a boy, he has parents with speech issues (his dad had a stammer, I get what I call speech dyslexia (although I'm sure there's an official name!) from my fibromyalgia), he's had a great deal of stressful change in a short period. I'm not sure he could be more of a classic presentation! According to the Speech Disorder website there are three types of stammer:

There are three main types of stammers that exist and which keep individuals from speaking most efficiently. One type of stammering occurs when specific sounds are repeated, such as the “s”. This often makes a word such as “sweet” be pronounced as “s-s-s-sweet”.Another type of stammering occurs when a specific sound is prolonged before the rest of the word is pronounced, such as “sssssssweet”. The third type of stammering occurs when some speech is blocked so that there is a short period of silence in the middle of a word, such as “s……weet”.

Pixie certainly does the first two, although he also repeats the first word or syllable as well as the sound. So far he hasn't shown any sign of 'blocking'. He also repeats sounds or words in the middle of sentences, although the speech therapist believes that because of his age he's treating them as two separate sentences. As well as those he adds filler sounds like 'um' and a sort of tut. Again this is common, apparently, as his brain realises that making those noises gives him a bit of time to get his mouth round what he's actually saying. Thankfully he hasn't noticed yet that he has a stammer.


As well as the stammer, I believe he has cluttering, which Wikipedia defines as a:

communication disorder characterized by speech that is difficult for listeners to understand due to rapid speaking rate, erratic rhythm, poor syntax or grammar, and words or groups of words unrelated to the sentence.

He can have an entire conversation with me where I can only make out a word or two of what he says. Although many websites have said that clutterers don't have any awareness of their dysfluent speech, Pixie has started to notice that people don't understand him. More upsetting, he's noticed that people are pretending to understand him. We've all done it to children who are learning to talk, replied to an unintelligible babble with "Oh yes, right! That's it, yes!" which is all well and good until the child is old enough to come crying to me because the person he's talking to isn't talking back.


My homework following the session is to see when Pixie's speech is at its most fluent, so we can use that state as a basis to improve the bad times. I think I'm the person least able to do this because I genuinely don't hear a lot of the issues because I'm so used to them. We're visiting my parents this weekend so hopefully they'll be able to help out.


I'm a little ashamed to say I cried in the session. Realising that my little baby needs help was honestly devastating. I'm even more ashamed to say I cried when a friend asked me how it had gone! We've only been friends for a couple of weeks so I don't think she was expecting tears over cake!


Something I'm finding hard to admit and even harder to articulate is the extra worry I have. There's something inside me that thinks the speech problems may be part of something bigger, more worrying. Over the last few months there have been times when I've thought 'you're just not right'. I can't tell you what, and I hope it's just an over active imagination, but I've been spending a lot of time reading up about ADD and salicylate sensitivity. More on those another day as Poppy has just woken up from her (very short!) nap.

More Morrisons

I know, I know, I only come here to complain about how utterly rubbish and useless the Morrisons brand is but, well, they keep giving me the opportunity so what can I do?

My friend has just shown me this picture, that she took in her local store. Nothing says 'little boy' than a list of gender stereotypes in children, huh?

Morrisons - Where Breastfeeding is 'Embarrassing'

I've still had no response from the last blog post. Interesting.

I've also just been told about a woman breastfeeding her baby in the cafe who was asked to leave as it was "embarrassing" the other customers.

Go Morrisons, you ROCK at being cool.

Seriously? Seriously? Does anyone believe that bullshit?

Also, as an aside, their 'cooked and ready to eat' mussels are so frozen I'll be ready to eat them about this time tomorrow.

Why I won't be buying from Morrisons or Kiddicare until they change their views

Below is a copy of an email I've just sent to the CEO of Morrisons, a Mr Dalton Philips, regarding a display I saw instore yesterday. Yes, yesterday - not 30 years ago as the sexist stereotyping suggests.

Dear sir,
I noticed in my local store that above the toy aisle were the signs ‘Boys’ toys’ and ‘Girls’ toys’ (helpfully blue for boys, pink for girls, just in case anyone was in any doubt!), with the toys separated according to whomever is in charge of this sort of thing’s pre-conceived ideas of what girls and boys play with.
I’m really disappointed that in this day and age this sort of thing is still happening. These aren’t old signs – the entire store has just been revamped – so someone, somewhere in your company has clearly decided that this is appropriate.Gender stereotyping through toys is highly influential and persuasive. It invades children’s and parent’s choices, their actions and their expectations. It’s indicative of the (thankfully slowly changing) world around them where boys dressed in blue do Boy Things, while pink-clad princesses pursue Girl Pursuits. I’m sure that you wouldn’t claim only women care and nurture children, for example, yet all of your dolls were in the ‘Girl’ section; utterly reinforcing regressive stereotypes and damaging growing children’s sense of individuality by lumping them in groups based solely on gender.

There have been many recent campaigns against this sort of sexist stereotyping, which you may or may not be aware of:

•  
Dr Laura Nelson led a winning campaign against Hamleys for gender segregating toy signage within its stores: http://delilah-mj.blogspot.co.uk/2011/12/campaign-success-hamleys-toyshop-scraps.html

• Swedish schoolchildren reported Toys’R’Us for outdated gender roles in their merchandising, resulting in a public reprimand for the company
http://www.thelocal.se/22504/20091006

•  
Pinkstinks (www.pinkstinks.co.uk) launched a campaign against the Early Learning Centre for gender stereotyping in stores which has led to some positive changes occurring.

You can see that corporations are taking this seriously and are slowly making the necessary changes needed. Please make Morrisons one of the progressive companies by stopping your stores’ reliance on this outdated and harmful method of visual merchandising which introduce, promote and reinforce sexism. Until such time as you do, I won’t be spending money on toys in any of your stores or affiliates. I’m sure one person’s boycott won’t even register on your radar but my conscience will be clear that I’m not supporting this behaviour. I do hope that the decision-makers at Morrisons choose not to continue propagating these destructive stereotypes.
I would appreciate your feedback on this matter.

In hindsight I wish I'd signed off 'love from a little boy who likes to breastfeed his dolly and whose favourite colour is purple, and a little girl who likes to wear blue pyjamas'. C'est la vie.

With thanks to various online peeps who gave me advice and support when drafting the letter, and to Dr Laura Nelson for blazing the trail with Hamleys.

Trial Tuesday

The very lovely Rebecca over at Weight Wars' most recent blog post has inspired me (to be honest, everything she does inspires me - she's truly inspirational in what she's doing and is, well, a lovely person too) to create some little goals for this blog and life in general.

This week's goals are:

1) Think about what I'm writing (and actually write it!)
I know it sounds a bit daft, but my posts so far (including this one!) have been written off the cuff and posted as soon as they're done. They're not exactly indicative of my writing style, or me as a person. So I'm going to start thinking a bit lot more about the content, look and feel of my posts. I'm also going to make sure I post regularly, otherwise what's the point?

2) Spend more time playing
I know it sounds a bit simple, but day to day life gets so caught up in going to and fro places, feeding people, changing nappies, wiping bums, cleaning up (Operation Organise My Life is going well, by the way) that I don't spend an awful lot of time playing with the kids. So that will change. This will also take up time, which will help me with a problem I'm having (that I won't go into here)

That'll do, donkey.