Reply to DD & Celiac ...

Forum Index » Health and Medicine

Reply to "DD & Celiac ..."

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous]Hi OP - I'm the OP of that other thread, and just want to say that I completely understand how you're feeling as we were in your position a few weeks ago with our 5 yo.  (And sorry in advance for typos - am on my phone but wanted to reply quickly.)

We're obviously still grappling with the changes, but I honestly think it has been harder than me than my child.  I can get caught up in the big picture, and feel sorry for myself about all the work and changes this requires, but my child gets upset briefly when there is a food she can't have and then moves on.  She has made some complaints more generically about missing flour/flour things tasting better, but we've made big strides with that in terms on explaining that there are alternatives and we're just still in the process of figuring it out. And this has been helped by actually following through and getting those yummy treats, so I've made both a batch of GF cookies and GF brownies recently and we've taken her to the GF bakery as well.  We also eat out a lot, so figuring that out has definitely been daunting, but there ARE restaurants that work for celiacs, so we are slowly figuring it out.

But I won't lie - even though there are lots of great GF options now (for which I am SO grateful), having to do this sucks, and there have definitely been negative emotions in adjusting to it. I still get sucker punched on a regular basis by another situation where the diet is a problem, most recently the surprise cupcakes at school and the food items at the end of a 5K where there were piles of bagels / cookies / ice cream sandwiches and basically nothing my kid could eat.  And those times suck and make my heart ache for my kid.  But even just a few weeks in it's getting easier and I'm starting to be able to plan better and anticipate some of those, and at the least it stops being so completely overwhelming.

And a few practical tips if you're ready for those:
-Order the book 'Gluten-Free Kids'. I'm about 1/2 way through, and it is definitely worth the purchase, as it talks about all the emotional aspects as well as the diet, and is focused at parents of celiac kids (most things seemed aimed at adult celiacs)
-Get a GF cookbook for kids and let her help pick out foods to make. We got 'recipes for gluten-free kids' and my DD has loved it.
-For birthdays, preemptively buy a pack of GF cupcakes to keep in your freezer. I also bought a thing of sprinkles since the store bought regular cupcakes generally have them. (I learned this last week when I did preschool dropoff and noticed a bag of cupcakes so had to run to WF and get them). But good news my kids was very happy with her cupcake, and there are now 3 more at the school waiting for the next b'day.
-Consider getting a breadmaker. We hadn't found good GF bread, but my IL's have a breadmaker and made a GF loaf (from a boxed mix) and my DD gobbled it up. So we will be purchasing one shortly.
-Hit up a good grocery store and pre-stock the house with GF alternatives to regular food items. For us this meant getting GF pancake mix, cereals, pretzels. I think as we get further into the diet we will transition to more naturally GF foods, but for now it has definitely helped to feel like we don't need to give foods but rather just find the alternatives.

And I'd be happy to try and connect by email if it would help to talk to someone in the same place who's still dealing with the emotional side of this diagnosis.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics