Stories of Motherhood – Transforming behaviour with food

Alison’s story of motherhood is one I can identify with – with my children, and my own journey with wellness. Food has been the key for us – it can literally be the line between sanity and insanity in our household.  I’ve watched my son turn from calm happiness into a violent rage on a store-bought gingerbread man with blue Smartie buttons!  For myself I well know how irrational I become after I have consumed preservatives. I know many readers of Lavendilly have been drawn here on their own food/wellness journeys too, and you may find some support in Alison’s story. Transforming behaviour through diet is a huge commitment, and one that we need our family and friends to make with us, which is often quite a challenge in itself. Alison’s journey has spurred her on to offer inspiration and support to others through the Angel Maker Challenge. Read on to find out more.

My name is Alison, and I have a wonderful partner and two beautiful daughters, Miss K (5) and Miss S (2). My parenting story begins with friends whispering in my ear the Grimm’s fairy tales of parenting – children’s tantrums which shatter the walls, torture by sleep deprivation and death by confinement to the kitchen. Never, ever did I imagine that these stories would take on a life of their own – my life!

Fortunately, my story became the Hero’s Journey of how we transformed Miss K’s behavioural issues to create the joyous family life we’d always imagined.

For the first 8 months of Miss K’s life she was a dream baby. She slept well, would go to anyone and I wondered what all the fuss was about. Well I sure found out. Around the time she started eating a lot of solids, her behaviour became more and more physical and hyperactive. She would pull, scratch, hit, kick and not sit still for even 20 seconds.  She also head banged until lumps appeared on her forehead. At age two, I stopped taking Miss K to playgroup, or the park because she hurt other children. She also hurt her baby sister and my mother. My days were spent trying to be proactive – having a rhythm, engaging in creative play but the reality for me was the moment to moment behaviour monitoring.

I tried behaviour management Super Nanny style – Miss K just escalated and no consequences were able to curb her behaviour. Time outs were a nightmare. I tried energetic healing, homeopathy, osteopathy and gluten-free diets. I know these modalities can work wonders for others, but the results for us weren’t lasting. I was desperate!

The funny thing was she never had any problems at daycare or kindy. They didn’t know what I was talking about. It was hard to think that it didn’t have something to do with my parenting.

A friend said, ‘Maybe that’s just who she is’. I immediately replied, ‘I refuse to believe that. I refuse to believe that a child could be naturally this unhappy’. By this time, every step in our day set off a major tantrum. I had to find a solution, so I searched frantically on the internet.

I ordered six parenting books and implemented as many of their strategies I thought would work. Then, as I researched yet another behaviour management book on Amazon, a reviewer said to take a different approach and buy ‘Fed Up with Children’s Behaviour’ by Sue Dengate which eliminates harmful food additives and natural food chemicals.

I looked at her website and ordered ‘Fed Up’ and ‘The Failsafe Cookbook’ immediately. These books are based on the RPAH elimination diet. I didn’t think that food additives would have been a problem as Miss K had never eaten chocolate, McDonalds or pretty much any junk food. We began the diet and it was surprisingly easy, despite resistance from family members who thought that healthy foods such as fruit and veggies should not be limited. I didn’t care, I was doing it anyway. We eliminated all harmful food additives and reduced natural food chemicals such as salycilates, amines, sulphites and glutamates.

And the improvements were immediate. Her tantrums became less and less and she could stop herself hurting people. We continued the elimination phase for 4 weeks and by the end of it she was the best version of herself I could imagine. I cannot describe how wonderful it is for me to see her happy, calm and comfortable in her own skin. It is like the food intolerance was crawling around inside her body, trying to get out and driving her insane. The bed time routine became easy, meals weren’t a battle ground and she got in and out of the car by herself, happily. She also became so much more creative. Before the diet, she hardly ever drew or focussed on an activity. All of a sudden, she was happy to get out her crayons and draw or make up stories. She started to spend time playing by herself. Her eczema also cleared up.

It was amazing to me that the seemingly healthy food I had been giving her still contained numerous harmful additives that had such a drastic effect on her behaviour. In particular, non organic dried fruit which contains sulphites, nitrates in ham and unlisted synthetic antioxidants in vegetable oils affect Miss K.  Fortunately she does not react to natural food chemicals, apart from excessive amounts of naturally occurring glutamates in processed tomatoes.

I don’t know what I would have done without this information. We now have a 90/10 ratio of parenting joy to parenting mayhem, not the other way around. Sue Dengate says that you don’t know how good your kids can be until you try it.

I am so passionate about empowering other families to have a transformation in health and behaviour that I have created the Angel Maker Challenge, a free online resource for families to trial additive free eating for two weeks. The website is www.angelmakerchallenge.com. We are doing the School and Child Care Angel Maker Challenge in September 2013 so if you would like to get your education provider on board please see the website or contact me at info@angelmakerchallenge.com.

The two common things that people say about additive free eating is 1) We already eat additive free and 2) My child isn’t that bad, I don’t think we need to do it. As you have seen from my story, unless you eat totally organic and don’t buy any packaged products from the supermarket, you are likely eating harmful food additives regularly. Also, it is not just extreme cases which experience a transformation after two weeks.  Intolerance to food additives can cause learning difficulties, bed wetting, skin conditions, social withdrawal, low frustration or any other behaviour you are concerned with along with more severe conditions such as ADHD, Aspergers, ODD and Autism.

This diet created the possibility of an amazing future for Miss K and our family. I am eternally grateful for finding this information and I am committed to transforming the lives of all families who are affected by food additives.

Celebrating Play: Creating Inside Spaces

I like to keep things very simple when it comes to play spaces. When a great deal of thought has been put into creating play spaces for children, then it is surprising how few things you need to fill it. The less furniture and playthings there are, the more children need to become inventive and imaginative – and also when there are only a few things to put away, then the less overwhelming a task this is!! That is definitely a bonus.

So here is a tour of our playroom, which is used by my three children and two playgroups. We have comfy places to sit: one couch, one chair and some cushions. These are not precious: they’ve been scribbled on and dribbled on, scrubbed and cleaned over and again! These spaces are where we share books, fold washing, relax with a cup of tea or have a cuddle.

I have a few tables that are easy to clean and multi-purpose. I was lucky and was given some second-hand child care tables that can be arranged in different ways. I also have a couple of coffee tables that are short enough for children to work at. Sometimes they are for drawing, sometimes they are for “cooking” at, sometimes they are for stories .. sometimes they are turned upside down are used for building.

Its the chairs that have been the best toys by far in the playroom. They are so useful!

A bedside table holds some home corner necessities: a basket of dress up accessories, a basket for keeping folded blankets, a basket for lots of different hats. I love having blankets and cloths in the playroom. The children use those more than the dress-ups, and for so many things! Capes, crowns, table cloths, landscapes for stories, bandages, wraps for babies. We’ve made knot dolls with them too and they do come in handy for cubby building. Learning how to fold cloths is a great shared skill too.

Next to the bedside table the dollies are tucked into bed. I made these dolls years ago. They are old and raggedy but every now and then we give them a bath and fix them up. Nobody seems to mind they are a little stained these days.

A play stand my husband made for me years ago holds our dress-ups. Some were given to me, some I have made, some I found in op shops. I like to have an assortment of open-ended clothes for all dress-up emergencies! Waistcoats, dresses, jackets and scarves. Not too many to put away.

This cd shelf was a good find! I discovered it in an op shop and we painted it at home. It has been a doll house tower, a castle, a shelf for baby toys and is currently being used as a home corner kitchen shelf. See what we have on there? Not much, but it seems to be enough.

Here is a felted wall hanging my daughter made when she was four years old. I like having my children’s artwork in their playspace. It celebrates their individuality and imagination.

A little coffee table is where the cooking happens. All they have to cook with at the moment is some felted noodles and some colourful stones. I switch it around now and then. I had to move the crayons away from home corner because I was forever looking for them .. and finding them in the play wok (which was a great find in a second-hand store!).

The doll house lives next to a comfy chair. The shelf under the doll house has a basket for dolls and animals, a basket for baby toys, a basket for nature items and a basket with just a few small soft toys and hand puppets. Another coffee table has a variety of felted play mats living underneath it.  Children use these playmats to tell stories with the little dolls and the nature items. Currently some boats are going for a sail on the river.

Out on the covered patio (where we don’t have to tidy it up every day!) the car mat lives with the wooden blocks, duplo, train set and the cars. This collection has been culled. If it doesn’t fit in the basket we don’t need it. There is an old wooden rocking horse living here too.

That’s all we have inside and it has always been enough. My furniture is old, mismatched, a little beaten up, most of it has been given to us or found in second-hand stores. The carpets are stained. Many of my toys I made years ago, and they are a little shabby now. I fix them up when I have time, but time isn’t always available and nobody appears to mind the ‘old-and-loved’ look. Nothing is precious in our play room, but the space is still treated with love and respect and it is always filled with so much fun. Having playgroup use the space also means it gets a great clean once a week!

I’ve always looked longingly at websites and catalogues for purpose-built play furniture, play kitchens and the like. I’ve drooled over pictures on the internet of other people’s pretty playroom things … but somehow we’ve never really needed it because with the bare essentials and a lot of imagination, we’ve just continued having fun with what we’ve got.

I invite you to continue reading about inside spaces over at Happy Whimsical Hearts, as Kelly shares how she sets up her waldorf play space too: http://happywhimsicalhearts.blogspot.com.au/2013/06/indoor-play-spaces.html

Stories of Motherhood

I love being a mother. My journey has been a joyful one. Challenging on a daily level, but also very satisfying, very interesting and often very exciting. There have been moments when I lose myself in the misadventures of parenting young children, but generally our path is one that we skip lightly together. There have also been times that have felt like an eternity of suffering, guilt and worry.

It comes as a relief to realise that aspects of my experience of motherhood are shared – that I am not alone in my experience. I am not the only one who feels such a range of intense emotions from grief, anger, guilt and frustration through to utmost joy, fulfilment, contentment, and love that fills me, lifts me and softens me. I am not the only one who at times feels simultaneously overjoyed and overwhelmed by the task of motherhood.

There are also aspects of my motherhood journey that are completely unique. All those ups and downs are a part of my story and have helped to shape me as mother, and also to shape our family. Most of all those experiences have shaped me as a person and that is where the real gain is for me. I grow with every moment.

One mother recently shared on this blog the story of a single day with her three children and the challenges that ASD presents to her family life. Her story has provoked a range of emotional responses from readers including compassion, understanding and recognition from many readers so far and also provided some sense of perspective in family life.

Let’s share more stories. Let’s feel heard, respected and understood. Let’s walk this interesting parenting journey together. What is a typical day in your life like? What is your ‘normal’? What unexpected challenges popped up in your motherhood journey? Were there challenges you were expecting and had to prepare for? What would you like to share with other mothers? How have you coped? Grown? Changed? What have you learned? Do your children make you laugh? Share it here: the good, the bad and the ugly.

If you have a motherhood story you want to share, I invite you to submit it here. The guidelines are up to 500 words, plus:

- No blame, no negative self-talk: your experience is valid.

- Use positive language. I am not asking you to sugar-coat your story, just to present it honestly and with respect to all involved.

- No birth stories please, unless it is an integral part of your journey. That is another forum

You never know how your story would touch another person. It is so important for us to share. Writing your story can also be a very healing experience. When we look at things retrospectively we might be able to see something new in there. We may be able to afford ourselves some forgiveness, congratulate ourselves for a great decision, just express how things are for us, find some support, offer words of encouragement, celebrate our efforts.

Let’s celebrate motherhood.

Submissions here:

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Recipe: Coconut Cream Jelly

Ooh here is a lovely treat!

I’ve been having fun with jelly again, making little fruity gummy treats for the children with gelatin. I was so excited about how easy, fun and yummy these are that I wanted to share them with playgroup, however at playgroup we eat vegan … so switch gelatin for agar and  honey for maple syrup. Remember the Rainbow Fruit Jelly Cake? These are just as easy to make, and just as lovely to look at.

These little vegan jellies are a softer, lighter, more refreshing experience than the fruity gummies I made with gelatin. They are so pretty and so delicate, they’d be perfect for a light, refreshing, sweet treat after lunch. Today I served it with the fruit at playgroup morning tea, and we followed it up with raw pumpkin pie. Except for my really chewy sour dough bread rolls (win some, lose some!)  it was a pretty delicious morning at playgroup today.

I think these jellies are magic. The coconut cream floats to the top as the jelly sets so you get this lovely separation of colour, with the clear jelly underneath. The light pink ones pictured were made with rosella fruit, cooked until the colour faded on the fruit, and then strained out at the end. The beautiful purple ones are made with blueberries and the white ones have a splash of vanilla essence instead of fruit.

COCONUT CREAM JELLY

INGREDIENTS

1 cup of fresh fruit (blueberries, raspberries, rosellas, etc)

1 1/2 cups water

3/4 cup coconut cream

1/3 cup maple syrup/honey

1 1/2 teaspoons agar agar powder

METHOD

In a saucepan, pour in water, coconut cream and maple syrup. Whisk in the agar agar powder and let sit for 5 minutes, then add fruit and bring to the boil, stirring constantly. Turn down the heat and simmer, whisking gently all the while, for about 15 minutes. Gently press the fruit while stirring to release the colour, essence and juice.

Pour through a sieve into a flat container with a lid and place in the fridge until it sets firm. The coconut cream should rise to the top, leaving a translucent layer underneath. The colour of the fruit juice will be more intense in the bottom layer. The rosellas made a pretty pink jelly, blueberries made a vivid purple and to make white jelly leave the fruit out altogether and just add a little vanilla essence.

Recipe: Coconut Flour Shortcrust Pastry

I’ve been curious about coconut flour. It is an interesting grain-free alternative for baking, being so fibrous and it absorbs a lot of moisture. It can make your recipes dry and is also quite sweet too, so you may need to adjust the amount of liquids and sweetener you use in your recipe. I have had varying success with it but have tended not to use it often because of the amount of eggs that need to go with it … some of my cakes have ended up tasting like omelettes made with honey and fruit… ew.

I’ve learned a trick to making coconut flour a little easier to use though. To adjust your recipes substitute your flour with about 1/3 the amount of coconut flour, and add extra moisture in the form of coconut cream/ coconut oil or an extra egg. It is tempting to add extra water, but the oil makes it much tastier and keeps its texture too.

I found some great information about it at the Nourishing Gourmet but didn’t find the recipe I was looking for. So after searching for ages for a pastry recipe using coconut flour I decided to adjust one by myself, and it worked! As a short crust pastry for sweet pies that have wet fillings, or as a quiche crust I think it will be great. I know it works with custard and blueberries, anyway!

It held together pretty well, wasn’t hard to swallow, wasn’t too sweet and still had that nice pastry texture to it. It can be a little crumbly if you are using it with a dry filling … but still tasty. Perhaps add another egg? I’m not sure how it would hold up for pies with lids though … if you can work that one out let me know, it is why I wanted to make this pastry in the first place!

COCONUT FLOUR SHORTCRUST PASTRY

INGREDIENTS

70g coconut flour

100g chilled butter, chopped into pieces

pinch salt

1 egg

60g chilled water

METHOD

Place flour, butter and salt in the food processor and mix until they resemble breadcrumbs. Add water and egg and knead to form a dough.

Cover dough and chill in the fridge about 15 minutes before rolling out. I actually pressed mine with my fingers into my greased dish … but let me know how you go rolling it out … maybe between two sheets of baking paper to hold it together?

Bake in a pre-heated oven at 200C until it just starts to turn golden. It didn’t seem necessary to weight the pastry with baking beads.

Add filling (in my case I added home-made custard and organic blueberries) and return to the oven for further cooking.

Celebrating Motherhood: A Day with ASD

Every mother’s journey is different and special. Motherhood is challenging and amazing all at once, but one thing for sure is that motherhood changes us. Here is a day in the life of one mother who has three children, and in her own words she shares the story of her children and the challenges  that ASD (Austism Spectrum Disorder) provides along the way. In the interest of privacy, names have been changed in this story.

I am very grateful to the author for sharing her story,  and I celebrate her for her the love she holds for her family, the inner strength she calls on to meet daily challenges, the ability to understand her children’s needs, and for finding the special moments when they present themselves. Thank you for helping us understand your motherhood journey.

” … Its  4.55 am and my son is awake and now that he is awake it is time for breakfast immediately. I make him a bowl of dry cereal corn flakes again same as every day,  he doesn’t like the texture of cereal and milk. Breakfast time usually sets the tone for the day he has Autism Spectrum Disorder and suffers from severe  anxiety so if anything goes wrong or upsets him now our whole day will suffer.

On the kitchen door is a large planner that lists our plans for the week, day and meals he will eat.  As he eats I give a run day on the morning plan and what he must do. He has an hour of time for Lego or ipad play now whilst his brother and sister wake up. His older brother is also on the spectrum and wandered around the house and head butted his pillow till just after 3 am so getting him up will be a struggle. Screaming makes me rush up to his room there has been toys knocked over all the army men and Lego man should be standing in little rows and they are lying on the floor  the kitten is probably guilty. The hysterical screaming and the loud begging of god to kill me now my life is ruined whilst punching himself goes on for well over and hour until some tight hugging and wrapping in his weighted blanket brings some calm.

At this point I need him to dress for school. Changing his clothes is always difficult as the seams and feel on clothes is “wrong”. He will put his socks and shoes on and off half a dozen times before they are right (and underwear is a huge no go too tight and a big sensory no no for him). Three or less meltdowns between waking and getting to school is a good day. On the way to school I am quizzed where will I be, what will I be doing, is my phone charged?

At 9.47 am my mobile rings - Nathan wants to check I am ok and have my phone, 10.50 school rings meltdown I have forgotten to double bag his recess - every food item must be in its packaging then in a sealed plastic bag too. Nathan worries about food being old and can’t have a packet of chips unopened in lunch box 2 days in a row, as he deems these old.

At 3pm I pick up, then drop my 6-year-old at dance and head home after school. Nathan needs to be at home - given a choice he would never leave the house. By time we are home at 3.20 his muscles are hard and rigid with stress he is on the edge and often tiny things will trigger a meltdown. He fears death and noise and people and desperately wants friends but just can’t manage to maintain a friendship. The afternoon wears on with battles over homework - he fears getting questions wrong and of course the sensory overload of showering and changing his clothes will be a nightmare. Dinnertime leaves me in tears as he screams that I hate him and am killing him. I generally cook 3 or 4 dinners a night.  Finally bedtime comes and there is fear of dark and death and losing me so he will fall asleep clinging to me and will sleep in my bed.

Often nights are full of nightmares, and him waking if I disentangle him from me.

His anxiety rules his life and of course there are those who say ‘let him miss dinner he won’t starve’, but I know he will. He is 10 and weighs 27 kg and when I decided he would eat what I said or go hungry he started to lose weight at alarming rate. The idea of paint or crayons or anything messy brings him to tears. Ducking to the shops without  pre-warning is a nightmare and the idea of just meeting a friend at the park without a weeks notice gives me cold chills.

My real life friends are few and many of them have ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder) kids as they are the only ones who understand the need for routine and ritual. My boys aren’t naughty, they really can’t help it. I have 2 boys with ASD and they are chalk and cheese. My baby is 6 and made me cry when last week she said, “Mum just do what Nathan wants it will be easier for us all.”

Parenting: The Dark Passage of Grace

I wrote this three years ago and shared it on the Kindred Community, as part of a series of posts celebrating the Sacred Family. I was looking for some of my writing on parenting and found this, realising I hadn’t put it on my blog. Three years later, here it is! Here are the thoughts on birthing and pain that I had before my third child was born.  And interestingly … about that comment I made about labour being a predictable pattern? Well it looks like you can’t even count on that … this child did not even allow me the time to indulge in labour. Hers was a cold birth.  …. I tell you she really did lead me down the dark passage of grace – and what a shining light she has become!

I am preparing for the birth of our third baby … soon. Thoughts about preparing for this birth are never far from my mind at the moment. Reflections on my past two births are also coming up and thoughts about the pain of birthing are surfacing too. I was writing an email to a friend a while ago, who was asking for some resources that will help her prepare for the birth of her first child. After listing a few of the resources that helped me greatly in my previous two births, and in the recovery from my miscarriage in between – I then found myself writing on to address the issue of fear of pain in birth. I think I may have garbled on a bit as I tend to do, but one remark I made in my email brought tears to my own eyes: I said that although I will always have certain concerns and worries about birth they are nothing in comparison to my experiences as a parent. Labour is a breeze.

I don’t think anything really prepares you for parenting – and indeed it can be a shock for first time parents. But I think that is part of what birth IS – the process of birthing is preparation for what is yet to come … it is the birth of a new phase in your life, a new role, a new you. I would take labour over waiting in a hospital emergency room with a sick child any day. At least with labour you know what will happen, well, kind of, as labour almost always progresses to a certain pattern. With a child’s illness you do not have this certainty. There is nothing quite like the tension and anxiety of waiting to find out if your child is going to be ok – or if they will make it through the night without further complications. We had that frightening experience as new parents when we waited to find out if our baby would survive the night without severe brain damage, at the beginning of a sudden and very serious childhood illness. It wasn’t fair. Labour was a relaxing meditation in comparison to the pain of that experience.

The times I cried when learning to breastfeed, the times when I’ve stayed awake all night nursing my children through fevers, vomiting, asthma or nightmares, the times we’ve visited hospital for accidents and illnesses, the times I’ve been ill and have STILL had to be a responsible parent, the times when our children’s behaviour is just too intense and challenging and confusing, the time when we found out our son is deaf … each time we experienced something like this I distinctly remember this thought popping into my mind: I’d rather be in labour! Labour is easy compared to the torture of on-going sleep deprivation, the agony of listening to your child’s struggle for oxygen during an asthma attack!! It is easier than knowing that parenting goes on and keeps presenting you with new challenges and you just have to learn how to move through the moments of uncertainty so that you can get back to loving and savouring every second of the joyful ones, which are far more common, even if the effects of the painful ones are long-lasting and bitter-tasting. Bitter foods awaken and enliven our digestive system. Bitter experiences awaken our ability to digest our life experiences.

I am painting a grim picture of the experiences of parenting! Like labour, these things pass into memory and labour prepares us for this. I love being a parent. I love my family and the colourful life they present me with. They’ve taught me that downhill runs and plateaus are so much more enjoyable and satisfying because you’ve had to slog it up the steep hill in the first place. I am grateful that my experiences of birth and parenting have allowed me to know what it is like to confront the scary face of the unknown, and move through it, maybe not always with confidence, but with the idea that if you just keep moving forward one step at a time embracing the unknown, then whatever happens next is much easier to accept. You’ve done what you could to prepare. You’ve done what you can to heal the situation – and the rest you hand over to trust and faith. THAT is the hard bit.

To be honest, pain in childbirth is never what you think it will be; certainly not if you are prepared to accept that it is going to hurt, knowing WHY it hurts. It is different every time, and for different reasons. Pain in labour happens because your body is changing shape in a matter of hours to let your baby out – it is a GOOD thing! It is a great skill to know how to then transform that experience into a power you can use, and recall how pain teaches us something new about ourselves. I am much stronger for the experiences I have had, through labour and beyond, and it has opened up parts of me that I couldn’t have accessed before.

I posted a quote on my personal blog from Rumi a few weeks ago, on the topic of pain. He wasn’t referring specifically to childbirth I think, even though he uses it as a metaphor, but all the same I think it applies.

Every midwife knows that not until a mother’s womb softens from the pain of labour will a way unfold and the infant find that opening to be born. Oh friend! There is a treasure in your heart, it is heavy with child. Listen. All the awakened ones, like trusted midwives, are saying, ‘Welcome this pain! It opens the dark passage of Grace’.” - Rumi

I am looking forward to the growth I’ll surely experience after this coming labour. That isn’t to say I’m not wary of the pain!! Of course I am, that is human nature, but I know it will pass and I’ll be ok. I am looking forward to opening the dark passage of Grace.

Copyright Jennifer McCormack, May 2010

Lavendilly House: Celebrating sacredness and beauty in everyday life.