“Heal the gut and the mind will follow.” Those are words I wished were spoken to me when I first found out my son, Skyler, is autistic. Books like Children With Starving Brains should be at the top of every parent reading list in their journey to their child’s improvement. Without these, I truly did not understand why special diets were needed, or all the supplementations, which is an all day affair in our household. As his Mother, I cannot let words like “It’s too hard” or “It’s too inconvenient” exist in my vocabulary. It’s tough. There are times I guiltily slip into convenience. I have to constantly remind myself that I am fighting a BATTLE – and the end result is to win back a child, either significantly improved, and possibly recovered.

Skyler was born a beautiful 7 pound 10 ounce boy at 8:31am. He was born 27 ½ hours after my water broke, and probably should have been a c-section. He was head down, but faced the wrong way, and stuck, stuck, stuck. The doctor vacuumed him out.

Still, he seemed to develop normally. He latched on no problems, even responded to his Dad’s voice the first time he heard it. He had a short stay in NICU for jaundice, but things seemed to sail smoothly as the months went by. He sat up on time, played baby games with us, hammed it up for attention. He even had a few words and baby signs.

When he was about 15 months of age, we grew concerned that he wasn’t pointing to things. To that, his pediatrician said “Just try to encourage him to point”. Then his eye contact went down, his response to our voice disappeared, and all these behaviors began: hand flapping, turning on and off water and lights, opening/closing doors. And no more words. Our pediatrician told us that he wasn’t concerned since Skyler was  hitting all his developmental milestones, and that some kids, when they develop their motor skills, tend to compensate their verbal skills.

Out of sheer luck, we met a young lady who happened to be with the psychology department at UCSB. She was having lunch by herself, and Skyler went and played “peek-a-boo” with her. She noticed he wasn’t talking and told us about a program they had to evaluate children over the age of 18 months who weren’t talking. We made an appointment and were puzzled to arrive at the Koegel’s Autism Research Center. They evaluated him, and on the day we brought his little brother home from the hospital (Skyler was almost 21 months old by then), they called and told us that he was “definitely autistic”.

“No way”, we thought. Our vision of an autistic was the person rocking on the floor, banging his head repeatedly against the wall, straight jacket to keep him from harm. Our son was definitely not that.  “They are nuts… how dare they say that about our son?” No one had told us about autism having a spectrum. The Koegels wanted us to start Skyler in their program right away. We had bought a house in LA county, and it was nearly finished being built. We turned them down (mostly because we were in denial), but started him in early intervention in Los Angeles, telling ourselves he only had speech delay.  Community therapy classes began right away, and in the mean time, we read up about autism, and started our own ABA therapy while we waited for LA county to fund  an ABA company to do an eval and start services.  We used the book Behavioral Interventions for Young Children with Autism, and through our at-home intervention got Skyler to stop flapping his hands and to stop his need to turn the water on and off. We started a sensory diet using the Out of Sync Child book and prepped him to get used to sitting at a table to work for his rewards. Ten months after we were told his diagnosis through UCSB, his private ABA therapy started. By then, we also had him evaluated at UCLA by Doctor BJ Freedman and Dr Sue Schmidt-Lackner. They confirmed that he was autistic, and started us on our biomedical intervention. Enzymes, probiotics, prozac, l-carno, GFCF. After one month of ABA and two months of biomedical, Skyler started to talk again.

The End.

Well, not quite. My son is now four years old, and he is still autistic. He is a rather high functioning autistic, but I wonder how he would be, had I not met certain people who are now in our lives. See, when he was first diagnosed, and we were told to try the diet and all the supplements, I didn’t really understand why. I met other Moms with autistic children and they all told me the diet didn’t work for their child. So, instead of continuing my struggle with trying to get Skyler to try the cereals (at that time he wouldn’t even eat gorilla munch) and to drink alternative milks, I just stopped the diet.  I also wasn’t emphatic about getting the necessary supplements in him.

Then we sold our house in LA and moved up to Washington state. I met a Mom who basically told me that I was killing my child’s brain cells by allowing him to eat gluten and casein. I hated her for saying that, but that kick in the ass forced me to try it again. I was introduced to Dr Green and biomedical testing, where I was shown proof of how much heavy metal toxicity exists in Skyler’s body, as well as a host of other things debilitating his gut system. High candida (which we are still battling), parasites, clostridia, c. dificile… I was speechless. How did my child get this way? I had his little brother tested, and he too has heavy metal toxicity issues, as well as gastrointestinal distress. He doesn’t seem to be on the spectrum, but he does have sensory issues and oral apraxia and is receiving speech, OT, and a community therapy class.

My understanding of how to help my children is improving every day. Reading Children with Starving Brains greatly increased my understanding of the biomedical issues, and it wasn’t until I attended the last DAN! Conference in Seattle that I truly understood the meaning behind  “Heal the gut and the mind will follow” .

Currently Skyler functions at a level where he cares about other people. He talks about friends, and wants to talk about/understand when he has problems or things he’s thinking about. But, despite all that, being with other people appropriately is still something he is working on.

He has come a long way, and no matter where he ends up as an adult, I am sure that he will be all the better for what we are doing for him now.