Grace

[Guest guest]

Grace, about the videos -- during the short periods of time when we

*have* had a working TV in the house, I found that the videos Juniper

likes best are documentaries. Children's cartoons always upset her.

You might see if the documentaries work better for your girls, too.

(I'm talking about anything from travel videos, which Juniper loved,

to " How to make ... " whatever!).

As far as the different therapies, autism has so many different

causes that I doubt that any one therapy will ever work for all

children. In our case, because I knew Juniper had the symptoms of

celiac disease when she was little, and because my mother and I both

have it, I really hoped that the gf diet would help her. But I think

we found it too late. She is still on it -- though we still drink

milk, though now (as of a couple of days ago) all our dairy

consumption has first been made into kefir -- and always will be. I

do think she has less temper tantrums than she used to but there

could be other reasons for that. So what I'm getting at is that,

even though it is a difficult diet to stay on, (I know, I've been on

the gf diet for several years), it is probably the first intervention

that should be tried with all children. It's non-medical, can't do

any harm, and if it's needed and NOT tried, the brain damage

continues and becomes irreversible. So, IMHO, it's essential to try

it and stick with it long enough to see if there is reason to

continue with it. Because of Juniper's age, and because we were out

of the " school loop " for many years (she attended a small Christian

school with her sisters after we moved here ten years ago), I don't

know a lot about the other therapies that are being discussed. But I

do know that most of them are also difficult, time-consuming, and/or

costly. So I think the gfcf is the place to begin, but not the place

to end. Best wishes to you and your girls.

Kathleen