school age. Everything now revolved around keeping Ethan happy, because if he was happy, we were happy. We walked on egg shells most of the time. “Don’t upset Ethan,” became my mantra. I spent most of my time keeping fun loving, cuddly Sienna away from Ethan. He wouldn’t play with his sister at all and didn’t like to be touched or cuddled by anyone. Sometimes just having Sienna in the room would tip him over the edge. He would begin yelling at her to get away and to stop looking at him or to stop talking to him. I could see this confused Sienna, and it’s one of the reasons Ethan spent so many hours in his room. It was his safe place away from everyone and everything that upset him. We also noticed, he didn’t smile naturally anymore, and when asked to smile for a photo, it was an over the top smile that was completely false. At age 5, he had lost all facial expression. Unless he was angry, he was completely blank in his expression. As Ethan begins school I am a total nervous wreck. The first week goes really well, and just as I start to think he has grown out of his tantrums, he refuses to go to school the next week. He becomes so upset about having to go to school, and each day gets harder to leave him. He begins to get stressed when he realizes it is a school day, and I try my best to make it sound fun as we venture off to school. But he becomes very upset as the weeks go on and most days have him crying and screaming as the teacher holds him so he can’t get to me. The teacher assures me he is fine once I have gone, and as she is very sensitive to his needs, I continue to make him go to school. But Ethan’s anxiety gets worse. And he is harder to get into the school grounds. I end up pushing him in gently while making school sound fun, and then he begins to resist getting into the classroom. He walks up to the door and then when he sees the class he tries to run, and I grab him and get him in to where the teacher gets him and I leave listening to his crying and yelling for me. He soon realizes I will grab him and he begins to run away before we reach the class. A couple of times I can talk him back to me, but he looks like he is in his own world. The worst day was when he would not go into the class, and I could not get near him … he kept moving as I approached him. Everyone was inside and on the mat, and I sat on the deck outside and waited for him to come to me. But he was so worked up and when I stood up begging him to come to me, he started running. He ran up onto the top field above the classroom and all the children and the teacher stared out at us as Ethan was running around the field and I was trying to catch him. He went out of sight behind the classrooms, and I started to think maybe he was not coming back this time … his teacher came out, and we swapped places. I sat the children down on the floor, and they all started asking me questions, and the teacher called out to Ethan. They both were out of site now, and I was answering questions about why Ethan was running away and trying not to burst into tears at the same time, all while watching the field intently to see if she had found my little boy. She was back with him in a few minutes and poor Ethan’s eyes were glazed over. I left that day and cried all the way to the car. During these times, I was teaching 4 days at Sienna’s kindergarten across town. I would be drying my tears and summoning a smile as I walked through the gates each day. I thought about Ethan all day, checking my phone to see if the school had called to say Ethan was upset. The whole next week, as he continued to run away, I cried. I wore sunglasses to school so no one could see I was crying. I felt like it was getting so out of control, and I didn’t know what to do. Over the weeks where he cried when I left school and ran away, he also became really unmanageable at home. His teacher told me he was an angel at school, and he always did what he was told. She looked so confused when I said he was acting out at home. I was confused too. I kept wondering what I was doing at home for him to be so upset at home, but fine at school. Ethan would spend hours screaming and yelling and running down the hall into the lounge every evening. He would see us and start laughing, and then we would take him back to his room. He would start screaming and flailing, dropping to the ground and kicking. Over the last few months, Ethan began laughing uncontrollably at times when he knew he was in trouble. To us at that time, it seemed like he was so rude. But later, we realized that it was part of his anxiety, and he didn’t think it was funny at all. During this time as he became angrier and angrier, he started to hit me as I would try and get him to his room. He would scream he hated me every day. I tried to keep everything together … I seemed in control. But I would wait until Ethan was asleep and stand at his door, watching him sleep, and I would cry. My heart was broken. I wanted to give this little boy the happiest childhood ever, but it seemed everything I did made him miserable. He wouldn’t let me get close to him, cuddle him, or kiss him. The only time I got to touch him was when I was carrying him flailing to his room because he was screaming so much in the lounge. I would go to sleep crying and would wake to feel someone in my room. I opened my eyes, and Ethan was just standing in my room, and when he saw me, he would run away and hide. It was like he wanted to be close to me, but he didn’t know how. He also had awful nightmares, and I was woken up by him crying most nights. The house was very strained during this time and had awful stomach pains myself, often being folded in half and breathing through them. I had always had IBS, and now I was under extra stress. I was really suffering. Jeremy was away a lot with his job, and I was raising the kids on my own. I sometimes thought Ethan would be better off living with his grandparents, who lived half an hour away. He would sometimes go and stay for the weekend, and they would say he was so well behaved. However, when I would pick him up, he would cry and kick the back of my seat all the way home. Over the last few months, he had also begun an array of toileting issues, which he had never had before. There are times when we considered using nappies again, as it had been happening in the last few months of kindergarten, and now during school. He had become so stubborn; he wouldn’t go to the toilet. He would hold on for hours until he would have a toileting accident. Even after the accidents, he wouldn’t let me change him without a kicking and screaming match. I definitely felt as though I was failing as a mother. When we went to his first parent teacher interview, 4 months into the year, the teacher said he was doing fine. I was glad that he was excelling academically, Math and English he was going great. Fitness was harder and swimming he didn’t progress, struggled with his gross motor skills, and didn’t like to take risks or put himself in front of a ball where he could get hurt. He still didn’t have any friends, although Ethan talked about the other children in the class all the time, knew all their names, their ages and what groups they were in for reading and writing. He knew how many children were in the class and what levels they were at. He was bright, and he enjoyed the routine of school. The teacher tried to pair him up with a couple of the quieter kids, but he just didn’t know how to interact and make a friendship. So they soon lost interest in him and moved on, leaving him alone again.
Searching For Answers
I was searching for answers, but I didn’t know what I was looking for. I didn’t even really know what the problem was. Was it Ethan, or was it something I was doing? I felt like I was being punished by the universe. I was living this secret hell, putting on a fake smile as I went out into the world. My heart broken inside. I googled everything to do with behavior, parenting, tantrums, the lot. The thing is there just is not enough room in the google search space to type the hundreds of symptoms that Ethan showed. I also needed to know that I was a good mother, that we were good parents, and that I had been doing things right, that this was not due to bad parenting. I also was beginning to wonder if food was causing some of the issues we were facing. It was this time, during a search at the local library that I came across the book Louder Than Words by Jenny McCarthy. I read about how Jenny’s son was diagnosed with autism. Although most of his symptoms didn’t fit Ethan’s, he had similar tantrums, and she talked about how by removing certain toxins from her son’s life, she had been able to recover him from autism. I saw in Jenny the same love that I had for my son. The same knowing that they deserved a better quality of life and the same determination not to give up. If Jenny could heal her son, then I could heal mine. I still wasn’t sure what Ethan had, but I knew I was going to find out if it was the last thing I ever did. It was because of Jenny’s book that I finally realized that Ethan was affected by particular foods. I had dismissed it so many times because although Ethan’s behavior would get worse halfway through a meal, it was also worse when he would first wake up. I had thought food only caused immediate reactions, not delayed reactions. So when he would wake up grumpy on an empty stomach, I thought it had to be something else. This thinking would change everything. I soon dug up everything I could about food sensitivities. I found a book and website that talked about elimination diets and gave the guidelines
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