We have been thinking about this for quite a while now and finally, over coffee and toast at Ya Kun, we decided to take Rayyan off the GFCF diet.
I have blogged about this in detail last two months I think but basically, our reason in making this decision is simply because till now, we are not sure of its effectiveness, we are not sure if it works on Rayyan at all. And so, rather than play guessing games, apart from the rather excruciating waiting game, we have decided to focus our energy on strategies that produce tangible benefits.
So we have decided to make this work FOR us rather than against us. And by strategies that produce tangible benefits, we mean...
1) Food is a really strong reinforcer/motivator in Rayyan's case... Let's face it, GFCF food tastes really bland... During those short periods where we take Rayyan off GFCF food, we can see that Rayyan really enjoyed the food. So we can make him work really hard to get the food that he likes... biscuits, bread, curry puffs, cakes, fries, etc... There are so many things that we can teach him by using food as the reinforcer/motivator...
2) We can now teach him more social skills because we can now bring him to functions without worrying endlessly about the food that he eats. We can let him eat the food that the rest are eating and not feel left out. We can even let him share food with others...
3) We can let him try various food with many different textures. With GFCF diet, the variety of food that he takes is limited. Again, the taste doesn't help at all in encouraging him to try different types of food. So now we can let him try soft, hard, spicy, bitter.... all the different varieties of food without worrying about the ingredients. And this is really important for his oral development. Rayyan's speech therapist wants him to try different food because this will help in the development of his oral skills.
4) The money spent on the expensive GFCF diet can be channelled to other tangible benefits like speech therapy, occupational therapy or other interventions.
There are other benefits too so.... there you go!! I feel so much better after blogging about this! Phew!! So, we really, really hope we have made the right decision... We really, really hope this works for us.... We really, really hope there'll be more pros than cons.... We really, really hope this will in the end, be more beneficial for Rayyan.
Wish us luck!! :))
