by Terri H. | Health, Parenting
If you have a teenager, or pre-teenager with anxiety, you know that it can be tough knowing what to do or say to help them. Our daughter went through a couple of years of anxiety which seemed to come out of the blue. A therapist friend of ours explained that this can happen when the abstract mind is developing. This makes sense now, and like our daughter, you will find that many times anxiety for your teen or pre-teen will pass, too. In the meantime, here are some important things to know.
First remember: Your teenager with anxiety is NORMAL!
Childhood and teenage anxiety are extremely common. Don’t feel that you have failed as a parent. They are learning about how to deal with adult life, and some anxiety is bound to be involved. In fact, I’d be worried if they had no anxiety about life and growing up.
However, some teenagers and pre-teens are likely to be more anxious than others. And that’s okay, too. We are all different people and cope with life in diverse ways. Our teenagers are the same. Some of us just experience more anxiety around certain situations than others.
So, don’t panic!
Although anxiety at this age is normal, there are some parenting strategies we can use to help our teenagers and pre-teens overcome and cope with anxiety. These strategies will equip them with life skills that they will go on to use in adulthood in order to cope with the world.
Anxious Teenager Tip One:
Do not tell them not to worry. Instead, help them work out if they should be worried (or as worried as they are) about something.
It’s all too easy to tell your child ‘Trust me, you don’t need to worry’. But at some point, you must remember that they will feel anxiety and you will not be there to say, ‘trust me’. This tip will prove valuable especially when they enter adulthood.
When your teenager is worried, sit them down. Have a discussion with them. Use these questions to help them conclude about how much anxiety is needed in any situation by themselves.
-What feelings are you experiencing?
-What about this experience is making you feel that way?
-What are the possible outcomes and how likely are each?
-Do you need as much fear as you are holding for this experience at present? And why?
-How could we look at this situation with a positive realistic viewpoint?
Try to help them come up with some positive self-talk they can use while they are in the situation. For example: ’I am nervous about going to the party tomorrow, but I have an opportunity to make some friends. If they don’t like me it’s ok. It’ not the end of the word. I will try again with some different people another time.’
Gradually, your child will learn to ask themselves similar questions and self-regulate their own anxiety.
Anxious Teenager Tip Two:
Don’t avoid subjecting your teenager to every situation that causes them anxiety. If you do, how can you expect them to learn to manage their anxiety? I am not suggesting that you let your teenager become overwhelmed with anxiety-provoking situations. Instead, I am suggesting that you tailor how many anxiety-provoking experiences they experience with what they can cope with and a very tiny amount extra that provides an achievable challenger for them to overcome. This allows your teenager to experience a sense of achievement, grow in confidence, and feel able to progress a little bit more with each experience.
For example, your teenager may be invited to a birthday party they are anxious about. You could say “Ok, I know you’re anxious. Shall we go for half an hour and then leave?” The following time you could suggest that again you will go for half an hour then leave, but this time they must say hello to at least 1 person there.
Anxious Teenager Tip Three:
Don’t tell them what they are doing. Propose ideas and ask them if they want to do something. Anxiety is so debilitating because you feel trapped and out of control of the situation you are in. By asking them what they want to do and giving them a choice, you allow them to feel some control over the situation. This should help to ease their anxiety.
For example, ‘Would you like to go to the park this afternoon?’. Listen to not only their words but their body language. If they look like they are saying ‘yes’ when they want to say ’no’, give them another opportunity to give their opinion. You could say “You don’t look very keen on going to the park, is there something you’d rather do with me this afternoon instead?”
Anxious Teenager Tip Three:
If your teen or pre-teen is in the midst of a real anxiety attack, using the senses can help to calm them. First, have your child find one thing that they can see and focus in on that. Next, find one thing to focus on which they can smell, touch, taste. . . you see where I’m going with this, right? This trick is incredibly helpful in reigning in a full-blown panic attack.
Hopefully, these tips will help your loved one learn how to cope with their anxiety now and in the future. Remember, some anxiety is short-lived. If you think it has become a problem, and you’ve noticed personality changes in your teen and/or a change in sleep patterns or and lack of interest in things that they used to enjoy doing, please seek out a professional counselor.
Additionally, homeopathy can help so much. Find out more about how homeopathy can help ease anxiety.
Have you tried any of these tips with your teenager? How did it go? Do you have any of your own tips you like to share? Let us know!
by Terri H. | Food, Health, Healthy Living
Let’s be serious for a moment. Just about every woman is or has been unhappy with their body at one point in their life, or unhappy with their energy levels, including me. So, what do we do? We immediately start looking for a diet and ways to change this. I have spent hours scouring the internet, rummaging through books at the library, and researching the best way to feed my body for optimal health. Through all of this though, I have learned one thing. What is that? Well, it has less to do with participating in an actual diet, and more on learning how to live a healthy lifestyle.
What a Healthy Lifestyle means to Me
To me, a healthy lifestyle means not filling my body with the garbage of processed foods. Our family practices a clean eating style. Along with this, we also are living a gluten-free lifestyle, have eaten Paleo-style for years, but now we are leaning more toward a plant-based diet. Now, this may sound like a lot, but in reality, making small changes over time will soon become second nature. None of these changes have happened overnight. It has taken planning and careful consideration, to determine if these changes were the best for my entire family or not.
Why Fad Diets Do Not Work
New fad diets seem to be popping up almost daily. I find this scary. These fad diets promise that you are going to lose a ton of weight in a short amount of time, have more energy and a higher quality of life in the long term. Well, research has proven that slow and steady weight loss, is more likely to stay off long term. (more…)
by Terri H. | Food, Health, Homeschooling, Parenting
Guest Blogging
I’m guest blogging today over at Holistic Homeschooler! Come on over and read my Five Tips for Feeding Your Family Better. What do you think of what my dental hygienist had to say about homeschooled kids?
by Terri H. | Health, Parenting, Travel
One of the most popular areas of contemporary interest for modern family health surrounds the benefice of a gluten-free diet. I first discovered the health benefits of a gluten-free diet after the birth of my daughter. According to Forbes, over 3.1 million people were on a gluten-free diet in the USA in 2009. However, just over 70% of these people did not have celiac disease but instead chose a gluten-free diet for the additional health benefits. Read more about my top five benefits of going gluten-free (for the modern family.)
Gluten is a protein that occurs in grains such as wheat and barley. Some people have celiac disease. This means that their body has an autoimmune response to these proteins which is not normal and can cause serious illness. It is also possible that rather than having celiac disease you are have what is called a gluten sensitivity. This means that gluten may cause your digestive system to become irritated or inflamed. Either way, consuming gluten causes sickness and/or discomfort.
Every sensation in our body, whether we are aware of it or not, has the capacity to affect our day to day life. For example, an irritated gut has the capacity to trick our brain into thinking we are anxious, thus, causing stress. This is because anxiety’s effect is also largely felt in the gut and is commonly known as the feeling of butterflies in your stomach. My test for celiac disease came back “borderline”. My doctor erred on the side of a “positive” which is why I simply choose not to consume gluten. Here are some other benefits of eliminating gluten from you diet:
1-Going Gluten-Free Improves Gut Health
Modern families are increasingly adopting a gluten-free diet to improve their collective health. But are there real benefits to going gluten-free if you do not have celiac disease, or is it all just a fad? Should you eliminate gluten from your family’s diet?
Gluten can cause inflammation in the gut lining, especially in those who are sensitive to gluten. Inflammation itself is a sign of a problem. However, inflammation in the gut also means that the proper absorption of nutrients from our food cannot take place.
Going gluten-free can help to reduce inflammation and improve the overall health of the gut. The health of the gut can also be improved by taking probiotic products.
2- Going Gluten-Free Can Aid Weight Loss or Gain
Ok, so largely this benefit isn’t directly a result of going gluten-free! It’s a by-product. Most foods that contain gluten are processed foods that contain a lot of fats and sugars that cause us to put on weight. So, put down your cookies and your cupcakes – it will be kinder to your gut and your waistline!
For some, going gluten-free can help with gain and/or maintenance. Leaky gut syndrome (intestinal permeability) can cause essential nutrients to “leak” out and cause some to become undernourished.
3- Going Gluten-Free Can Improve Our Energy Levels
Opting for a gluten-free diet can reduce fatigue and improve energy levels. Studies conducted by The University of Aberdeen also found that adopting a gluten-free diet also improved concentration in its participants and found that they were able to think more clearly.
Gluten-free diets have been popular in celebrity culture for a long time now. Gwyneth Paltrow and Novak Djokovic are among stars who have gone gluten-free as a means of improving their physical and mental health.
Why does it lead to higher energy levels? Because going gluten-free reduces inflammation and bloating. This, in turn, improves the bodies capability to absorb the nutrients we need from the food we take in.
4- Going Gluten-Free Is Essential for Treating Auto-Immune Disorders
There is a major link between gluten and auto-immune disorders. In fact, to adequately treat an auto-immune disease it is imperative that you cut gluten from your diet.
If you have an auto-immune disease your body is trying to protect itself from toxins or even foods, it considers being harmful. However, your body fails to differentiate between your own body cells and the substance it is trying to defend you from.
So where does gluten come into it? The gluten we eat today is not the same gluten consumed by our grandparents. Wheat has been modified over the years to create fluffier bread, cakes, and pantries. It has also been altered to give it a more uniform structure and color.
We are being increasingly exposed to more gluten that our bodies are not naturally programmed to process. Our bodies can not tolerate this. Therefore, we experience more inflammation and poorer health of the gut along with auto-immune disorders.
5- Going Gluten-Free Helps Kids Who Are on The Autistic Spectrum
Research has found substantial evidence for a link between the brain and gut. Both adults and children who suffer from autism are much more likely to suffer from gastrointestinal problems. The Autism Research Institute has found that as many as 70% of children with an Autistic Spectrum Disorder also suffer from gastrointestinal distress.
These gastrointestinal problems cause the gut’s lining to become more permeable. Partly digested gluten and protein particles pass more easily through the more permeable membrane. The then travel to the brain and bind to opioid receptors. This affects the neurochemistry of the brain and causes symptoms of autism to worsen. For example, mood swings can become more frequent or intense.
A Few Extra Tips for Going Gluten-Free
- Firstly, concentrate on what you can eat. Not what you can’t eat! Habit is a tricky thing to break. Everyone who goes on a gluten-free diet finds it challenging to begin with.
- Buy a gluten-free cookbook.There are so many grain-free cookbooks that we love! Cookbook’s showing mouth watering pictures have the amazing ability to get us excited about food. They will also present you with ideas on how to create interesting meals that you will love on a gluten-free diet.
- Don’t cheat! Little bits of gluten here and there might not seem like much, however, they can cause your body distress and make you feel worse. If you are trying to change a habit you want to see progress. But progress is hard to see when improved health is clouded by little bits of distress due to cheating.
- Make connections. Join Facebook groups dedicated to sharing gluten free recipes and motivating each other to maintain the change of diet. Follow inspiring Instagrammers and / or create a Pinterest board to fill with new meals to try.
- Check labels on food packets and tins. The easiest way to break a gluten-free diet is accidentally! Check whether food contains gluten before consuming it.
- Reflect on how far you have come. Reflection and taking time to notice a difference will make it easier to maintain a gluten-free diet.
- Praise yourself. Rewarding positive actions is used in psychology to reinforce a desired behavior. Eventually, reinforcing a desired behavior creates a habit.
So, after reading this post how do you feel about glutens place in the modern family diet? Do you think you will be adopting a gluten-free diet in the future? Do you feel able to implements a family gluten free diet? If not, then why? Let us know, you might get your questions answered in a future blog post!
by Terri H. | Health, Healthy Living
The story of our journey toward a gluten-free lifestyle is one that has many subplots, complete with suspense and fascinating characters along the way. I won’t write the entire novel here, but I’ll give you the highlights instead.
Our Daughter Was Sick
When our second daughter was born, she had some serious issues which no doctor could pinpoint. Some of the more severe symptoms she had were not sleeping, dark red circles under her eyes and lots of fussiness which mostly came at night time. She was exclusively breastfed as a baby, and even nursing her did not help her sleep. As our daughter grew, her symptoms did not change, and she began to withdraw. She had what I call the “checked out look”, you know that dreamy stare that doesn’t actually focus on anything?
When our daughter Kate was born, her sister was only 17 months old, and although I was busy caring for my two babies, I took every.single.spare second to read and research so that I could find an answer to what was wrong with my daughter. I felt like this was on my shoulders because the practitioners on our ever-growing list of People Who Could Possibly Help was getting us nowhere.
Autism Spectrum Disorders and Dental Work
The more research I did on why babies didn’t sleep and had dark circles under the eyes, the more I came across issues related to Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). The more I read about Kate’s symptoms and ASD, the more I read about the benefits of a gluten-free lifestyle (and dairy-free, too). As I delved deeper into this rabbit hole, the more I learned about metal toxicity and how it relates to ASD and allergies.
It was then that I began to realize that perhaps it was the mercury that was chipped out of my teeth and replaced with composite fillings a few months before, that affected my baby. I had some old amalgam fillings that needed replacing when I was pregnant. My dentist decided to wait and do this as soon after my baby was born as possible, so I had these fillings replaced when Kate was only four or five weeks old. Since she was still breastfeeding, she too, was poisoned by the mercury that went through my body, and, into hers via my breastmilk.
Research is Key
At that time I was not aware that there are dentists who take mercury removal extremely seriously, and that there is a proper protocol for mercury removal. Since I did not know this, I went to my regular dentist who removed these fillings from my molars and as she was doing so, I remember swallowing chunks of my old fillings thinking to myself, this can’t be good.
It wasn’t until months later that I learned of the damage that mercury can do, particularly to a growing brain. Kate also had some exposure to toxic metals via a flu shot that I had when I was pregnant, and by all the vaccinations that she had at birth and until she was 9 months old.
Diet Changes and ASD
Another thing that kept coming up in my research was the Specific Carbohydrate Diet (SCD). This diet that has helped many children who are on the spectrum, and has helped many adults with leaky gut syndrome. Learning about leaky gut was a big aha! moment for me, as I had always had gut issues, ever since having surgery for an intestinal issue when I was two days old. It also made sense to me that anything that I was ingesting was going straight into my daughter, given that she was exclusively breastfed.
The first thing the SCD teaches is that you should cut out all grains. Wheat/gluten is a big culprit in causing gut issues, and so as I continued to try to find a practitioner who could help us, I cut out gluten, grains, many carbs that I was used to eating, and sugar. If you are imagining that going cold-turkey with this was probably hard, you’d be wrong. It was excruciating. I’m not gonna lie. And, I had a fairly healthy diet to begin with. I have always been into natural health and I knew the list of no-nos on Dr. Andrew Weil’s list, but it was still hard. So hard, that I have a very vivid memory of standing in my kitchen one weekend sobbing uncontrollably because I had to cook everything from scratch. Everything. Every. Little. Thing. No packaged anything for us. Plus, I was beyond sleep-deprived, and was caring for two babies, who now both had issues. (I had also continued to breastfeed my oldest daughter when I brought Kate home and she suffered some effects of this too.)
Eating Gluten-Free Today is Easy
The year we journeyed toward the gluten-free lifestyle was 2006, and back then, we couldn’t just run to our local grocery store and buy gluten-free items. I think there was one brand of rice bread at the store and not only did it taste awful and fall apart when you tried to use it, but it definitely wasn’t allowed on the SCD.
If we wanted any “baked goods” I had to make them out of almond flour. We bought almond flour in bulk, 25 pounds at a time, from a company who has since changed its name. It would come in a giant box in a giant bag and we’d repackage it in ziplock bags. I desperately missed bread, muffins, pastries, and crackers, but I found alternative ways of making these via the Specific Carbohydrate Diet. I had to learn to love cooking and baking. (I faked it then and I still don’t like it!)
Healing Began
The last doctor we saw around the time we went full-force with the SCD was a pediatric allergist. We opted for one blood draw, instead of the prick tests, and although this doctor made us feel ashamed for bringing our daughter the hour’s drive only to put her through the blood draw, he still agreed to do it. He kept telling us that we had a “perfectly health daughter” . Imagine how smug I felt when he called me on a Saturday morning, to tell me, “get your daughter off of all forms of gluten ASAP because she is highly allergic“. Thankfully, I had already learned that removing gluten could help, and we had been off of it for two or three weeks at that point.
Cheating and Proof
As we waited for Kate’s allergy reports, my own testing proved that Kate truly was allergic to wheat, as I suspected. One day I ate about one-third of a piece of Pizza Hut “personal pan pizza” while shopping at Target. Can you picture how small that is? I was starving and I had been on the SCD for about three weeks. Disclaimer: I never did the SCD intro diet; I went straight for the second stage. I just didn’t see how I could maintain strength while nursing two babies and not getting any sleep and by eating only gelatin and broth. I do know that the intro diet is a very important stage in healing though.
The fallout from that cheat was horrible. While Kate’s symptoms had not entirely disappeared, she was doing a little better in terms of not looking so “checked out” and the circles under her eyes were a bit lighter in color. After this one “cheat” her symptoms came back with a vengeance, and I did not cheat one tiny bit for the next 26 months.
Big Improvements
After about eight to ten weeks, we saw big improvements in Kate’s behavior and in her skin, her eyes and her circles under the eyes. It was as if the fog she was in was cleaning. By that time, we had found a doctor (and a dentist) who understood our issues. We thank God for both of them. The doctor we found is a DAN! (Defeat Autism Now!) doctor.
Our dentist is a member of the IAOMT board, and both of these practitioners taught us so much about the immune system and overall health. I believe that our DAN! doc saved Kate from an autism spectrum diagnosis. I believe that if we had not followed his protocol for repairing her gut and mine (and our immune systems), that events would have turned out much differently for us.
We Still Live a Gluten-Free Lifestyle
After a few years, I was tested for Celiac Disease. My results came back right on the border of “yes” and “no”, smack in the middle. My doctor took that as a yes, and it did explain why, after being off of gluten for a while, I gained weight (I had always had a hard time keeping weight on), and felt healthier than I had in years.
Today my girls and I still live a gluten-free lifestyle. About two and a half years into the SCD, I also introduced grains to my diet. I can handle these now in moderation. I tried eating wheat again a few years after doing the SCD, and it just didn’t really give me warm-fuzzy feeling I thought it might, and it made me constipated so I went back to the gluten-free lifestyle. This turned out to be a very good thing for me, because I have Hashimoto’s and was also reated for Lyme disease a few years ago, (thank you, mercury). Living a gluten-free lifestyle helps with any auto-immune disorder.
Both of my girls understand the health benefits of the way we eat. Kate has eaten tiny pieces of bread so she knows what “regular” bread tastes like, and when we go to church and receive holy communion she now consumes the “regular” host instead of the g/f one and she does just fine. Sometimes if we eat out, my girls will order French fries (these should usually NOT be eaten if you are living a gluten-free lifestyle, because of cross-contamination), but that also seems to be just fine for them in moderation.
Today, I still bake with almond flour, but not as regularly as before, and now that the SCD has improved our guts, we can eat other grains which allows us to be able to walk into pretty much any grocery store and buy gluten-free things like bread, muffins, crackers, and granola bars. We still prefer homemade things because of the high sugar content of many of these gluten-free packaged foods, but it’s nice to know that they are available to us if we want them, and it definitely makes living the gluten-free lifestyle a lot easier.
