attention problems in 6yo - a food intolerance?

[Lucy123]

I don't know if anyone will be able to help much on this but I thought I would give it a try.

A friend's 6yo dd is very difficult. She will rarely listen when being told anything and is very disobedient. This is not all the time - when she is nice she is lovely and I guess she could just have a very independent and fierce personality. However I think there is some other problem. When told to do something she will often start it but then sit down and talk to her dolls as if she is in a world of her own. She will also play up generally much more than any other 6 year old I've met. To be quite honest if I didn't know the mother I'd say she had some sort of problems at home (lack of attention or discipline or something), but as far as I can see the mother is doing everything right!

The symptoms are almost like some attention deficit disorder (though she's not really hyperactive). Could this type of behaviour be caused by something like a food intolerance?

yes- although this is a huge area. Removing gluten from our son's diet made a huge difference. There's a lot more on this in the Autism Research Unit pages at Sunderland (not saying the girl is autistic- non-autistics can also benefit from the diet and there is a test that can be done there- you don;t need a diagnosis for it). I've added links to the ARU on the MMR thread (if you dare look there )

For ADD you don't need hyperactivity (that would be ADHD). One thing that would almost certianly help is fish oils- you can get efalex or eyeQ in Boots. They are slightly different formulas- efalex has research evidence behind it. It would take about 6-8 weeks to see a result.

Garbled reply but I only have 2 mins spare...

This little girl sounds a bit like my son, minus the dolls. A friend who knew my son well even suggested he may have a food allergy. I took this seriously and asked both his doctors and his teachers about this. Not just the one teacher - several over two or three years. Every one of them poo pooed the idea of a food allergy, because my son can behave well when he wants to -his lack of concentration etc seems more a matter of choice and sheer devilment. I still wonder whether fish oil supplements might change his behavior and really must look into this.

thanks both of you. Tigermoth - I also think that this girl could just have a very strong personality, but, well, it could be something else. I'll look into the fish oils.

I'll gather some courage to look at the MMR thread!

Hi Jimjams,

My ds is 3.5 and can be a bit boisterous and doesn't always concentrate on things for too long,I was wondering about the fish oil supplements, do you know what age these can be given? Are they in tablet or liquid form? I have never seen them so I wasn't sure?

Thanks very much

Lorna

lucy123, a friend of mine has a 5yo girl who is a DEMON if she has sugar. I don't know if this is relevant to your friend but my friends have cut sugar from her diet totally for the past couple of years. I've seen this girl with and without sugar and the difference is truly amazing. Her behaviour was way beyond normal and they wondered about ADHD and various other things until a homeopath tested her and said that E numbers, sugar and chocolate were her triggers. Lo and behold, Smarties (with their lovely combination of all 3) were the things that seemed to make her the worst, her parents just hadn't made the connection. Anyway, she is now a different child, still feisty and herself but without the extremes and anger. She knows she isn't allowed sugar because it makes her angry and is fine with it. Anyway, this may not be relevant but just thought I'd tell you about it anyway in case.

Good one www- lots of children react very badly to sugar.
lorne- the fish oils come in all sorts of formats- capsules, oil from the bottle, or these wierd tiny things (not quite sure what they are- can't give them to ds1 as they contain gelatin which he isn't allowed). I've been giving ds1 (3 and a half) proefa from the states which came in a huge capsule so I cut the capsule open and poured the contents on his toast and added honey on top. Efalex has a stronger flavour and gives fishy burps!!! We've just run out of the proEfa so I'm going to try eyeQ. I think they're oK from 2ish. I don't give them to ds2 (a year old) but I do take efanatal when I remember and I'm still bfeeding. HTH

Hi Jimjams

Thanks for your message, I will give fish oil a try and see how I get on.

Regards

Lorna