In November of 2009, my husband and I had just received a diagnosis for our 7 year old son, whom we had been struggling with for quite some time.  The diagnosis was ADHD and Asperger's Syndrome.  We had recently been married 4 months prior to the diagnosis and were expecting a baby in early August.  We definitely had a lot going on, but it felt as if our world had come to a complete stop. I could not believe that this was happening, all I could think about was how we were so not prepared for this.  How would we help him, what could we do, and what did all of this mean for my little boy, and for my soon-to-be expanded family?  I was overcome with grief and sadness for some time, and struggled to understand how I and we would deal with this!  After a few days of walking around in a daze and coming to terms with what all this meant, I began to do some research.  I tried to educate myself the best I could, what exactly was Asperger's, were there any causes, was there a cure, what helped this syndrome, what made it worse??  I had so many questions and was overwhelmed with the information that was sitting at my fingertips! 
Prior to getting married I had earned a bachelors degree in English Education, and I had recalled learning about Autism and other spectrum disorders.  I knew there were certain medications that were shown to help as well as other drug-free methods that had been explored.  Again, all this information was extremely overwhelming and I felt lost.  One of the books I had encountered along the way to educating myself had mentioned a special diet that required specific foods to be cut out of the diet completely.  This very much intrigued me, the fact that there could possibly be a way to help my son that did not include medicating him in any way.  Unfortunately my husband was not very fond of the idea and it was causing even more tension in our house so that became the end of that.  Instead we scheduled an appointment with our pediatrician and started our son on a very low dose of Ritalin.  The Ritalin seemed to work for some time, his focus was better and he was more attentive at school.  But we were still having daily meltdowns and after a couple of weeks the Ritalin didn't even seem to help with focus and attention.  We were feeling lost and overwhelmed again!  On top of dealing with this we had a baby girl we had welcomed to the home and the stress of worrying about how the meltdowns and freakouts would affect her was just as stressful!  So we stayed committed to finding the right dose of medication for our son and started him in therapy every other week.  We listened to everybody's advice and tried everything we could possibly think of.  Everything that is, except the diet I had read about. 
It had now been over a year since the diagnosis and being consistent with medication and therapy and things were not getting any better.  I refused to keep increasing the dosage of Ritalin and was at the end of my rope with all of this.  In April of 2011 I mentioned the diet to my husband again and this time showed him all the research I had found on it.  He was exhausted from trying to figure this out as well, he just wanted to help our son in any way possible, so he told me to make an appointment with the doctor and discuss the diet with her.  I did just that, and our pediatrician supported our decision to try this out 100%.  She said she had seen many people that had a lot of success with the diet, but that we needed to prepare ourselves for the amount of work and dedication it took to be this successful. It has been a year later and my son has been drug free and this diet has changed our lives!!!!!  So, I started this blog hoping we could help change the lives of others the same way this has changed ours...