Right around that time, we were deciding as a family to start intervening in more preventative ways in Levi’s health. His anxiety at school was keeping him from participating like the other kids. And at home, he was becoming unbearable. Not only was it difficult to enjoy his company, but he also was refusing basic required interventions for his health (doing his daily lotion regimen or taking medicine, for example).
Our first step was to finally respect all of Levi’s food allergies as a family. I spent New Year’s Eve last year reading a couple of cook books to better understand how to substitute and where allergens may be hiding in our food. This change would require scratch cooking and baking with little room for short cuts. Both things had seemed daunting. So daunting that I actually feared making anything from scratch. So, I did what I always do, I did my research, prepared my supplies and then went for it.
In addition to changing what I cooked, we needed a system to encourage the kids to eat new foods. We were going from highly processed foods (mac n cheese, chicken nuggets) to more and new vegetables and more and new preparations of meat. Things looked different and for our kids, that was not easy. The result, though, was that Ana - our pickiest eater - has gone from not wanting to try anything new ever to requesting that this morning’s breakfast be pumpkin donuts. She would never eat anything pumpkin before - even if it was a cake. After sneaking it to her in a donut recently, she finally is open to trying things even though she initially doesn’t like them. We did the same thing sneaking zucchini and spinach into our Grinch pancakes.
So, this morning, I’m living out the fruits of this year with our iet: I’m throwing together pumpkin donuts with ingredients we have on hand (because we have these things on hand now) and I even threw together a cinnamon vanilla glaze for our donuts because now I know how to freestyle with icings and glazes. That’s what 2019 brought to this house!
What was once the obstacle (really cooking from scratch) now became our tools for success. The change in our diet changed Levi into a different person within weeks. He went from being wild and argumentative to loving and conscientious. What we thought were small harmless choices had accumulated to some huge issues.
The interventions didn’t stop with food, though.
We engaged every specialist we could to help with the behavior issues we saw in Levi (but also in the girls). He saw a counselor at school, after school, speech therapist, occupational therapist, behavior therapist. If we could get it, we did.
We learned about anxiety, something I admittedly knew very little about despite having so many students who struggle with it. My fear showed up again because anxiety can look so different for so many people and the “solutions” can be so ambiguous. What we needed, though, was not to have solutions to the anxiety as much as we needed solutions to the behavior that came from the anxiety (not wanting to put on lotion or take necessary medication - two essential things in Levi’s life). We enlisted a behavior specialist who changed our lives. She showed us how we were reinforcing some of the negative behaviors we were seeing, which also increased the anxiety and that created a vicious cycle that we could break. She also showed us how to reinforce the positive behaviors to increase the chances of them becoming normal in our lives. She was encouraging and positive and gave us practical solutions that changed our lives immediately.
In addition to seeking outside help, I started some of the academic intervention at home. We used what we knew from the behavior specialist to get Levi to engage in the academic activities that he was avoiding at school. I was so hesitant to give up “my” time to engage with him over academics, but really, it was what was needed. I didn’t want one more thing to do, but it has turned into a real positive as I see him overcome his anxiety each time that we sit down with a pencil in hand. I’ve seen how proud he is when he does well and reaches a new level and how hard he’s working to try to get it right. Although we encounter many conflicts and engage in argument getting started, this time together has been a real opportunity for me to see Levi and appreciate who he is.
The obstacle of being busy with all of these doctor’s appointments and schoolwork at home was anxiety inducing for me. Facing it head on, though, was one of the main reasons we were able to leave 2019 feeling triumphant as we see the successes happening little by little.
And that’s really it: all of these things we tried, they created a brick road of success. With each success, we were able to add a brick and pave our way forward. Each time we moved forward, we were adding onto that success. And the success and all of those bricks together made momentum. In many ways, it created confidence for me. It didn’t mean that I never failed, I failed so many times, but it did mean that when I failed, I was willing to try again (eventually) and it meant that when I succeeded, I was willing to try the next harder thing. And those next harder things weren’t always related to Levi’s health. They were related to work, relationships, living the life I want to live. And it all started with facing this huge obstacle that I had been avoiding for so long.
