Читать книгу The Chemical Generation - Are the HIDDEN toxins in food making your family sick? - Jamie Geurtjens - Страница 5

I was in my final year of my teaching degree when I met my husband, Jeremy. I knew as soon as I saw him that I would marry him. He was tall, kindhearted, and stunningly gorgeous. Just 4 months later, we were engaged, and within a year of our first meeting, we were happily married. We wanted to be parents more than anything, and it was something we talked about a lot. We lived in the small town of Bulls where we owned the most run-down house on the street. Almost two years after we were married and still living in our run-down, but half done up house, we became pregnant with a little boy. Ethan was born naturally and was absolutely perfect. He had the cheekiest smile, big blue eyes, and the softest blonde hair in the world. He had a really healthy start. I would make all his baby food from fresh market fruits and vegetables and soon added in farm raised meat. He had soon grown into a busy, happy toddler, and everything was going well for us. However when Ethan was 18 months old, not long after his MMR vaccination, he became more defiant especially when he had to do something that he didn’t want to do, like have his nappy changed. I began to dread changing his nappy as I had to try and hold him down as he kicked his legs and tried to get away. When he was really tired in the evenings, it would sometimes take both Jeremy and me to change his nappy. I can still remember his first tantrum. I was at home one evening and had been trying to change Ethan’s nappy, but he wouldn’t let me because he was more interested in playing with his cars. He got so upset that he threw himself on the ground and started this almighty screaming tantrum. It lasted over 20 minutes, and only stopped once he had worn himself out. This tantrum was the start of a severe anxiety disorder that would later have Ethan diagnosed as being on the autistic spectrum. At only 19 months old, he was soon having regular tantrums every day. I kept thinking I was doing something wrong, that I must be causing him to get so upset. He would never have these tantrums around his grandparents or visitors, only me or Jeremy. I think I read every parenting book in the library. We were consistent. We gave positive reinforcement. We spent quality time with him, set boundaries, modelled appropriate behavior, shared our feelings, role-played situations, disciplined, had sticker charts, smiley charts, getting ready for school charts, and money charts. We fostered his strengths, ignored the negatives, praised the positives, guided him through social situations, talked to him at his level, gave him timeouts, and took toys away, books away … everything in his room but the mattress. We made a lucky dip bag for a good day’s behavior, took him on trips, had weekly and sometimes nightly meetings as parents to work out a better plan, we sometimes blamed ourselves, occasionally blamed each other, and even blamed him. You name it, we tried it, and we gave it a good go … and then tried something else. Nothing worked for Ethan, and under the advice of 2 medical practitioners, we hoped that he would grow out of it as he reached 3 years.