Need to vent

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We have fairly recently undergone lots of changes.
I now work, my husband stays at home.
We moved from the city to a rural environment.
My daughter moved from a special needs preschool to a regular preschool.

For those of you who don't know, my daughter is gluten intolerant. This is a separate issue from the gf/cf lifestyle. She is clinically gluten intolerant as diagnosed by a respected mainstream gastroenterologist.

My daughter has been having trouble with sleeping and been a difficult eater and having a bright red anus and lots of sticky nasty poop stuck to her underwear.

Just found out TONIGHT that the preschool program my husband has been taking her to gives her Coco Puffs for breakfast everyday! These people have sat down with me on multiple occasions, read written IEP's, and are fully aware she isn't even supposed to touch gluten! It gives her stomach pains and migraines!

My HUSBAND told them Coco Puffs are OK!

I personally walked him through the cereal isle and had him purchase 5 boxes of cereals for her to take with her before the school year started!

Every night since she started school I have been scrubbing out her underwear, fretting over the glow in the dark anus, and blaming her nightmares on a reaction to recent changes! NOW I find out he's been letting her have Coco Puffs! WTF! The more gluten she has the more it builds up the worse the symptoms get. The worse the symptoms get the worse her sensory issues eye contact, etc. becomes. And I've been blaming a lot of this the stress of moving, me at work, etc.

Why, you ask, did I find this out tonight? Well, tonight the poop was back to her pre-gluten free state. Poop overrunning the toilet, stuck to the bath mat, streaked across the bathroom floor, on the soles of her feet which tracked it ALL OVER the house!

And my husband wants to know why I'm mad!

I have spent a great deal of time, energy, money, resources, figuring out the whole gluten free thing and making sure she has a healthy varried gluten free diet. Now that I'm at work, his idea of a healthy varried diet is Coco Puffs EVERYDAY for breakfast!

It takes her months to get the gluten out of her system! How long does it take a man to learn to read labels!?

Not to mention, WHAT kind of a preschool gives kids Coco Puffs everyday as part of their HEALTHY FAMILIES INITIATIVE?

Words can't even describe how extremely pissed I would be! At both the husband and the school!! !! I would be raging. I can only imagine how much time and effort you put into figuring out the problem to conclude it was her diet, implementing the new diet, training others on the diet, and all the other stuff that goes along with figuring something like this out!

What was your husband's excuse for this? OMG I would be so mad...

Aaaaaaargh! I'd be raging too!

I'm curious what your husband has to say about it ...

And, yes, I would be mad, too.

Gluten is a difficult one, because it isn't that obvious. Deep breath, start over.

I'm really, really sorry to hear this happened.

I'd be mad too, really really mad!

Having issues with my sons dad right now as he seems to think that AS or not he should just get on with dealing with contact etc when it is clearly upsetting for our son and his house is complete sensory overload! So know hoe your feeling!

Hope your daughter will be feeling ok soon

Unbelievable. I would probably have had at least a couple of screaming fits ( near meltdowns in fact ) at him by now if it was my partner/husband.

What a truly awful thing to happen, I can imagine your rage and frustration and feelings of discouragement as like you I know how long it takes for gluten to leave the system ( up to 26 weeks ), and how long it takes for gliadin-antibodies to return to anything like normal levels after just a few exposures, ( from a year to over two years )!

I hope this doesn't keep happening. I hope that your husband learns how to read ingredient lists.

Really sorry to hear about this set-back, especially at such a particularly fraught and anxious/stressful time, with all the changes.
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I know I should laugh but I am. Not at your child's suffering or your extra work load but at your husband being such a completely numpty. I think he may be related to mine. I hope you got him to clean up all the mess and do all the washing until your daughter is back to normal.

Now that I'm not so mad, here's my husbands excuse.
1) She is old enough that when she soils her underwear she strips totally naked. Since she always strips naked to use the potty, he just put clean underwear on and never thought to look for the soiled ones. At the end of the day, when I picked up, I would find and scrub the nasty ones thinking he knew about them and just neglected to do it as he's new to the stay at home gig.

2) I should have informed him the underwear was nasty and soiled.

3) We blamed the trouble sleeping, irritability, poor eye contact, etc, on our moving and me starting work. We should have known all her nightmares stopped when gluten stopped. It's difficult that she has both migraines and aspergers, since the symptoms appear to overlap until they hit critical.

4) When I bought the special "school treat" cereals there was a box of EnviroKids Gorilla Munchies. I told my husband "These are like Gluten Free Coco Puffs." In my mind, I was saying, even for gluten free these are still junk. In his mind he just heard "Gluten Free Coco Puffs."

5) On the school end of things, their Healthy families initiative means they are striving to give all the kids breakfast. They don't particularly care if it's healthy as long as they eat it. The milk is provided by a local organic farm, and they view the cereal as incentive for the healthy milk.

6) It's going to take at least 2 months for her poop to get back to normal. At least now I know why she was having nightmares, if you recall my previous post "when a special interest goes bad."

So sorry to hear about all of the troubles---It is sooooo frustrating when husband's use selective listening! Try to take deep breaths!! !!

Health seems like something that is supposed to be taken very seriously but it would seem too many people dismiss things so easily, by not reading labels in a GF situation or being very careless. By the sound of it your child has really bad reactions to gluten-- I wonder if the child was allergic to something common like nuts would the same mistakes be happening? I wish people weren't careless. I'm GF and am glad I'm old enough to be in charge of all the food I eat...

It sounds like you have to forgive the husband. But it is still a pickle to be in. Just glad that you've now figured it out.

Oh, that kind of abtuseness just drives me crazy. And your poor daughter. I would have steam coming out of my ears as well.

On the bright side, he wasn't deliberately ignoring her issues. And you did find out what was going on.