6 Must Dos If You Think Your Kid Has a Food Allergy

I’ve been there my friend.

Once, I had a two-year-old who would wake up every night at least twice, crying in pain that her tummy hurts.  

She would cry and cry and my heart went out to her.

When I brought her to the doctor she said ‘Oh, it’s just growing pains.”

Seriously?!?!?

Thankfully this was not my first child, so I knew that kids don’t wake up in the middle of the night crying from ‘growing pains’.

I did a little research, asked around, and found a doctors’ office that did alternative allergy testing. (Yes, we left the doctor who told me that my daughter was screaming every night in pain from growing pains!)

My daughter had her blood taken and a few weeks later we got the results: egg and dairy allergy.

Well, I’m not going to deny that it was challenging. Eggs are in every baked item! Cheese is every kids’ favorite food! But I was so grateful to see a content and well slept toddler, the difficulty was all worth it.

If you think your child has a food intolerance or maybe you think that you yourself have I’d love to share what I’ve done that might help you.

1. Get yourself your child tested.

Getting testing is becoming easier and easier as time goes by.  Now they have home allergy testing that you can do in the comfort of your own home and you don’t even need to take any blood.  They do it using a hair off your head.  It that like totally awesome?Check out Children’s Intolerance Testing.  They will test 300 food items and 300 non food items, which is a very good start.  

Or you can go visit your local alternative practitioner for allergy and intolerance testing.

If you’d like to book a Body Code session with me, I can also help you with allergies and food intolerances. Schedule a free 15 min. consult here.  

2. Chart it

Try keeping track of what your child ate when she’s not feeling good.   As soon as she’s not feeling 100% go back and figure out what she ate and what it might possibly be that’s causing the problem.  Then try taking the suspected food out from her diet and see how that feels.

This is what we would call a trial and error time period.  But it’s well worth it when she finally starts feeling great again.

3. Take Probiotics

Probiotics are the number one cure to any allergy or intolerance.  Start taking them every day or giving them to kids.  

An adult can start with a 10 billion capsule, and a then move up to 20 billion after 2 weeks or more.  A child really depends on his age and size. Check out dosage with your local alternative practitioner.  

Make sure to take a good quality probiotic. This is the probiotic that I use – highly recommended by the GAPS Diet book. Bio-Kult Advanced Probiotic Multi-Strain Formula Capsules Great price on a pack of 4.

Reading the GAPS Diet book really helped me understand what an allergy is, how to avoid developing them and how to cure them. Really amazing read.  Check out the GAPS diet book here.

4. Learn about your new eating style.

If you do need to start a new eating style then you better learn up about it. The last thing you want to do is feel like there’s noting to eat and then out of desperation (and hunger) go back to the foods that aren’t good for you.

… I wonder how I know about that…

If, for example, you need to go gluten-free - which I stress is not for everyone, only for those who are gluten sensitive – then here are some great resources.

The Gluten Free Cookbook for families is written by Pamela Ellgen, a mom and food blogger. She totally gets the challenge of cooking for a whole family with one person who’s off gluten.

She shares family-friendly (that means recipes that aren’t too complicated), gluten-free solutions that are budget-friendly and much healthier than the processed store bought expensive products that you find in the gluten-free aisle of your grocery store. 

Personally I’m doing the grain free diet thing for the last number of years and this book has been my life savior.

Going gluten free is one thing, but grain free is totally different. I do it because I have more energy this way and I see that I sleep better. But I don’t think I would have been able to do it without knowing how to make all my good old recipes.

The real secret, of course, to grain free cooking is the Almond Flour. I wish someone had shared this with me when I first went gluten free instead of going through years of rice and corn flour confections. I feel like they would weigh me down almost as much as the gluten foods.

But I still need my apple cinnamon muffins once in a while. So here you have it. Between the Everyday Grain-Free Baking cookbook and the Almond Flour itself, I’m all set.

Learning to cook and bake egg free was also a challenge but I did some digging, learned the tricks to the trade and now it’s not so hard anymore.

So if you’ve got a new allergy or food sensitivity - go out and learn about it - and guess what - it won’t be such a big deal in a few months.

5. Use a Menu Planning Service.

It is so frustrating to deal with regular cook books and online recipes when you’re dealing with an allergy in the house.

Especially so when there’s numerous allergies. It’s just not reasonable to expect from yourself that you’ll be able to adjust everything so easily.

At one point when I was really struggling (I mean struggling!) with one kid who couldn’t have eggs, another couldn’t have dairy or gluten, one couldn’t have tomatoes and one couldn’t have wheat (but didn’t like gluten free, only liked spelt) – I said that’s it. I can’t do this anymore!!!

That’s when discovered Real Plans – on online meal planner. When you set up your plans, you can tell the system what foods to avoid, they calculate and then make a menu, including all the recipes – without any of the ingredients that you can’t eat.

Best part is each week’s menu plan comes full with a matching shopping list.

Ingenious if you ask me. Just love it.

So why on earth didn’t I start using them years ago? Sure would have saved a lot of frustration.

If you’ve got someone suffering from food allergies in your home, do yourself a favor and make the small investment and get monthly meals plans. Worth it’s weight in gold.

Like sanity gold! Visit Real Plans here.

6.Smoothies

Ok, so I’m not embarrassed to admit that I’ve always been a Vitamix wannabe.  But I just couldn’t bring myself to spend that kind of money.

Then one day I was at Walmart and I met my destiny!

The Ninja! This blender is super powerful and works every bit as good as its Vitamix counterpart.

I’ve been living in smoothie heaven now for 3 & ½ years and loving every minute.  I get all my veggies blended in with some fresh fruit to make it extra yummy and voila!

Super Mom!!!!! It literally gives me energy.  Not coffee energy. REAL Energy! Love it.

If you’re suffering from allergies or intolerance and you want to get some well needed energy into you, there’s no better way to do it than a smoothie. And the same goes for your kids.  There’s a million and one recipes you can put together using the Ninja that will get those needed veggies into your kids without them even knowing about it.

I feel like it’s so important to get those necessary nutrients into those little bodies in a fun and tasty way when you’re taking something out of their diet that they love and crave.

This is the Ninja I have. Check out the Ninja CT805 Chef here.

This is the Smoothie Recipe Cookbook I love most (note the popsicle green smoothies on the front cover! :)

Be Strong!  I relate to your struggle.  

I’ve literally been there, done that. Just put one foot in front of the other and you’ll see, soon it will before second nature! I mean I could make an egg substitute in my sleep at this point. LOL.

What allergies are you dealing with? Any tips for coping?