We have struggled with Jonas’ behavior shortly after he stopped breast feeding at just under a year. Although I made pretty gradual changes as I found what worked and didn’t work for him (he had to have soy milk for another six months because he couldn’t handle the cow’s milk), eventually his diet increased to contain more and more foods, and I felt relatively good about what he was ingesting. This was a boy who would eat green beans as a snack, who loved prunes and fruits and veggies! Once we stopped introducing most major foods and were sure that he wasn’t frightening allergic to any of them, I relaxed and became relatively laissez-faire about food.
Within six months of Jonas’ diet expansion I began to notice remarkable changes. He has always been an very intense little kid. He is ecstatic when he is happy and miserable when he is sad. He is high energy, extremely intelligent and creative. All of these temperamental qualities can be used for good or for greying your mother’s hair, and Jonas went both directions often. The problem was that some days Jonas was a sweet, energetic, goofy kid, and other days he was extremely emotional, angry, and occasionally violent. He would be nothing but cuddles and kisses one day, and the next day he would literally throw a chair at me.

I blamed the military separations. I blamed all of the moving. I blamed my own parenting skills, or lack thereof. We saw therapists who confirmed that Jonas was an intense little guy, but that he had no markers for ADD, ADHD or a number of other issues that can seriously tweak a good kid’s behavior. My parenting was evaluated and found to be quite good, heck, I was already doing everything the therapist was suggesting, and after several evaluations he strongly suggested that I make it a point to hire frequent baby sitters so I could get a break! This was not comforting to me.

I had a suspicion that there was a dietary intolerance causing some of this crazy behavior, but I had no idea where to start. I would go for brief spurts dropping eggs or gluten or sugar from our diet (boy that sugar one didn’t last long at all!), but they never did anything but make everyone cranky that they couldn’t have what they wanted. I dropped preservatives and saw some improvement, but it wasn’t consistent enough to prove anything.

We had about three years of having no idea why we had a reasonable child one day and an angry child with no impulse control the next. We continued in this cycle and I would try to look at what he ate prior to taking a three hour screaming tantrum ( I may be given to hyperbole, but I assure you that when I say three hour tantrum, I kid you not). I never found any dietary consistencies. One day it would be pizza in question, so I would feed him pizza again and watch him like a hawk, only to get nothing. We did this over and over with a whole variety of foods.

My enthusiasm for this odd science project waxed and waned as frequently I was just plain too exhausted from all of the craziness to see straight. Finally, I had a major breakthrough.

A few months ago when my husband was deployed, we went to the commissary and hit a great sale on Fruit Loops cereal. Now, I’m normally more of a Cheerios or Kashi buyer, but for fifty cents a box, plus two free funky plastic cereal bowls, I was sold. I bought four boxes, drove home, and immediately came down with a nasty virus. I was absolutely out of commission, and Jonas was so excited about his Fruit Loops that I let him eat them all day long. For breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks, my boy had pure food coloring, and then he morphed into a monster.

He screamed. He hit his sister over nothing. He threw chairs at me. He broke toys, threw himself on the ground and tantrumed as though he had been possessed by demons. I was sick, exhausted and at my wit’s end. I finally got him into bed that night wondering how we had all managed to live through the day.

The next morning I went to the bathroom where I found that Jonas had already been there. As little boys are want to do, he had neglected to flush the toilet and I noticed with amusement that his bowel movements were bright green from all of the food coloring in the cereal. Suddenly a light went on. I continued to monitor his waste over the next few days. His behavior was still very erratic. The day he returned to his usual sunny self, his waste showed no signs of dye.

I kept him very dye free over the next few days, and then I tried it again. I think I gave him fruit snacks, if I remember correctly. A few hours after the food coloring, he was out of control, and I was suddenly very, very in control.

I spent the next few months slowly learning which foods had colors added (quite a few), and what natural things would go over well. I made several dietary changes, and they worked. His first few weeks at school were pretty rough, but as our food routines changed, we saw a lot of improvement.

The biggest challenge has been getting everyone on board with these changes. Chris has gotten very good at choosing natural snacks for Jonas, and I’ve learned that I need to show up to school parties to moderate what Jonas eats. (You should have seen his Christmas party- it was a food coloring buffet!) His teacher wasn’t much help in moderating the children at snack time, and there were days where Jonas would come home cranky because he had shared fruit snacks and rainbow goldfish with his friends. One of our biggest challenges was teaching Jonas that he simply couldn’t eat food coloring. It was hard for him to hear no so often, but even he has gotten good at asking which foods he can eat.

As I had done some research on food coloring intolerances, I found that some dyes were bigger culprits than others. Red Dye 40 had a particularly bad rap, so I decided to see if Jonas would be alright with other colors. His teacher gave a him a huge bag of leftover Christmas candy, so I separated the candy into colors. I let him have all of the green and white candies, and then I observed. I saw no change! We retested the experiment again a few days later, with good news. Both Jonas and I were so excited! We have slowly gone through other colors and determined that for Jonas, Red 40 is not his friend.

This discovery has changed a lot at our house. Not only do we have a more even, pleasant kid and less stressed out parents, we have started being even more conscientious about eating more whole foods. I think this will be to everyone’s benefit.

It took over three years of frustration to get here. I know other families who are still fighting with similar circumstances and who haven’t found a solution. I strongly encourage you to take a good look at your child’s diet, particularly where food coloring is concerned. A little investigation could make all the difference.