Food dyes simulating ADD/ADHD

I have two children, a boy, 5 1/2 and a girl, 2 1/2.  Our children are both very bright but my son has had a problem with focusing on his work in school.  When a teacher worked with him closely, he was fine but when left on his own, his attention tended to wander.  He would bring home a completed work from school once every week or week and a half.  His teachers were advising us to send him through kindergarten for another year, in hopes of improving his ability to focus in school.  One teacher even suggested testing him for ADD. 

My wife and I did not want to drug our son to “help” him.  We were trying to work with him at home to help him in school.  When we worked with him, everything was fine but when given a task and left to himself, he had a great deal of difficulty completing the task. 

We heard from someone about a news report they had seen on the effects of food dye on children’s behavior.  We jumped into the Internet for further research.  We didn’t find any hard and fast evidence but we did find a lot of researchers saying food dyes may be a problem.  We also found a lot of blogs with reports of better sleep, better concentration, and better behavior without the food dyes in the kid’s systems.

We decided to give it a try.  It wasn’t easy to eliminate the food dyes from their diets, but we did it.  My son’s last day with dye in his diet was on a wednesday evening.  He had a four day weekend from school so the following Monday was the first real test.  We spoke to his teachers on Thursday about what were going to try and asked them to see if they could detect a change in his behavior the following Monday.  They told us that he was a completely different child.  He came into his room, and without prompting or direction got out a work project and stuck with it until he finished.  Then he started another!  In the subsequent three weeks, he started bringing home completed works every day.  He has brought home more work in the past three weeks than in the entire school year.  His sleep is better, he behaves better at home and at school, he eats well.  All because we took food dye out of his diet.

My little girl has always been a poor sleeper, waking up three or even four times a night.  It was also difficult for her to go to sleep.  Now that she is dye free, she goes to sleep very easily.  She still wakes up once a night or so, but she puts herself back to sleep most times.  Only rarely do my wife or I have to cuddle her back to sleep.  Heaven!

Please try a dye free diet before you drug your kids.  The base ingredient for food dye is coal tar.  Why would we feed that to our kids?  Try it and see if it works for you.  By the way, Ritalin, the drug of choice for ADD/ADHD is loaded with yellow dye…hmmmm.

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