Understanding Hand-Flapping and What To Do (or Not Do) About It

My 5 year old daughter has been hand-flapping (literally flapping both of her hands for one to a few seconds at a time) since a very early age. It was kind of cute when she used to do at 1 or 2 years old as if she was a little bird or butterfly trying to take flight. Of course, at that time we knew nothing of autism and that hand-flapping is one of its tell-tale signs (but not necessarily a definite sign of it).

Tips and Advice on Implementing a Gluten-Free / Casein-Free (GFCF) Diet

This diet is very hard to implement and it is very easy to get tired of the limited and often undesirable choices. The worst part is making my daughter feel like a freak at birthday parties because she has to eat some safe crappy treat while others are rubbing cake all over their smiling faces. Nonetheless, the hype machine has everyone believing that this diet could lead to some real improvements in your autistic child. I’ve heard a success rate of as high as 65%. Given how hard this diet is to implement, one would think that the other 35% of the participants are probably just doing it wrong. Personally, I think these numbers are not completely accurate for many reasons of which I won’t get into right now. In fact, I find it ironic that my daughter started having digestive problems on this diet when the complete opposite is supposed to occur!