A must read for anyone with a child with an ASD or knows one!

I cannot say enough great things about this book. I initially read it because my best friend's son was diagnosed with autism 4 years ago and I wanted to gain insight into what she had been going through with him. She had implemented the GFCF diet, among other things and saw amazing improvement with him.

Little did I know that my second daughter was about to be diagnosed as being on the spectrum as well. I immediately put her on the GFCF diet (she was only 16 months). I had incredible help from my best friend with implementing the diet and my husband had been gluten free for a couple of years already. And my older daughter and I were already dairy-free. So, even though initially the diet was overwhelming, once I let go of my preconceived notions of what children need to eat (like milk and wheat bread) and how hard it would be, I was surprised to see how easy it became. Yes the food is more expensive and yes it is limiting at times. But would I trade my daughter being able to talk and be a normal child for some macaroni and cheese? No way!

If you look hard enough, there are tons of GFCF foods out there. Amazon.com even has a grocery store now and it is super easy to get great foods for cheap. Plus, you can use digestive enzymes from Houston Nutraceuticals to help if the child needs to eat gluten or casein.

If your child is diagnosed with an ASD, PLEASE give the diet a real try. Expect to be overwhelmed at first, but know that it will get easier eventually and it is the best thing for your child. We eat to live, not live to eat.

And please read this book if you have an autistic child or you know one. It will give you such incredible insight into what the parents are going through and if caught early enough, autism is completely treatable and curable.

My daughter (now 2 and a half) shows almost no symptoms of being on the spectrum. She's just slightly more hyper than other kids. But I'll take that any day as opposed to where she could be.

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Super informative book!

Of all the autism books I have read, this is one of the best yet! Packed full of helpful information. Great story and lots of ideas for parents/caregivers to try.

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This book was the first step to our son's recovery

Two days after my son was diagnosed with autism, I dragged my mom to the library to see if I could find out what in the world this meant to us. One of the first books that we stumbled on was this book by Karyn Seroussi. After reading several excerpts about her son to my husband, we agreed that we saw a lot of parallels in our own son. By the end of the weekend, we decided to take a leap of faith and implement the GFCF diet that Ms. Seroussi described.

Within one week, our son made eye contact with us for the first time in as long as we could remember, pointed at us in turn and said "Mom" and "Dad". It has been a bumpy road, but we have never looked back from that point on.

Ultimately, we have had to eliminate a lot more than just casein and gluten from his diet (based on IgG bloodwork and charting reactions to everything!) We have been on a more healing diet (Specific Carbohydrate Diet - See Breaking the Vicious Cycle by Elaine Gottschall) for more than a year. The diet (and therapies and biomedical treatments) has been extremely challenging, but it has been worth every effort. Two and a hal years later, nobody would suspect that he once was labelled "Autistic".

Unfortunately, autistic behaviors are the result of many totally different underlying medical conditions. Diet has been a huge key to our son's recovery, but that's not the answer for everyone. Until the medical profession opens their eyes to this reality and helps us really dig in to find answers, it is up to us parents to try anything we can to allow our children reach their potential. I encourage you to read EVERYTHING you can to help your child! I pray that something you find will resonate with you the way this book did with us.

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