Gaps Diet For Kids – Yes, I see. Like many “GAPS kids” or as I mentioned when talking to other parents of special needs kids, “our kids” have very strong food likes and dislikes, and we can already feel that we are trying to get to eat our best Love.
I just wrote a post about how I get my toddler to eat – now it works well for our family after years of GAPS (gut and psychology syndrome) diet and years of understanding her quirks and what to say or circumstances that encourage or discourage her to eat healthy food.
Gaps Diet For Kids
Desperate parents have tried jumping right into Intro and seeing the big benefits in it, but if you can try a more gradual approach, which is what we’re doing, I think it works. The previous steps took us about 10 weeks, so not too long, and we are seeing results every step of the way.
Gaps Recipes For Kids: 50+ Delicious Ideas The Whole Family Will Love
No. You can’t just put a plate of GAPS food in front of a child who has only had a very limited amount of food before and expect them to eventually give up and eat it, it’s not a matter of discipline, it is a matter of sensory . This advice may work for well-meaning grandparents with normally developing children, but for GAPS children, it’s a sensory issue—they actually starve themselves to the point of harm rather than eat foods they deem inappropriate.
In the gut-brain connection post, we discussed how gut flora releases toxins that affect our brains, like drugs. This is what this sensitivity to texture and taste is all about, like our bodies telling us to avoid bitter foods because they can be poisonous. Our children have sensory issues and are “told” that these foods don’t taste good. This is where picky eaters come in when it comes to sensory matters.
The nice thing about it being a gut flora problem is that it’s usually easy to fix! After just one week on the GAPS diet or even a gluten-free diet, many children eat more food. I often get emails from parents who tell me that after taking GAPS for a week, their 4-year-old can happily eat copious amounts of squash, soup, meat and eggs – all foods that were previously disliked .
I wouldn’t worry about anything other than restricting your kids to GAPS approved foods for the first 3-7 days of your diet. Even if they only eat applesauce for a few days, it usually starves bad gut flora enough that they can tolerate more GAPS food.
Gaps Diet For Kids
Your job during this time is to make sure they don’t have any cheats – even a crumb or a few grains of rice at this stage will feed the bad gut flora and prevent them from dying, and all your hard work will be negated. Watch out for sugar or additives in supplements, and buy a different version if it contains harmful ingredients. GAPS, especially in the beginning, is not something you can do 80% or even 99% of the time, it takes 100% persistence to be successful. Occasional cheating won’t screw up GAPS people as badly after the gut heals (which is about a year for us), but it has to be strict in the first place.
Although starting GAPS helps a lot with eating new foods, parenting tips can still help our kids eat healthy. My child is prone to both visual overstimulation (light, color, movement) and sound and touch/pressure. If any of these are out of balance, or if she is too hungry or tired, it will be difficult for her to focus on eating, and this hunger will only overwhelm her and prevent her from focusing on eating.
If we get stuck in it, I’ll do what I can to get her a few bites of food to break the cycle. Usually, once she takes a few bites, she notices how good it feels and keeps eating. For the first few bites, I often put her on my lap (still! She’s 6!), put one arm behind my back, hold the other hand, and take a bite from my plate. She most likely ate something from her mouth.
Another thing that works for her is making a silly, loud, lively game out of it. Yes, I still do the “plane” game and the forks buzz in the air, she loves it, I love it, and it meets her development at that moment.
The Ultimate Gaps Snacks Roundup
Some parents report success in getting their children to do their favorite activities and to use snacks as a form of play. For example, a child may like to climb stairs, so encourage them to go up 3 flights, then say “3 flights, then a snack, here you go, then 3 more flights!” in a happy encouraging voice. Opening doors is a big thing for us, and we use it to get her to do things she used to have to do too, “Open, close, bite! Open, close, bite!”. When on a diet, it is very important to get children to eat what we can. Once we get into a few days or weeks, it gets a lot easier, I promise.
For some children, the “when, then” approach works well. My daughter doesn’t like it, but it is exactly what is described in the GAPS book and works for many parents. The diet begins by allowing a bite of a favorite food (any food, even a non-GAPS food) after a bite of a GAPS food (soup, meat, etc.). In this way, the child gets used to the taste of GAPS foods and slowly weans himself from favorite foods.
When we have young children with special needs, it seems easier to wait and start when the children can speak and reason. I personally advocate that you start as soon as possible. When we first started, I could easily prevent my kids from getting food that wasn’t on their diet by keeping it high in the pantry, putting a lock on the fridge or simply not offering it at home . The older the children, the more independent they are, the more they have access to illegal food, at the beginning of GAPS the bad gut flora dies and sends chemicals to the brain that say you need bread, sugar and grains, an adult It’s really hard to have that much self-control, let alone a child.
When we started GAPS, I decided that starting November 1, 2009, we would do a 30-day trial. This gave me motivation to try. We obviously found it worthwhile to continue the diet, but getting through the first week was the hardest. If you have any other questions about how to get picky eaters started on GAPS, please ask below!
The Gaps Diet: Pros, Cons, And What You Can Eat
I’ll show you how to turn that picky eater around in one week, with foods your child already loves!
Register below to reserve your seat and get your free cheat sheet now: 10 most popular foods to help cure picky eating habits (I’ll explain more in the webinar)
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An Intro To The Gaps Diet
If you disable this cookie, we will not be able to save your preferences. This means that you must reactivate or deactivate cookies each time you visit this website. Adopting a GAPS diet for your child may be a good decision if your child has one or more chronic health issues that mainstream medicine may not be able to address, such as food intolerances, allergies, autoimmune diseases, asthma, eczema , many digestive disorders and even autism.
The GAPS Diet for Babies It can be a bit difficult when applying the GAPS Diet to children (toddlers and older children) as they have acquired some food preferences (they are very picky).
To transition your child to the GAPS diet smoothly, you need to do it slowly (especially if your child is used to mostly processed sugary starches).
For extremely picky eaters, it is recommended to start with the full GAPS diet (more relaxed) for a month or two and then slowly transition to the GAPS starter diet. It is less stressful for the parents (as they get used to the new shopping list, recipes and mistakes) and the child as he/she learns to change eating habits.
Healthy Homemade Lunches For The School Lunchbox Gaps Friendly, Gluten Free, Easy
If the child is already used to eating (mostly) healthy, jumping to the GAPS introdiet should not be a problem.
It is good for children with food allergies and intolerances. It is designed to heal and seal
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