Jenny

My son (11) has always been a very difficult eater and his diet consists mainly of bread and variations of bread (toast, crumpets, pancakes, muffins,pitta bread etc). When I first read about the GFCF diet, I convinced myself that he was addicted to gluten and that he why he wouldn't eat anything else but having discussed this with both his physciatrist and dietician, they were both very sceptical and I haven't persued it any further. He has AS but thankfully only mildly and although his behaviour can be difficult at times and his eating problems exasperating, we're ticking along quite nicely at the moment. As the last message said, if I was to remove gluten from his diet, he would be left with virtually nothing to eat and with no physical symptoms, we've decided to let him eat and be happy than not eat and cause more stress for the whole family.

I believe my son's AS is hereditary from his Dad's side. My son (our first born) had a perfectly normal pregnancy and full term birth but was difficult from his first hours in this world and has never looked back ! My husband also has AS (they were both diagnosed just this year) and we think it likely that my husband's elder brother and father (now dead) are/were both AS also. We have tried talking to his brother and gave him a leaflet explaining the syndrome but he seems to have dismissed it as a mental illness and not something he wants to be associated with. As we don't see him very often and the relationship between my husband and him is pretty poor, we are not persuing the issue, but we strongly suspect he also has AS like his younger brother (my husband). We also have 2 perfectly normal girls.