Allergies and Moodiness in Kids
Posted on Friday, November 21, 2008 by bbb-admin
This last week brought with it a couple of the most challenging days I have ever had with the twins. They were grumpy, whiny, uncooperative, and just plain crazy! At one point, all three of us were crying. Me, because I had a fat lip from a head butt to the face and broken glasses in my hand. Isn’t parenting glamorous? Wondering what happened to my happy little girls, I could only come up with the following explanations:
- they were teething
- they were getting sick
- they were overtired
- they were plotting against me
After careful examination of each of these, I decided that they were not teething (got bit a couple of times checking that one out, ouch!), they didn’t seem sick, they had napped and slept well, and I sincerely hope that they are not yet able to plot against their dear old mom. We will save that for their teenage years.
Perplexed, I found myself falling asleep after the second day of well…hell… thinking about what on earth could be going on. It suddenly hit me. Milk. It doesn’t always “do a body good”.
We have been dealing with a sensitivity to cow dairy products since they were 5 months old when we introduced one bottle at night of formula (I had to give the breasts a break!) Suddenly the girls had eczema. After trying this and that, we eliminated cow dairy from their diets and voila, eczema mostly cleared up!!! I recently was told by my pediatrician that I could begin reintroducing cow dairy to the girls’ diet to see how they tolerate it. A few days of cheese and yogurt later, and the eczema was a little worse and the girls were insane.
I wondered if it was just the increased itchiness that made the girls grumpy but the fact is that they have had way worse eczema and not been so nuts. I googled about the internet and found research that has found a link between the moods of children and allergies. In fact, constant fussiness and insomnia are classic signs of a food tolerance issue.
Relieved by the thought that there was a likely explanation for the girls behaviour, other than that I had given birth to two she-devils, I cut out dairy the next day and they were wonderful. Same with the next day. I am convinced that their mood was related to the milk sensitivity and I will certainly look to allergies as a possible explanation for behaviour issues in the future.
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hey Jen… what a wonderful bit of insight! i feel like i’ve been having the same sort of week with my little “angel” as you have. My happy cheery little girl has been taken over by a screaming, tantrum throwing…. YIKES! I’m going to look into this allergy moodiness link a little more! like you i don’t think teething, illness or lack of sleep are the issue – but boy do we ever have a case of the moodies. after reading this i tried to think long and hard about what may have changed in my daughters’ diet the last week, and the only think i could think of was her new interest in eating little oranges! she has never shown any signs of a milk/dairy sensitivity but maybe she is having issues with citrus?? needless to say those oranges are now out of one and a half year old sight in the fridge!
hey Tina… I know that citric acid is a very common allergy so maybe the oranges pushed that one over the edge? It’s so funny how we just write them off as fussy, in a bad mood, crazy etc, when something else could be going on. I can’t wait for when they can say, “I have a tummy ache!”