Jill
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Posts posted by Jill
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I don't think soy is bad for you unless you're eating GMO soy or you're living off of veggie burgers, tofu dogs, etc. Fermented soy is better than regular soy.
I basically follow this. I found "Better Than Milk" to use since I have dairy allergy; it is tofu milk as opposed to soy milk. I rarely buy tofu but I think the traditional ways of eating soy that are mostly fermented have the good track record. Miso is yummmmmmy.
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Around Halloween there are lists of GF candy and GFCF candy published all over the net. I use those as basic reference for off the shelf candies, not "natural" but if you're going for sugar...:
http://surefoodsliving.com/2011/10/halloween-candy-list-gluten-free-allergen-free-2011/
http://www.gfcfdiet.com/Chocolatecandy.htm
As far as recipes, you might try tacking the word "vegan" onto searches for recipes on the web and then you should get dairy free options. That's what I do for myself since I have to be gluten-free and I have a casein allergy (just hives so I cheat on rare occasion.) e.g. http://dairyfreecooking.about.com/od/sweetsaucesfrostings/r/vegancaramel.htm
How about gluten-free Rice Krispie bars?
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:ohmy:
Thanks for posting. I also hope they don't cancel.
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Not if her content happens to be about style.
It's funny. It seems to me that's what some of her writing is about. People easily get so hung up on style and grammar as if it is the important part even though the message is what any reader of any material should be looking for. That's what I read as the content anyway. :)
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The author is a she/her not a he/him. She posts in her "About" page:
"The title of this blog is an homage to Anne Lamott, namely the chapter in Bird by Bird that I assign every semester."
I think it's worth pressing through personal objections to style to get to the content.
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I read this blog post today and thought this might be fun fodder for the WTM hive.
"...fluency is inevitably contextual. It is possible to be fluent in your native language in some contexts but not in others."
http://writingishard.wordpress.com/2010/05/14/texting-is-not-destroying-the-english-language/
Another entertaining read was "Why I'm not proud of you for correcting other people's grammar" http://writingishard.wordpress.com/2010/05/11/why-im-not-proud-of-you-for-correcting-other-peoples-grammar/
edit: The blog posts are probably R-rated. Maybe PG-13 but obviously a couple people were caught off guard. Sorry about that.
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After some reading, I am wondering why Celiac disease was never checked for in the past?!?:001_huh:
I don't recall the dates your history spans but the newest blood test - the tTg - was only "released" for use by labs around 2003. During the few years preceding that, the trials of the blood test showed researchers that celiac was far more common than previously thought. It's about 1 in 133 people as opposed to the older thought of 1 in 250 to 1 in 400. (It's about 1 in 100 with people who have symptoms, ANY symptoms - and there are a lot.) So, if you started looking for help prior to '03, chances are it wasn't on your Dr's radar unless you had chronic diarrhea and were short of stature, anemic and losing weight. It still takes an average of something like 10 years for most celiacs to get diagnosed from when they start seeking help. An average. Mine was more like 25 years...
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This is my first thought too. It's amazing how common it is---and how long it goes undiagnosed. People are totally shocked at how much food my ds puts away, and his BMI wavers between 1st-3rd percentile. He eats at least twice as much as anyone else in the house (adults included), and he's almost skeletal. We recently discovered he has celiac disease, and I'm hoping he can gain weight on a GF diet.
Yes, check for celiac disease, definitely. Get a CBC so they check for anemias and even if the tTg is negative, a biopsy would be in order since the tTg misses a LOT of celiacs. In fact, I would recommend you go straight to a gastroenterologist, do not collect info from a GP.
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Sounds very likely to be celiac. This is not a surprise, 2.5 million Americans remain undiagnosed so probably your son is one who has gone undx'd for a while.
Definitely get an appt with and get copies of the blood tests sent to a pediatric GI or whatever GI you can get your son to. There's a good thread on the various bloodtests and what they may mean here: http://forums.glutenfree.com/viewtopic.php?t=217
Thank you. At least if this is the problem then we can start getting him healthier.The adults in the house were looking to make diet changes in January anyway to try to loose some weight. If we end up going gluten free that might help everyone.
Especially if you substitute lots of veggies, brown rice, and quinoa and such in place of the breads and baked goods. I've lost a lo of weight since diagnosis; some of that is just because I feel better, I move more and my metabolism is straightened out but some of it is from changes in types of food intake.
Also, keep in mind that all siblings and both parents should be tested for celiac. Risk is one in ten for all those but you tend to find "clusters" of celiac in families.
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I searched this site but couldn't tell if this was linked frequently or not. Sorry if I'm doubling up or tripling up on something but I found it so informative and useful today I wanted to make sure I shared:
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The celiac panel is supposed to be unreliable, but it still may be a good place to start, especially if you're getting bloodwork done anyway. I do have a friend, who was told for 20 years she had IBS and was suspected of having lupus, who may have never considered celiac herself if it weren't for that celiac panel her doctor finally decided to do. Turns out her daughter has it, too, and possibly her son. That one test really helped them because celiac was not on their radar.
I'm also a fan of checking B12 and D levels, and ferritin if you have any signs of low iron.
It can be a good place to start, I agree.
there's
Antigliadin IgA and IgG (AGA-IgA or AGA-IgG)*
May indicate Non Celiac Gluten Sensitivity. More info on NCGS
Anti-tissue Transglutaminase Antibody (tTG) IgA
Anti-endomysial (EMA)
An indicator of villi damage [slight damage is not always detected. 66% of patients with only partial damage get false negatives]
Total serum IgA
Rules out IgA deficiency. This must be run to ensure proper IgA test results. If one is IgA deficient [they don't produce IgA antibodies], any IgA based test will be skewed falsely low.
they may do this deamidated (following) test instead of AGA tests but insist on the AGA which will give an indicator of gluten-sensitivity vs. celiac.
Deamidated Gliadin Peptide IgG & IgA (DGP-IgG and DGP-IgA)
The DGP test is the new kid on the block and will likely over take tTG as the "test of choice" to detect intestinal damage (celiac disease). It's more specific and more sensitive.
more detail on these tests from my pals at forums.glutenfree.com :)
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Ellen McHenry's materials are fabulous, and my son and I had great fun with The Elements last year. I have not used her other materials.
I have CPO Life Science and planned to use it this year but ended up doing something else. One reason (though not the main reason) we didn't do CPO is that many of the labs were just not feasible to do at home without a lot of preparation or were simply not possible to do at all (required something from the publisher that was not available separately or was very expensive). Aside from that, it seemed like a good program.
Do you think it might work well to do The Elements and then follow up with CPO limiting ourselves to labs we can pull off?
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You can even buy cups with lids and dirt in baggies from them if you need to.
lol, sometimes it is just easier to have things delivered to the house than have to make another run into town to the store...
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It's not impossible to have celiac disease without the genes.
The test only gives an idea of risk and is not all encompassing, meaning there are exceptions. HLA DQ2/ HLA DQ8 are what are usually looked for as the risk genes but celiac disease confirmed in the absence of those two has been reported. There was this study where 7% of those in the study were HLA DQ2/ HLA DQ8 negative, but all diagnosed as celiacs (specifically in S. American AmerIndian celiacs though...) And DQ1 is implicated in gluten sensitivity and in gluten ataxia and gluten-induced peripheral neuropathy (neither are technically celiac I guess) but at this stage it is not "officially" considered by most physicians. There's plenty I don't understand about this topic but it seems to me that the genetic testing still leaves room for error and positive response to a gluten free diet is more indicative.
Are you certain you have eliminated all the hidden sources of gluten? most soy sauce has it, some processed meats, french fries fried in the same fryer as battered food will get you, most tortilla chips have too much gluten cross-contamination to be considered GF and at restaurants that fry their own there is the batter-fryer question again. Double check through this thread to see if there's info you've missed about cross-contamination: http://www.celiacforums.com/viewtopic.php?t=1309
hth
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Blood tests for celiac disease are not definitive. In practice it is estimated that about 66% of patients with partial small intestine damage still test negative even though they actually have celiac disease. This is based on a modest study but it is worth knowing. So, unfortunately, if your son had the celiac blood panel run and was negative, it still doesn't absolutely rule out celiac.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=Dig%20Dis%20Sci.%202004%20Apr%3B49%284%29%3A546-50
Also, here's a good recent article on eliminating certain foods to deal with IBS (including wheat and gluten-containing foods). It's basically the Specific Carb Diet, now becoming known as a low-Fodmaps diet. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204554204577023880581820726.html
I did temporary gluten-fee trials with my ds before he was diagnosed - 2 week gluten-free here, a week there. It became obvious that he was reacting to gluten just based on those trials. Someone with a less severe reaction might not be so obvious, I don't know for sure.
If you do still need to get either bloodwork or a small intestine biopsy done, he will still need to be eating gluten.
Tricky thing about testing, there are still reactions to gluten that Drs don't really have good tests for except elimination diets. We did the testing and biopsy in order to have an "official" diagnosis for things like schools, summer camps, any institutional setting where we might have to "prove" his need for a special diet. Other parents do not bother with the diagnosis and I can completely understand why: the testing does not cover all possible bad reactions to gluten, pure and simple. It ends up being your decision in the long run. I hope any of this helps in your search for solutions and decision making.
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I haven't really looked over CPO all that much, but it is available free online if you search for the link.
Thanks for your comments. :)
I have already downloaded the CPO middle School Sci books from a website provided in another "accelerated elementary science" thread here (http://www.nhusd.k12.ca.us/node/52) but the teacher's editions are not there. :( On bad personal days, I need to be able to crutch on a teacher's guide plus it has the experiments in it. The main website for the CPO sci is choking on my request to shop for items (which doesn't surprise me because it's School Specialty and I've had a lot of bad experiences with them with supplies for our public school this year.) oo, just found some versions used on amazon. google and ye shall find.
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I need to find a science curric that ds, who will be 10 in Dec, can sink his teeth into. We've really enjoyed the Scott McQuerry books but need a little more depth. Up until now I've just supplemented but I'm running out of supplements that are chewy enough in themselves - Bill Nye's great but ds is starting to leave that level behind.
I'm comparing the CPO middle school Life Science to EM's Life Sci + Elements +Chem.
I note that McHenry's website has a Bible History category. Are the science programs fairly nondenominational and "old earther"? I'd be ok with that, I'm not okay with a creationist slant. I haven't seen anything in the samples I've read but I figured I'd double check. I like the playfulness of the text and the cartoons; it doesn't seem to distract from the content but my ds is a little hit and miss with that kind of thing. McQuerry's writing style is a bit playful too but I'm wondering who here has had issues with that in EM's texts? And if anyone has further analysis or comments on these I'd appreciate that too.
The CPO LifeSci book also looks really good to me with my biggest concern being whether we'll be able to do some experiments/demonstrations or not. Are there many projects in there with specialized supplies we might have a hard time accessing outside the public school realm? I noticed a plant based experiment with 4 clover samples; I was thinking I can probably substitute other plants but the example made me wonder if supplies might be hard to get. And are there many demonstrations or not so much? I also haven't been able to find out how much the teacher guide is (web server errors I guess...) and how necessary it might be, any ideas?
Thanks!
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I just told them there were several ways of writing the answer to a division problem: decimals, fractions, and as a remainder. I made sure mine could convert from one to the other. I used money to explain decimals. I also pointed out that time, with its minutes and hours worked rather like decimals, too, but with base 60 (and 12 and 24 and 7 and 28/29/30/31 and 365/366 lol). I just had them work the conversions for the things that made sense and for the things they understood.
Nan
^ This. There is value in being flexible and knowing which type of answer you need in which situations.
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I'm familiar with those Joy Berry books and there are many more in the series. You might want to look at Jellaby by Kean Soo, the Amelia series by Jimmy Gownley, Babymouse series by Jennifer Holm, the Bone series by Jeff Smith tho it may not be age appropriate because of scary creatures? Some on our "to read" list are Zita the Spacegirl, The adventures of Mal and Chad : the biggest, bestest time ever / Stephen McCranie, and Zig and Wikki in Something Ate My Homework. Much of the Marvel comicbook series "Marvel Adventures" is aimed for a young audience and is pretty safe content-wise and violence-wise. Any of the above may or may not be at your daughter's level but they might give you some starting points. hth
edit: I almost forgot: Peanuts! The entire series of comic strips has been collected and bound into several volumes. My ds has been working his way through those off and on over the last year. Here's a link to just one of the volumes: http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Peanuts-1961-1962-Charles-Schulz/dp/1560976721/ref=sr_1_9?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1319814767&sr=1-9
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Based on her enjoyment of Wrinkle in Time, Narnia and some others I recommend The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett.
http://www.amazon.com/Wee-Free-Men-Discworld/dp/0060012382/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1319720589&sr=8-1
http://www.librarything.com/work/1043958/book/72937808
The heroine is a nine year old girl but even so my ds really enjoyed the book and is looking forward to reading the next. You may just wish to look at a few reviews of it to make sure it fits your content standards. The only thing I can think of off the top of my head that a parent may find objectionable is that the "wee free men" are pixies based on a Scottish sterotype and includes a fondness for Granny's special "sheep liniment" (some sort of home brewed alcohol.) It is aimed at ages 9 to 12 however after I read it I felt it was fine for my son last year at 8 yrs old. There's also "The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents" by Pratchett. It's also considered a "Young Adult" book but I've read it and I don't think the scary moments are any scarier than what happens in a Wrinkle in Time, or when Aslan is first killed by the witch in TLWW.
edit: also look at The Young Merlin Trilogy by Jane Yolen http://www.librarything.com/work/95722/book/58219088
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I don't ever plan to teach cursive writing. I believe it to be cumbersome, space-wasting and less neat, even at its best, than good printing. I also don't believe it to be faster, or in fact to have any actual advantages. I have tried in vain just now to find studies on relative speed of cursive, as used by a proficient person, versus proficient printing
I generally agree with you. However I'm having ds do cursive (HWOT) in English and Spanish this year partially just to keep him doing some handwriting since I have him typing spelling and stories, etc. I tell him that in the long run he will probably use a mix of print and cursive as his hand control gets better much like the study you linked to indicates. I now can understand starting a child on HWOT cursive at 5 or 6 just in terms of fine-motor skill but it never occurred to me when my ds was at that age as I don't think cursive is much of a necessary skill (beyond being able to read it) nor was I aware of HWOT. So back to the OP's original question, I think 6 sounds like a good age for cursive now, 5 if there's obvious readiness.
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We like Risas y Sonrisas: http://www.spanishforkids.com/products/homeschool-parents-tutors/individual-self-study-program-2
We would listen to these during playtime when ds was about 4 and then at 5 & 6 made more effort to truly learn the songs and play with the domino-type cards. All still come in very handy as we work on Spanish.
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I stumbled upon this "invisible" thread while looking for reviews of MCT's "Classics in the Classroom." Anyone still interested? My husband is a Tiger Mother and so by virtue of supporting him, I'm certainly Tiger-Mother influenced. So I have borrowed the book and am going to read it. Compared with some local public schoolers and even many local homeschoolers I may be a Tiger Mother but not compared to the greater world of TWTM scholars. (I prefer the term "home scholars", e.g.) At least I don't think so because I falter some days because of my own chronic illness. However, we have daily discipline - if we are able to be up and out of bed we are able to get certain essential things done no matter what. Sure, if I or my ds have a fever of 102 we lie down, but otherwise Math, grammar, reading, Latin, Spanish, handwriting and spelling all get done. I like the earlier reference to "Education, Ethics and Expectations." I will have to read and consider whether I am willing to go to the extremes of a Tiger Mom...
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For cursive you might try HWOT.
^ this. We're doing cursive in both English and Spanish this year - that gives him twice the amount of practice but spread out twice as long also. I can't say enough good about HWOT esp for a 5 yr old tackling cursive.
Latin...Who teaches this?
in Accelerated Learner Board
Posted
We're not exactly teaching Latin but we are doing Caesar's English which is an MCT property. My son enjoys memorizing the Latin roots, the English vocabulary words that are often related, and the sentences given. I don't know if we'll delve into studying it as a language or just keep this up. That may depend what materials are available when we're done with the MCT.