When your child is young and it is time for bed, you walk into the room ahead of them, and turn on the nightlight. You might find the special blanket or lovie, you might even turn on the closet light and open the closet door…

You do these things because you love your child.

You do them because you know how to make your child feel safe and secure. You know what makes your child feel anxious or afraid, and you take steps to make sure your child never has to feel that way. You flip on the light switch and make sure your small child doesn’t have to be alone in a dark room.

I am a parent of a child with anxiety. The things that my child fears don’t always make sense to me or to others. Unlike a common fear like the dark, children with anxiety often struggle with irrational fears. These fears cannot usually be reasoned away.

The anxiety at our house is the result of severe food allergies. My daughter knows that she is deathly allergic to certain foods, and to help herself feel safe, she asks about foods, who has touched what foods, who will touch the things she is going to touch and if they have previously touched certain foods. These are the walls that she places around herself to protect herself.

In her mind, the world is full of danger. A simple door knob or restaurant table, a hug from a friend at school, a park slide or the monkey bars… all life-threatening encounters in the mind of my little girl.

Now, as adults, we can reason that it is unlikely that she would have an allergic reaction as a result of playing on the monkey bars, even though it’s not impossible. A child technically could have eaten a peanut butter sandwich and then run off to play, contaminating the playground equipment. My daughter constantly surveys her environment. She is constantly searching out all possible threats, continually assessing the world around her.

And most of the time, the world around her feels dangerous.

As her mom, I do my best to help her. We all want our children to feel safe and unafraid. But previously, most of my help came in the form of trying to tell her that she was okay. I would try to tell her all of the ways everything would be okay. Like calming a child after a bad dream, I would explain that she was safe. If you’ve ever had a loved one struggle with anxiety, you know that telling them not to be afraid is pointless.

The feelings of fear are real to them. The possibilities, real. The dangers, real. The uncertainty and worry, real…. even if we don’t see the world the same way.

But I have come to realize that I cannot calm my daughter’s fears by convincing her that she is okay. It is not my job to convince her that the room isn’t dark. It’s my job to find a light switch and help bring revelation to her feelings. What my daughter needs from me right now… in this season… is for me to be able to see the world from her perspective and do my best to turn on a light.

That’s what it feels like to parent a child with anxiety. It feels like trying to see the world through the eyes of your child and turning on the lights even when you don’t see the world as dark. It looks like finding what will help your child in that moment even if your solution won’t make sense to another living soul.

Turning on the lights might look different for each of us.

For some of us, it might actually mean turning on the actual lights. For others of us it might look like bringing hand wipes to the park (to pass out the other children). It might look like a conversation with your child’s friends about not wanting to play a certain way today. It might look like a placemat from home at the restaurant table, or not wanting to go to sleep alone. It might look like driving your child to school even though they could take the bus.

But we do these things… We walk into the room ahead of our children and turn on the light… even when we don’t see the world as dark…

YOU MIGHT FIND THESE ARTICLES HELPFUL

Why Many Millennial Parents Struggle With Anxiety

Christian Women & Anxiety

The Vitamin Deficiency That Caused My Anxiety

When What’s Best For Your Child Doesn’t Make Sense to Anyone Else

I first heard of MTHFR sitting in my perinatologist’s office. My husband and I had gone through our second miscarriage, and my OB sent us to for additional blood work. While we discovered my miscarriages were likely caused by my inability to maintain progesterone levels in early pregnancy, the doctors also discovered a number of other underlying genetic conditions – one of which was an MTHFR mutation.

I know. It’s a weird abbreviation, but it stands for methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase and it’s a pretty important process.

“The MTHFR gene creates an enzyme necessary for processing amino acids, specifically, this enzyme converts a molecule called 5,10-methylenetetrahydrofolate to a molecule called 5-methyltetrahydrofolate.” 

You might have caught a part of that word you recognize – folate. MTHFR is necessary for our bodies to turn folate (vitamin B9) in our food into methylfolate used for a number of important processes.

MTHFR mutations and pregnancy are often spoken of together – the primary concern being that the mother’s body doesn’t have the necessary enzyme to process folate and pass that key nutrient onto her baby. From BabyCenter.com, “Folic acid helps prevent neural tube defects (NTDs) – serious birth defects of the spinal cord (such as spina bifida) and the brain (such as anencephaly). The neural tube is the part of the embryo from which your baby’s spine and brain develop. NTDs affect about 3,000 pregnancies a year in the United States.” 

It was during my pregnancy that I discovered, learned about, and treated my body for the effects of the MTHFR mutation.

But it wasn’t until about a year after my youngest child was born that I went on to do my own research about how an MTHFR mutation might affect my own body. What I found helped me make sense of an issue I had faced my entire life – anxiety.

Some background… While I remember feeling anxious even as a young child, I wouldn’t say that I have ever experienced crippling episodes. I have always just been a little nervous. I thought it was just who I was. But there is a link between a MTHFR mutation and anxiety that I didn’t discover until recently.

So here’s how this works.

The gene MTHFR allows our bodies to turn the folate in our food into methylfolate. Methylfolate enables our bodies to convert the amino acid homocysteine to another amino acid, methionine. The body then uses methionine to make proteins and other important compounds, including neurotransmitters (serotonin, dopamine, norepinephrine). And serotonin is super important to mental health.

So, I know you’re intelligent, and able to follow along, but just in case all of these ridiculous words and chemical processes are confusing, here’s a breakdown.

1.) MTHFR produces the enzyme needed to turn folate in food into a form of the vitamin our bodies use – methylfolate

2.) Methylfolate helps our bodies convert the amino acid hymocysteine to another amino acid methionine.

3.) Our bodies then use methionine to make compounds like serotonin.

4.) Serotonin appears to be specifically important in feelings of well being, and deficiencies are highly related to anxiety and depression. 

It’s a long process, but when I followed the trail, I realized that my body’s inability to properly process folate actually contributed to the anxiety I experienced all of my life. Crazily, one study suggests that up to 40% of the population has some form of MTHFR mutation.

The good news for me was when I discovered that there are companies that make daily vitamins with methylfolate in them. This means that this nutrient doesn’t need to be converted by my body. It is already in the form my body can absorb. They call vitamins like these bioavailable nutrients. (That’s just a fun bonus fact.)

The Honest Company is just one of many vitamin suppliers that has methylfolate in their vitamins.

Because we’re all friends here, I needed to share my story. It was a connection I wish someone had pointed out to me years ago. Maybe you know someone who suffers from anxiety too? Maybe it’s you? You can read more about my thoughts on Christian women and anxiety here. 

And if you suffer from anxiety, I might not be able to offer any medical advice, but I can pray for you.

The truth is, while I was able help myself by taking an appropriate vitamin, I still occasionally suffered from anxiety. I didn’t even recognize some of my behaviors as anxiety… Things like feeling as though everything was too big. Like there was too much to do, and I’d never get it done, but not wanting to do any of it. I wanted to pretend like I hadn’t gotten the text message or email. I wanted to avoid projects that seemed to hard. And often everything felt like too much.

But after an experience in a church service just a few weeks ago, I am experiencing a new level of freedom from anxiety that I hadn’t ever before. I shared that on my Facebook Page here. I’d love to share the rest of the story and pray for you  below. (Skip to minute 8:30)

We just came back from our kids’ Halloween parties at school. Now, whether or not you celebrate this holiday in your family, schools often host costume and treat parties this time of year. This year was no different in our small town.

But there are a few things that make this time of a year a little more dangerous for our family. My children have severe food allergies… as well as extreme dye sensitivities. (Which is a very real thing if you’ve never heard of it.) While birthday party days at school are always a little tricky, a holiday that is known for candy and treats makes dealing with our food allergies particularly more difficult around October 31.

So, I feel like this is a great time of year to address a few things – some things I think most allergy parents would like to say.

1.) Food allergies are more serious than you might realize.

I didn’t realize that my daughter had a peanut allergy until the third time I gave her peanut butter. The first two times she ate a little, she just seemed tired and fussy. But the third time, she broke out in a rash everywhere it touched her. Her eyes were swollen. Her lips and cheeks were red. She looked like a child who had been crying for hours.

I called the pediatrician and was instructed to give her Benadryl. We were lucky that Benadryl was all she needed that day. It could have been a much more serious reaction. She could have reacted like my son did a few months later when he tried cashew butter for the first time. That afternoon, we were lucky that the epinephrine shots and prednisone given to him at the ER were able to stop his reaction.

Our experiences aren’t unusual. One in thirteen children suffer from a life-threatening food allergy. This means you likely know a family who faces this reality. And when you look at these numbers and how they relate to a school, one in thirteen means that potentially every classroom has a child with a life-threatening allergy.

Did you know that mild food allergies can progress to anaphylaxis suddenly? Even those who have only had a mild reaction in the past can out of nowhere have a reaction that closes their airways and suffocates them in a matter of minutes?

Did you know that even a trace amount of the allergen can trigger an anaphylactic reaction? This means that a food that doesn’t contain the allergen but is processed on the same equipment as the allergen can still cause a severe reaction. Want to know where to look on the package to find out if it is safe or dangerous?

If you turn over a package you will see an allergy warning on the bottom of nearly all products. It might read “Contains” “May contain traces of” or “Processed in the same facility as” and then a list of the major food allergens included in the product.

Did you know that even if a child chews a bite of the wrong kind of food and spits it out, they can still have the same reaction as if they had eaten the entire bite?

Did you know that even if you wipe down the surface (counter, hands, plate) with water, the allergen still doesn’t go away? So if you feed your child a peanut butter sandwich and send them to play on the playground without washing their hands, that peanut butter can transfer onto anything they touch… and then onto another child’s hands. And even that trace amount can cause a life-threatening reaction. The combination of soap and water is one of the safest ways to remove an allergen from a surface.  This brings me to my next point.

2.) We recognize that our child’s allergy is an inconvenience.

I remember the first time that I heard of a school banning nut products. I thought it was just another way that parents were overreacting. I thought it was ridiculous. The way that those parents would make the lives of everyone else difficult because their child had an issue was just sad. “Don’t give your kid nuts,” I thought. “Why do we have to rearrange our lives because of your kid?”

I am so ashamed of my thinking, and it shows just how uneducated I was.

Knowing what I know now, I want to say this about life with allergies. Allergy parents know that it is extra work to think about our kids. We know that it requires extra planning and consulting with us or your child’s teacher. We know that you have to go out of your way to include our child… which brings me to my next point.

3.) We appreciate the effort that you make to include our children.

We are used to bringing special snacks for our kids to birthday parties and class parties. Our kids understand why they can’t eat the same foods as everyone else. But we cannot tell you how much your concern and your effort means to us and to our kids. Knowing that you would try or ask or express a desire to include our children means more than you know. And I personally want to take a minute to say, “Thank you.” Trust me, if we could change this we would. Your effort to include us makes it all feel a little less left out.

There are entire companies who specialize in allergy friendly candy and treats. (Affil Link) The Natural Candy Store clearly labels their ingredients and divides their products by allergy-friendly categories. They boast that they have, “Absolutely NO artificial colors or dyes, NO artificial flavors, NO artificial sweeteners, NO preservatives, NO hydrogenated oils!” We ordered all of our October candy from them this year!

Also, this time of year the #TealPumpkinProject is one way homes can include allergy families. Placing a teal painted pumpkin outside of your house indicates that the house will be giving out allergy safe treats for trick-or-treaters.

Thank you for helping keep our children safe. Thank you for treating our children like your own. From one momma to another, from one friend, one woman, one desperate advocate to another… I’m asking you to please consider the seriousness of food allergies. Never offer a child food of any kind unless speaking with their parent first. If your child is eating at the park, please wipe down their hands before allowing them to play on the equipment. And please consider sharing this post. Because even if food allergies do not directly impact your family, you can share this message and play a part in saving lives and bringing awareness to others.

I have been hesitant to write this for quite some time. Writing and sharing my thoughts online isn’t new to me. I have been posting my opinions and personal experiences on my website since 2013. But I have learned something in the last three years.

The moment a person makes a decision to share their opinion online, they must also be prepared for those who will undoubtedly disagree.

So before I continue, I must preface what I’m about to say with these quick facts (still understanding that there will be those who do not agree with what I write).

First, I’m not a doctor or nurse nor do I have any medical background by which I can offer any professional advice. I am, however, a mom and an author with the opportunity to share with anyone interested in reading the events that have taken place in our family over the last few years.

That’s my goal. I want to share our personal experiences with the hope that perhaps someone else will realize they aren’t alone in their experiences as well.

As always, if you have any health or behavioral questions regarding your child or a child in your care, you should always consult with a medical professional.

Now, since we have that out of the way…  Here is our story.

About two years ago, we began to notice some behavioral issues with our then three-year-old daughter. I have always described her as my strong-willed child, but in addition to her normal desire to self-govern her own life, there seemed to be moments when she had trouble listening or obeying more than others. She was moody, irritable, and angry at times.

I was pregnant with our third baby, and I equated her mood swings to normal anxiety any young child might display when they experience big changes in their home. Also, let’s be honest. She was three. They don’t call three-year-olds threenagers for no reason. They’re moody little things as they learn their boundaries, figure out the world around them and understand the emotions within them.

But my daughter wasn’t your normal strong-willed three-year-old. She had moments when she just couldn’t settle down. She yelled or threw fits that didn’t make any sense, crying uncontrollably or becoming very angry about very simple situations. She also had a hard time focusing. There were moments when she was so hyper we couldn’t calm her down no matter what we tried (and I mean more than the average three-year-old).

I’m a praying momma, and so I would pray. I would pray while she was throwing a fit, and I would pray for her after she had calmed down. Because when the tantrum was over, she would crawl into my lap and tell me how sad she felt. Once, she even told me, “Momma, I tried to stop feeling angry. I just couldn’t.” I would also pray that God would show me what to do. Thankfully, He did.

It was about that time that my mom started asking if we had noticed a trend in my daughter’s behavior. Because while my little girl had moments where she was overly emotional, or had trouble focusing, or couldn’t calm down, she also had just as many moments where she sat and colored and played and interacted very politely and well-man

nered. She had moments where she could take instructions and obey them easily. She had moments where she could be silly without being out of control.

Truthfully, I couldn’t put my finger on what was triggering the difference in her behavior. I wondered if it was too much screen time or not enough one on one time with me. I had a lot of mom-guilt in that season. I felt like I wasn’t helping my daughter in the way that she needed to be helped. I just couldn’t figure out what she needed so I could help her.

About a month before my third baby was born, my mom mentioned that she had read an article about some children having adverse reactions to food-dye. I remember thinking that I had read something about that too. Something about other countries banning (or wanting to ban) certain dyes from their food products… but I hadn’t read why. I hadn’t done any research of my own.

I was curious. I hopped online and began to comb the internet for anything I could find about children having adverse reactions to certain food-dyes. I didn’t have to look very far. The information was overwhelming, and what I found astonished me.

In 2007, a UK study reported children behaved impulsively and lost concentration after consuming a drink containing certain food coloring additives. Children acted aggressively or displayed symptoms of ADHD. You can read more about that here.

The results of that study and others like it were compelling enough for the Food Standards Agency in the UK to push for a voluntary removal of dyes from all products. In 2010, they required a warning label be placed on color containing products because of the confirmed reaction in children.

A current article published on the FSA’s website states, “A European Union-wide mandatory warning must be put on any food and drink (except drinks with more than 1.2% alcohol) that contains any of the six colours. The label must carry the warning ‘may have an adverse effect on activity and attention in children’.”

WHAT?!

I came across article after article with case studies and testimonies of how dyes have adversely effected children and families across the world. The statistics concerning the amount of dye the average American child consumes were overwhelming.

I thought about the fruit drinks and the fruit snacks and the breakfast cereal and all of the other foods that my daughter consumed regularly. How could it be that simple? How could the answer to all of her behavioral issues come down to simply removing the artificial color from her diet?

It was worth trying. And I will admit, food dye was in more items than I realized. Being an allergy momma, I was used to checking labels. But there were dyes in products I never would have expected: crackers, pickles, yogurt… The list went on.

While it wasn’t easy, it was worth it. As we began to remove the dye from her diet, my daughter changed before our eyes. She became mild-tempered. She didn’t become angry like she had before. She could take direction and focus and obey without resisting. She was happier. We were all happier.

It was as if our entire home breathed a collective sigh of relief. We didn’t have to brace ourselves for any major meltdowns. I didn’t have to strategically plan how I would tell my daughter, “No.” I still had a strong-willed little girl… don’t get me wrong. But she was able to take direction and process moments of discipline, learning from them and moving on.

Today, at five-years-old, my daughter is our living proof that food dyes effect behavior. It’s not always easy telling her that she cannot have certain foods, but there are entire companies (both local and online) that we can partner with to expand her naturally colored food choices. Aldi and Natural Candy Store are two that we personally love. (And no. They aren’t paying me to say this.)

So what am I hoping to gain from writing this? Why did I want to share our story? Well, many of you know me. Over the last few years, I’d like to think that you have learned that you can trust me. And often, we trust the experiences of those we know more than we trust the experiences of a stranger.

I wrote this (unusually long post) for the same reason that I write everything.

I believe that somewhere there is a momma or daddy or teacher or caregiver who needs some help. I believe that there is someone who feels hopeless. I believe that there is someone who feels just like I did and wonders what they can do.

And maybe my story will be the starting point for healing to begin in someone else’s home. Maybe our family can set another family on a journey toward hope.

Is this the answer for everyone? Probably not. I never said that it was. But this is worth considering. It is worth researching. It’s at least worth wondering.

And if one family realizes they’re not alone and sets out to find answers… then it was definitely worth every word.

What about you? Do you have any experience with food dye behaviors?

CLICK HERE TO READ HOW WE ELIMINATED DYES IF YOU’RE READY FOR YOUR NEXT STEPS!