Teen-aged boy... free to a good home.
I love my oldest... really, I do. Last night I could have cheerfully hung him up by his toenails though. We've finally gotten him cleaned out from all the crap he ate in California... and it was really starting to show. His behavior was back to normal for him, he was less obnoxious, more willing to help when asked, and didn't lock in as hard to things he was doing. That's usually the kicker: the inability to unlock from something - usually video/computer game or TV related. When we see that come up, we know we're having food issues.
So since he's cleaned out, we're starting the food testing... again. Starting with tomatoes, and this time doing a full run - never made it all the way through the list of fruits that are to be avoided during clean out. Due to the celebrations and stuff going on this past weekend, and the migraine that completely flattened me on Monday, we didn't start testing til Tuesday. That day, he has his Writer's club meeting at the library (which he biked to - important to know for later), and then for dinner, burrito salad. Nothing majorly noticeable on Wed, slightly twitchy - BLTs for dinner Wed. Thurs, noticeable twitchiness, thumping his elbows against his hips, flexing and popping his fingers, rolling his head back against his shoulders (partly to stretch, partly so he can feel his hair brush his neck), and getting more obnoxious, less tuned in to the family - chicken burritos for dinner. Friday, he's anti-social, completely impatient and cranky with his little brother crawling on or around him (something the oldest usually initiates, so only has himself to blame for the baby thinking this is how to play with big brother), and by Friday evening 100% locked in, won't be done til he's ready to be done, thinks everything in the world is really stupid, why do we have to do these stupid things on Saturday that he doesn't want to do (Drums - stupid, hates marching bands, not interested, doesn't see why he has to go - when the week before he was excited about going) all because we said "Record the show, we all need to get to bed. You can watch it tomorrow morning or whenever."
You'd have thought we turned off the TV in the middle of the program without letting him finish watching it. He whined, he complained, he bitched about how stupid this was... came very close to calling D some things that would not have been able to be taken back later, but did actually manage to self-edit (in and of itself an amazing feat for this boy). On and on and on... how unfair this was that he had to record the show to watch later, and not be able to stay up so he could watch it now. Mind it was 10:30ish, and we all needed to get some sleep. D had work this morning (otherwise this wouldn't have been an issue), which C was well aware of, and C has been complaining about not getting enough sleep... Oh yeah, that's the other part: he couldn't understand why we didn't trust him to go to bed on time, he's been going to bed on time every night, at the end of whatever time we set as his reading time. Next breath, he doesn't see what difference it makes, he goes to bed late all the time, is always up past when we tell him to go to bed. Sense a little confusion here? Finally got him to see what we were seeing with that inconsistency, and why we couldn't say yes, stay up and watch the show, with no way to make sure he actually went to sleep after. Finally, I hit record, which pissed him off even more.
When we brought the point around to his behavior, and how this was looking after four days of tomatoes, and we got the response that he "didn't care, why the hell did it matter...?", we told him we understood that this was his reaction speaking. That we could understand what was going on, which was why we weren't mad right now, but that his attitude could really hurt his relationships with other people - those friends who might not know what the deal was, and just thought he was being a colossal ass - like the gamers at the library for his D&D game that he's supposed to go to this afternoon. That shut him up for a little bit... and helped him unlock a little more. We started discussing whether this was truly an allergic reaction (in the traditional sense of "allergies" no, but very definitely yes), and headed upstairs to go to bed. For whatever reason, D asked C if there had been any other things he'd eaten this week... and before he'd even finished his question, C responded with a very definite "Yes."
There it was. The unexplained reaction to tomatoes (he reacts, but not usually like this). Turns out, Tues when he rode to the library, he'd finished his water, and was thirsty when he got there. They had free Minute Maid berry drinks, so C grabbed a couple of them - "cuz the water fountain was all the way downstairs... what was I supposed to do?" Umm, walk downstairs, maybe? Anyway, he said since they said Berry on them, and we were testing tomatoes this week, he knew he shouldn't have them, so he didn't even look to see what all was in them. So who knows what all was compounding the tomato testing, and making the reaction to them so much worse than we'd ever seen. However, since almost every Minute Maid drink out there has corn syrup in it, and since his behavior was reminsicent of what he's like when he's had corn syrup (we were spared the full reaction by him riding home - burned some of the extraneous reaction off), I'd be willing to lay odds that one of the ingredients that he didn't bother to look at was corn syrup.
We thanked him for being honest when we asked him, told him he's got to tell us when goes off diet like this, and let him know just how close he'd come to losing tomatoes forever. Grrr!