On biomed

I have one biomed observation to make. Back in the day, TH had...issues...when it came to toileting. There were angst-related plumbing problems, traceable to terror about the monstrous, loudly flushing appliance that threatened to drag everything within earshot to its sewery depths. There were prescription laxatives. There were, yes, in moments of extreme exigency, suppositories. There was Me, kneeling before a toilet with TH latched on to me like a huge, screaming barnacle. There was trauma.

And in the midst of this, we turned to the one biomed approach we really thought might work: Fish oil. I don't know what it is about fish and their oils--but the stuff was like magic. And really--have you ever heard of a constipated or autistic fish? No? Well, that's because of the oil. Toilet terror ended. To our surprise, a lot of the more difficult of TH's regulating behaviors or dysregulated behaviors ended or diminished right along with it. We started giving the entire family fish oil. We should have bought stock in fish oil, or at least moved to Norway, we've dropped so many benjamins on the stuff over the years (the good, clean, ahem...mercury-free... stuff ain't cheap).

This summer, we dysregulated somewhat as a family. Mr. DMFP used to give the boys their acidophilus, vitamin, and fish oil with their breakfasts every morning, like clockwork. For the summer, though, the works have jammed. Breakfast has become less about structure and more about wandering into the kitchen, opening a box of cereal, dumping it all over the kitchen while occasionally getting some in a bowl, pouring milk to the brim and then some, and then slogging to the table to hunker over the increasingly softening mess while watching Noggin. Somewhere in there, fish oil got lost.

OK...I admit it. It's my fault. I'm in charge of breakfast in the summer, and I keep forgetting to give it to them. In my defense, I also keep forgetting to give it to myself because that is also usually Mr. DMFP's domain. He's the family fish oil enabler.

And we've noticed lately a huge ramping up of squeals (like nails on a chalkboard), faces, flapping, vocalizations (a new favorite is "butterbean dumplings," which, if you think about it, does have a certain attractive mellifluity), and a diminished ability to hold regulation in abeyance in certain public situations.

So, in my sole concession to ancedotal biomed outcomes, I say the following as a mantra, hoping it will wander the halls of my neural circuitry until breakfast tomorrow. Must. Remember. Fish. Oil.