I got very frustrated today when I was with my nephew and I'm angry at my brother-in-law. A few weeks ago he decided to stop my nephew's gluten-free diet without even asking my sister. My sister believes the diet helps, since some scientists say gluten is like poison for autistic children, so the diet helps them recover. My nephew has been on the diet for about 9 months, and it takes a while for it to take effect - and indeed in the last couple of months he was absolutely adorable with a minimum of autistic behavior. We weren't sure whether it was the special kindergarten he goes to or the diet.

So a few weeks ago my brother-in-law started giving him regular food (with gluten). My sister still gives him gluten-free food, because she thinks that at least that way the damage will be less than if he stops the diet altogether (the best option of convincing my brother-in-law to start my nephew's diet again seems impossible now).

My nephew had been great even after the diet ended. But today he had autistic ticks and wanted to do nothing but change CDs all the time and do repetitive things. I haven't had such a hard time with him in months. I'm afraid the gluten kicked in (unfortunately, it took a few months for the gluten to wear off, but it took just a few weeks to kick back in). I hope I'm wrong and he just had a stressful day today and will be back to normal, so we'll have to wait and see the next few days.

I'm furious with my brother-in-law. He didn't consult my sister, he just told her he was doing it and didn't want to argue about it. He's a real jackass sometimes. In this case, while he said the diet was interfering with my nephew's life without any proof that it helps (and I don't think it really bothers my nephew at all), I think it actually bothered him that he had to be careful about what he ate around his son. That really pisses me off.

On a lighter, more optimistic note, John Kerry won in New Hampshire! Yippie! I looked into registering with Democrats Abroad to get information about elections, but then I came to the conclusion I might get more mail than I'm interested in.

By the way, Blogger just added a new RSS feed feature, so I now have an RSS version of my blog. Since I don't use any newsreaders, I wouldn't know if it works or not until someone actully tells me. It might be stupid to rely on readers when I don't know if I have any (last week was the first time a reader commented about my posts - but a one-time thing like that doesn't mean I actually have regular readers who check out the blog from time to time).