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Now how did I miss that one?!  I must have, because I don't remember seeing
the original note to which Karen, Stella and Lindsay have responded.  But I
want to add my voice to theirs.  I'm a big advocate of standardizing diets
in the family, merely for the ease of doing so, but mainly when a child is
really young.  (It just seems mean to put bread on the table when he or she
can't have any.  Kind of like drinking in front of a newly reformed
alcoholic!)  And I happen to think the CD diet is essentially a very healthy
one that everyone can benefit from -- nothing wrong with lots of fruits and
veggies.  But everyone has to learn that we can't always have what we want,
and quite often for good reason.  I think CD is a great teacher, and agree
that we do our children an enormous disservice by minimizing their need to
adapt.

I think, as Lindsay seemed to suggest, the best answer -- like most best
answers -- lies somewhere in the middle; having a reasonably gf home without
escaping reality. The world is not GF, nor is it carcinogen-free, or heavy
metal free, nor free of the hazards of oncoming vehicles, biting insects or
planes dropping out of the sky.  Now I know that we can control gluten, to a
great extent, where we often can't control these other things.  But the
point is,  one should be in control of one's condition as much as possible,
rather than having that condition control him or her -- or at least the
*fear* of that condition.  Home is a good place to learn to safely overcome
fear, to know that it's okay if there's regular bread in the house next to
the gf loaf, and that some people can have donuts while others have to be
content with a bowl of strawberries instead (and have the secret contentment
of knowing they're better for you anyway!).

A lot of people are "different." At the most severe end of the spectrum,
quadriplegics have to make their way through a tall, forbidding,
inaccessible world and the most successful do so with a strength and
determination that should shame us for complaining about a restrictive
"diet" of all things.  The world will not change for any of us for any
reason, and the earlier we teach our children to be strong and
self-confident about this relatively minor "condition" of wheat
ntolerance  -- especially in a country where we have more access to a
greater variety of foods than almost any other, and thus relative ease of
adaptation -- the sooner our children will be able to go safely, confidently
and contentedly into the world.

Just my thoughts...

Terri