Cognitive Delays In Kids With Celiac

[Cam's Mom]

Hello helpful people!!

My 6 year old daughter has been struggling with learning to read and other challenges of first grade. She has been diagnosed with Celiac for about 8 months and despite our best attempts at getting her gluten free her ttg numbers were still high at her 6 month check. We are working hard (and I mean REALLY hard) on this. But, in the meantime it is subtle but it seems to us that some of her cognitive abilities were better a year ago than they are now (i.e. early reading attempts were stronger in K than now).

So my question is - have any of you had any similar experienced with cognitive/learning delays due to celiac disease and/or know of any resources that I could share with the school on this topic? Thanks for any help or thoughts.

Best to you all,

Barb

[taweavmo3]

Hi! I can relate a bit to what you are going through....my daughter is almost 5, and she is very behind for her age. She's been gluten free for almost two years, and we were really hoping she would have caught up by now. I had her blood levels drawn just to make sure she wasn't getting any hidden gluten, and that was fine. When she does get accidentally glutened, she has some neurological symptoms that go along with her GI stuff. Her speech gets slurred, and she seems a bit out of it for a few days.

I know how hard it is in the beginning to keep 100% gluten free. One thing that helped us was to make the whole house gluten free. I also have to keep a close eye on any lip balm she uses, and all hygeine products just to be safe.

Could your daughter be getting glutened at school? I also have a 7 year old who is gluten free, and he has had many opportunities to cheat if he wanted to. Lunch time is pure chaos, and the teachers can miss alot.

I hope you find the gluten culprit, and can get her TTG numbers down. If that doesn't do the trick, you could look into other food allergies as contributing factors to her cognitive delays. Good luck!