My 4 1/2 year old likes to follow rules, plus we've pointed out a zillion times that gluten makes her stomach hurt, so she's careful to always ask about any food offered to her, to make sure it is something she is allowed to eat. We've followed the suggestion from the Danna Korn book about kids with celiac disease, where every time she has a stomach ache we say, "Maybe you accidentally ate some gluten." Actually it mostly seems to be true -- if she has a stomach ache, it does seem to come from accidental gluten.

My 8 year old is a world-class picky eater, so he wouldn't try most foods. I'm not sure what he would do if junk food was offered, though -- he likes some types of junk food quite a lot. His behavior is affected by food, but *he* says that his behavior is the same all the time; he doesn't at all have the self-awareness yet to see that eating the wrong foods is a problem. He does get stomach aches from some foods, though, so he knows he needs to be careful of those foods. So I don't think he would eat most foods if they were offered, but I don't know for sure.

My real puzzle is my family's exchange student. The exchange student organization originally matched us with her because she has celiac disease too. She's 17, living with us for the year, attending our local high school. I'm still really looking to find my way with what support she needs. For example, I'm not sure whether to tell the swim team parents that she needs special food, and risk interfering when maybe she didn't want me to, or *not* tell the swim parents about her food needs, and risk having her go hungry at swim team events. I think this would all be easier if she'd always lived with us; part of my issue is that I'm not sure what support she's used to having from her family. She doesn't seem to mind skipping meals, and I think she'd rather not have me interfere, so lately I've been keeping quiet and letting her navigate on her own. I'm having a hard time keeping quiet when she doesn't respect her own needs enough to make sure she gets dinner, but I think it's best if I treat her as an adult and let her handle this in her own way, even though it's not the way I would have chosen to handle it.

-Valerie