“But he showed remorse,” said my kind friend when I called her crying to apologize that my son had bitten hers at school. “What more could you want?”

Um, for him to not do it at all?

Really, what I want is for my son not to feel that kind of out-of-control anger. I know he’s three and a half and that some socially inappropriate behavior is, well, developmentally appropriate. But I also know that when he went through a similar phase two years ago, some body work and energy work really seemed to help.

And I know that as someone who suffered from undiagnosed depression all through my childhood, it’s no fun to feel unhappy inside. Although medication helped through a few dark periods in my adulthood, it’s become crystal clear to me that what has made the most profound difference has been a combination of non-drug remedies: a gluten-free, casein-free diet; regular exercise and yoga; and body work and energy work, including acupuncture, chiropractic and craniosacral therapy (CST).

So when my son had a biting episode a few weeks back for the first time (a 12-hour playdate is a rough thing for overtired cousins inhabiting a small space on a rainy cold day), I made an appointment with the acupuncturist who saw us when he had an ear infection months ago. While I waited the three weeks before that opening, I also got him in for CST work, which I though was probably more useful for him (lasting a full hour) but is twice as expensive as the acupuncturist who works with kids.

The acupuncture was scheduled for Friday at the end of the first week of school. E seemed to enjoy school fine and had none of the crying some other kids did upon leaving their moms for the first time. But on Tuesday, the second day, he did bite the arm of his friend, G, in what was probably a tussle over a toy. “It might have been provoked,” the teacher said, having not seen the lead-up. But I was deeply troubled.

My kid is nice. He’s usually patient and kind. When he does physical stuff, something seems like it’s just not right inside. That’s an awful feeling, and I don’t want him to have it. To me, the biting is a symptom. Maybe he’s feeding off of my stress. Maybe it’s partly the change of season, as the acupuncturist suggested. Maybe it’s that we’ve been trying some dairy in his diet, and maybe it doesn’t agree with him any more than it does with me.

What I do know is that he and I both had a nice day Friday and a pretty mellow weekend after a week of volatility and meltdowns. All the doctor did was use a little roller on a few spots and then put little acupressure stickers on his ears, hands and feet. Thinking we might try needles on him next time, she did a demo on me with a quick insertion to two points that address the kidney meridian and fear. “You’ll have a good day, too,” she nodded to me.

And I did. Within a few hours, the sense of urgency and crisis was gone. My son and I had a lovely time together. We’ll see if he can hold onto that calm through today, the first day of the second week of school.

A few months back, I finally did a cheek swab test on my son to see if he did in fact inherit gluten sensitivity from me. I’d ordered the test from Enterolab almost a year earlier on the advice of Melissa Diane Smith, author of the fabulous book, Going Against the Grain. For some reason, I just had a block against finding out. I wanted to keep my boy gluten-free until he was three anyway. With all the added gluten in today’s grain and the increase in gluten sensitivity, I don’t think it’s healthy for anyone to have much of it period, and certainly not when the gut is so immature.

The results showed that my son has one of the main genes that predisposes to gluten sensitivity and celiac sprue and one “non-celiac” gene that also predisposes to gluten sensitivity. Mainstream doctors would not diagnose celiac disease without blood testing and/or an endoscopy, but those would likely not yield positive results unless he had eaten enough gluten to do damage to his gut. That’s not a risk I’m willing to take.

However, we are trying him now on cow’s milk and will then do a stool test to see if he shows casein sensitivity. The idea is that the more integrity we can build in his gut now, the healthier he will be in the long run. But I don’t want to keep him off of all dairy unless we know. There is so much good to be had in full-fat, farm-fresh dairy — real milk.

So we’re trying to just be up front with him, always pointing out that different people eat different things. Since this is not an issue of allergy, I want to keep out the fear, but I do want him to understand that we sometimes make choices based on information that doesn’t have an immediate impact. That’s next-to-impossible for someone his age to get, but I’m trying to present it just as things are and hope that it will help him eventually make choices that are good for his body rather than get stuck in some kind of right/wrong dichotomy.

I really hoped we could tolerate some goat cheese, my son and I. We bought some of the same kind we were eating a year ago until the chiropractic neurologist muscle-tested us and said “Absolutely not,” literally tossing the morsel I’d brought aside. “I just adjusted him!” she exclaimed, as though eating something his body couldn’t handle would mess with all that energy work.

Well, he did turn around after that first visit last October — stopped biting, transitioned better to me separating from him, and just generally seemed to feel more comfortable in his own skin. I was adjusted on many levels that day, and I went from weepy to dealing pretty well with life. So I think she was onto something.

But I figured now that I’d cleared some other issues, maybe it was worth a try again. My sister was bringing her daughters to town, one of whom doesn’t eat gluten, and I thought it was a good time to try a GF pizza crust. (I’ll post a link when I get to confirm the brand. It was good, but tough for those of us sensitive to yeast!)

I told E, “We’re going to try this cheese and see if we like it, if it makes our bodies feel good.” The next day he remembered and went looking for it in the fridge. He loved it. He told my visiting sister with gleaming eyes, “I ate cheeeese!” (I think it might be this Shiloh Farms Raw Goat Cheddar, but I’ll have to check next time I’m at the store.)

I loved it, too. It was creamy and rich. I’d missed that texture and taste. There weren’t any obvious stomach problems right away, but I just think it made both of us kind of off. E got a runny nose for the first time in I don’t know how long. It didn’t last but for two days, perhaps in part because I took Thieves oil from Young Living (and he’s still nursing) and gave us both the Respiratory, Immune and Lymphatic MBP solutions from Perelandra. But still, it was a runny nose, and his behavior seemed a little challenging.

My neck started to get very stiff. I used to feel like this all the time but just haven’t seen I’ve been on an allergen-free diet and especially since last October when I saw that chiropractor.

I hope that maybe some day I will be able to tolerate raw milk, or at least raw goat milk, that I can try to culture myself into yogurt or kefir. Cheese, I’m told, isn’t the best way to get raw dairy, which is believed by some to be so much better than pasteurized because it retains the active enzymes. See the Campaign for Real Milk from the Weston A Price Foundation.

I did enjoy a lovely (pasteurized) honey goat cheese that my friend gave me a few days later. I figured once I was trying one new thing and realizing it wasn’t optimal, I might as well go all the way. I could stand to do more research on the subject and will share what I learn when I do.

Now that both cheeses are gone, I’m not planning to buy any more. E did not ask again for the cheese after we had the pizza. I was surprised because he’s usually pretty relentless about remembering stuff that he likes and wants. Maybe he knows it’s just not right for us right now.