“She started talking, and potty trained herself”

When the Whitlocks began, the list of things they were hoping for was short and specific. Sleep, first. Then perhaps some of the digestive trouble easing. Speech was not on the list at all — they had been told to expect that to take years, if it came.

Where they started

The first fortnight was, by their own account, the hardest thing they had done as a family. Meat stock four times a day. A kitchen that never seemed to be clean. A three-year-old who wanted none of it.

We nearly stopped in week two. What kept us going was somebody in the community saying “week three is where it turns” — and for us, it did. The Whitlock family

What changed, and when

• Weeks 1–2: harder before easier. Disrupted sleep, a good deal of resistance to the food.
• Week 3: the first full night’s sleep in eighteen months.
• Month 2: digestive symptoms settling; more willingness to try new textures.
• Month 4: first spontaneous two-word phrases.
• Month 6: potty trained, in their words, “entirely by herself, in a fortnight”.

What they would tell someone starting

Two things, they say. Read the book before you change anything — not during. And find other people doing it, because the week where you want to give up is a great deal shorter when somebody else has already been through it.