Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional Food allergy case

One of the more surreal experiences that I have regularly re my DDs diet is having her come home from a friend's house and the mother always commenting how she worries that my DD doesn't each much (I send all of DDs food). But isn't it wonderful how healthily she eats. What blows my mind about this is that the mother in question is a dietician with a morbidly obese child... My DD eats enough to maintain a perfectly healthy weight, she's slim but not skin and bones, and her diet is restricted but se gets plenty of treats, seriously DD would sit and eat cream with a spoon given the opportunity. She would eat only treat food (that it is possible for her to eat), given the opportunity, but she gets that most of what she eats needs to be nutritious.

It terrifies me that a woman who thinks my DD eats too little (but is magically a healthy weight) is out there "helping" people who need dietary advice.

I don't see any reason to be be dealing with the behaviour of a hungry child, haven't from birth. Why go through all the crying and fighting and shouting and drama just so you don't have to get off the couch and feed them when you could just feed them and deal with conflicts like rational people?

You may choose to feed your kids unhealthy food, but there's no need to. Many many healthy foods can be prepared in less than a minute, from fruit to cheese to bread to hummus to baked beans or any number of other foods. And if you were bothered to watch your children, you might find they have a regular pattern or that plummeting blood sugar has telltale signs which give you plenty of notice that they're about to fall apart so you don't need to rush to get food into them. Morning and afternoon snacks are sterotypical for a reason, but YMMV.

Really? This is what you extrapolated from the thread?

Because what I extrapolated is:

1. Children are fed frequently outside the parents' locus of control.
2. This can cause health and appetite issues.
3. It would appear to be particularly challenging for children with serious allergies.

When my daughter was in daycare, they used to give us these little papers every day with a list of everything that she had done and everything that she ate that day. It was really convenient when we were trying to track down food sensitivity issues. Except that they didn't bother to write it down when they gave them an extra snack at 5PM, because that one wasn't state-mandated. And the daycare director was utterly bemused that I was upset about that.

I don't see any reason to be be dealing with the behaviour of a hungry child, haven't from birth.


Tallulah, I'm not really even sure what to say to this. Have you read anything in this thread? The problem for my family isn't that any ONE person feels free to ignore "No food or drink" signage as some kind of infringement upon their rights-- but that so MANY people do. ANY location seems to be fair game for an impromptu picnic.

Food that appears unexpectedly and at times/places where it has NO business being (museums, stores, workshops, etc, etc) constitutes a barrier to disabled persons like my child. Yes, her limitations are significant enough (and then some, frankly) to be considered a disability.

If I had a nickel for every time someone has snidely asked us how we "do _______ if she's so allergic," I'd be a very wealthy woman. Very wealthy. Mostly, the answer is "we don't. At least not the way that you're familiar with this activity." She saw her first movie in a theater when she was elementary aged, and even then, there were a lot of little particulars involved. Her first "sleepover" was when she was 13 years old.

So yeah, it's not that I ask other people to do stuff so that I don't have to. It's because ALL that she and we are capable of doing just isn't enough sometimes. And yes, on SOME special occasions, I feel that it's not too much to ask of other parents to make themselves or their kids "go hungry" (or at least not eat allergens in her vicinity-- and wash their hands) so that my child can do things like...

visit a public library
attend a museum event
see a play or concert
participate in a team sport
try on prom dresses at a boutique
go to a book signing
attend a ceremony intended to honor her in some way
make a purchase at a toy store
attend her own high school graduation ceremony

If none of that is "reason enough" to think twice, then I'm at a loss, honestly. Is it that people don't believe in my daughter's reality? I'm truly not sure. I can't quite think that anyone who DID completely understand it would actually think that pulling out a snack in line at the bank was worth her life, when compared to forcing their unhappy three year old to wait ten more minutes.



For once and for all-- what other people EAT and DO with food can and regularly DOES impact food allergic people. Their lives are really hard already.

I see this as being very much akin to resenting the "empty" parking spaces reserved for those with handicapped plates/placards. Sure, they are usually prime parking spaces, and most of the time, it wouldn't hurt a thing since there are usually several of them empty either way... it would sure be much more CONVENIENT to park there-- particularly during inclement weather. But I see a reason not to do that. It doesn't seem to be too much for me to be (very slightly) inconvenienced in order to make someone else's life just a little less harsh. I am reminded, as I walk past those empty parking spaces, that I don't have to consider a mobility impairment all of the time.

I am really not trying to start an argument about this so much as explain what life is like when you live as we have to. I'm just asking that anyone reading this accept that for some people, this IS reality. It's not exaggerated or made up, and we very definitely didn't CHOOSE to have this happen to us.


I cannot count the number of times when I've seen that light finally dawn on an individual-- when they watch us walk away from something that they can see means a lot to us. It's always "Ohhhhhh-- I had no idea..." I'm bemused by that. What? No idea that.... I wasn't just making it up?? that we really meant it? or just that we really do see the choice as 'is this worth DD's life?' I have no idea, but that look-- in someone that I've attempted to talk to at length in an effort to work something out? It angers me. Because it's crystal clear in that moment that they've just been blowing smoke at me, and I've been wasting my time and energy on someone that can't/won't/doesn't listen.

I've had that sensation again and again and again with DD's school over the years. Most recently at her commencement. (Which she wound up not attending, btw.)

Tell us how not going went down if you can?

No, people don't believe. I get severely asthmatic when exposed to cat dander and trust me cat dander is everywhere. Despite my efforts to explain the severity of my allergy, people don't get it until they've witnessed me have an uncontrollable asthma attack from something as simple as sitting in a co-worker's car. They are dumbfounded that there is cat dander in their car even though their cat has never been in their car. I imagine that it is similar for your daughter with food residue but her reactions sound even more severe.

Similarly, people who have not witnessed someone have a severe allergic reaction to food just don't get it. My son has multiple severe food allergies, though not as severe as your daughter's. It seems he has to ingest it to react so in that way, he is lucky. People don't understand how stressful it is to always have to make all of your own food and bring it with you wherever you go. They don't understand never being able to grab some take-out or go over to a relative's house. We've paid the price for our attempts to see if some of these everyday activities could work. We've seen the results of cross-contamination at restaurants despite telling the waitperson the full list of allergies and grilling them for 20 minutes trying to find one thing on the menu that my kid could possibly eat. We've had well-meaning relatives forget and use an ingredient that they shouldn't. My kid has one bite and throws up for the rest of the day. Traveling is nightmare. We always have to have a place to stay with a kitchen and bring our own pots and pans. Forget attending sleep away camp. The only way I can possibly see it work would be if I drove food up to camp everyday.

Our school has a no birthday treat policy that DS's teacher decided to ignore this year. I kept my mouth shut as my son dealt with seeing everyone else get home-baked cookies or cupcakes that he couldn't have. He even begged me to let him do a food-challenge so that he might be able to eat a cookie with everyone else. We tried with one of the allergens that the doctor said his numbers had improved to the point where he could try. I watched my kid force himself to eat something that I could tell was making him feel ill in the hopes that his discomfort who be minimal enough that he could fake it on occasion. He threw up in the car and laid in a ball for the rest of the day. When the school administration finally came down on the teacher for allowing treats, I got dirty looks because everyone assumed it was me who reported this teacher even though I did not. I've watched parents force candy bars into my son's hands and tell him not to tell mom, like I'm not letting him have that milk chocolate candy bar with nuts because I am some sort of health nazi! He just brings them home and trades with his sisters or our safe-food stockpile.

So sadly, my only conclusion is that people really don't believe.

Honestly-- commencement was just such a mess-- for SO many reasons.

I just wish that we'd been able to get information enough to make a reasonably informed decision, but there again-- this is how these things tend to go. You ask all the right questions, but this stuff just doesn't cross other people's minds. They don't connect the dots-- and because they don't, they also tend to not think to tell YOU that there, um-- is a dot there. Even when you ask.

So there was a lot of chaos, a lot of relatively low supervision, and a LOT of time, some of it crossing meal/snack times. No teenager is going to go from 1pm until 8pm with no food, and the school just never "got" why I was concerned about it at all. They also communicated poorly with catering, had no real plan for having a trained staff member there with my child (but excluded US, too), etc. etc. etc.

Add in some really unfortunate social stuff with my daughter at the epicenter, and it was just not something that DD felt that she could go through with. It's sad-- but it happens. That is our life, basically. She was a lot less upset about that than most kids would have been. She is used to it.

Sorry to hear that Howler. That is really a shame that the school didn't take the situation with her allergies seriously.

On online message boards the custom is to quote any post you're particularly replying to. If you reread, you'll see that I am replying to a certain post, whose author seems to feel that hunger is a moral issue and that only food which takes hours to prepare can be healthy.