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    #193665 06/06/14 10:18 AM
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    Man, that word "reasonable" here really burns my britches.

    Haven't these people ever heard of Letter to Zirkel??

    Sheesh.



    As a side note, it is MIND-boggling how ugly school staffers, teachers, and even other parents can be toward children like this one.

    And so much for "hidden" disability, eh? Nothing like calling that one out by putting a child into a special "disability" seating arrangement when parents and the child's physician ask for more appropriate risk management. Contact-sensitive kids are a real challenge for schools-- everyone knows that. The problem is when schools choose to behave like petulant children themselves over it. These parents and this child certainly didn't choose to have this medical condition to live with, and what possible motivation could they have for exaggerating it?? I realize that most people know at least one person who has self-diagnosed or made-up food allergies, but a kid wearing a medic-alert bracelet who can explain what anaphylaxis is and how to use an epinephrine autoinjector.... probably is not exaggerating anything.





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    Part of the problem is that there are those folks who exaggerate their kid's food allergies. I know folks who have very serious food allergies, and the exaggerating people are doing a disservice to them.

    My youngest went to a day care with all sorts of allergy/"Don't bring in this food" signs. Nut, eggs, dairy, etc. - the list went on and on. And each parent swore that their kid's allergy was severe.

    What ends up happening is a danger to the truly allergic child. I saw products that contained the allergy trigger items in that classroom (because I read the labels), and I saw kids eating them right next to the kid that would have a life-threatening reaction if they were in the same room with the food (according to Mom). So what happens is someone like me, with kids that don't have allergies, sees stuff like that going on and starts ignoring the signs. My youngest will barely eat anything anyway, and the day care is limiting her food selections to items she won't eat, so I figure it won't hurt to add this in her lunch...and there is the problem.

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    I am not sure about parents "exaggerating" their child's food allergy. I have never experienced that but I "hear about" it a lot 2nd-hand from resentful non-allergic parents. You may see it that way, but you have no way of knowing people are exaggerating unless they admit it, and it is very likely not the case. The problem is the allergy can worsen with each reaction. When my son was first exposed to peanuts he got excema, Later he threw up and became congested, the next time his face all swelled and he got hives as well as congestion. The last few times he filled with thick mucus and his throat closed. While he is not allergic (yet) to the smell he gets extremely anxious when he smells peanuts b/c he has almost died - more than once now. For most of us, each time the reaction gets worse and worse and doctors warn of this. In my experience, non-allergic parents have this huge tendency to "exaggerate" how limited they are that they can't bring in "ANYTHING" to eat b/c "everyone" has an allergy. I find that not to be the case at all. Usually it's just my kid banned to a table by himself b/c it's so inconvenient for kids to go 6 hours without peanut butter. Occasionally, there is one or two other kids from a total of 5 other classes. I just have never encountered these 'extreme' cases where every kid has an allergy and the poor non-allergic kids have "nothing" to eat. And I have two children in the public school system - one who is fatally food allergic and one who is not. MANY parents do not respect my fatally allergic child. The school does lunch bunches and class lunch with the principal and each year, without fail now, several parents send in peanut butter anyway (even though they were asked not to because there is a fatal allergy... So who gets banned from lunch? The children who were asked to refrain from peanut butter this one day? No. My kid does. I have people say the nasty things right to my face about it too.

    Last edited by Irena; 06/06/14 11:57 AM.
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    Oh and we don't "swear" the allergy is severe here. We have medical proof of it - in blood tests and skin tests. And of course, hospital records of severe physical symptoms.

    In my younger son's classes, son who is not allergic to anything, I always ask are there any allergies because I will not send those foods in. One teacher said to me - "oh, don't worry about it - that's not fair to your child." Not knowing that I had another child who was fatally allergic and so I am very concerned about the welfare of all the kids not just worrying about convenience form my non-allergic one. Boy was she shocked when I responded that "what wouldn't be fair would be my putting another child's LIFE at risk because I refused to have my son refrain from eating a dangerous food for the few hours he was at preschool. He loves yogurt, for example, but he can certainly go a few hours without it and we can certainly wait to eat it at home if it's going to possibly kill another child. Really."

    Last edited by Irena; 06/06/14 11:59 AM.
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    Yes. Most parents that I know who have kids with life-threatening food allergies (and definitely those like us who live with contact/aerosol reactive kids) have the same exact thoughts about that, believe it or not. I know plenty of people that I'm pretty sure are exaggerating, and a few that I suspect are out-and-out lying. I can definitely see why parents who don't live with food allergies can get the impression that it's completely fabricated.


    That's understandable from other parents. Not so much when schools ignore medical evidence that parents have provided, because they... just know that we're all fakers out to make our special snowflakes just the most precious things ever, or something. Or maybe we're all suffering from MBP. We like the attention, right? Yeah-- sure. That's why we don't want our kids to be called out in front of their peers... oh, oops-- guess that part doesn't fit. smirk

    I'm particularly touchy about this today given that a person who sat in on my daughter's 504 meetings for a year-- a year in which national legal input was required over accommodations that I insisted were inappropriate and illegal, not to mention dangerous (I was right, and THEIR lawyers said so, as did OCR)-- was still capable of taking a nasty pot-shot at MY kid over perceived over-anxiousness re: her food allergy. So it really didn't matter whether or not we can prove that some risks are real enough that "anxiety" over them is completely warranted-- some teachers, administrators, and other adults are still totally willing to shame kids for not being... less inconvenient, I guess. That's just incredibly sad. I'm pretty sure that it would be unthinkable for a teacher to say "Well, we would be having a fun end-of-year PARTY at the CLIMBING CENTER... if some students weren't insisting on sitting in wheelchairs, I mean..."



    The in-your-face humiliation/isolation/discrimination faced by kids like this can be very extreme. When teachers and administrators are dismissive or rolling their eyes, etc. it creates an environment which is simply hostile.

    That's not even considering the actual physical danger to them-- which is also exponentially higher in an environment in which this kind of allergy is treated as a joke or communicated to others as an unecessary pain in the neck (which I'm gathering is what has been communicated to NotSoGifted via school staff).

    I've seen schools do some pretty outrageous things in their dealings with parents and food allergic kids. One district was even so determined to eject a student that they insisted that they would not allow a 504 plan to be written unless the child "proved" anaphylaxis potential with a particular allergen... with a medically-supervised deliberate ingestion to elicit a life-threatening allergic reaction. Yes, that's right. I don't know of a single reputable allergist that WOULD have done it, and the family wound up homeschooling. (HUGE surprise, I am sure.) Another child was given a garden vegetable while classmates (all early elementary kids) ate gorgeous, elaborately decorated bakery cupcakes. My own daughter was once offered a grubby BEAD fished from the bottom of a teacher's purse as a last-minute "substitution" at the end of a one-hour class (because she couldn't have the cookies). Yes, really. This is incomprehensibly cruel. I've seen and heard things personally that I still have trouble fully wrapping my head around because they are so jarring or unexpected. My own child was "offered" the accommodation of sitting in a closet or office-- or maybe out in the parking lot in our car-- so that coaches and teammates could eat at will on the sidelines during competitions. Of course, even that was not a real offer-- they quit returning our calls and e-mails entirely. Yes, their national legal counsel MOCKED my child in an e-mail that I still have a copy of. NO joke.


    In one of the most jaw-dropping moments that I have personally experienced, an extra-curricular workshop teacher was going to EAT my child's allergen (even after I'd carefully communicated with organizers ahead of time), then was willing to "forgo eating lunch" (making my child feel HORRIBLY GUILTY)... and finally, "helpfully" telling us about how we could-- you know, if we didn't want to keep being such incredible downers everywhere we went, I guess-- CURE MY CHILD'S ALLERGIES WITH CHIROPRACTIC. With an audience of ten other 6-9yo children, and 4 to 6 other parents. {sigh} No, as a matter of fact, I did NOT 'drop-and-go' with that particular teacher, and yes, I did have to have the "why we love you even though we haven't cured your allergies" conversation with my child, who LUCKILY, being PG, immediately saw that Ms. HippyDippy there was probably talking out of a position of profound ignorance relative to her specialist physician, who is one of the most respected on this coast with respect to food allergies, anaphylaxis, and immunotherapy, and trained with one of the top three researchers in the world.

    Chip on our shoulders?

    You BET.

    Honestly, food-creep is one of the single biggest problems in my life and it's potentially THE biggest one in my DD's. Our culture is awash in food and eating-- everywhere, all.the.time. Signage prohibiting food and beverages is IGNORED. My 6yo loved MoMA much better than Disneyland. She felt safe at the museum. sick



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    Good Lord, what is wrong with people? Can they seriously not avoid some fairly unnecessary foods in their child's diet for 6 hours to avoid a potentially fatal reaction in a classmate? That's a meal and a snack or two.

    My husband is in the "allergies unreasonably trespass on the right of the non-allergic to eat food X ad libitum" camp. Excuse me, but in what parallel universe is the right to eat peanuts more important than the right to life?

    I grew up in high school with two friends with life threatening allergies: peanut and sesame. I saw first hand the needless threats to their safety on a daily basis. Never would I want that for my child, or someone else's.

    What are most common severe allergies anyway--tree nuts, dairy, and wheat? IIRC, dairy and wheat allergies are usually less common as airborne allergies, which lowers the required degree of accommodations. If you can't come up with an alternate menu for a meal and 2 snacks for your child, maybe parents need to band together to support an allergen free cafeteria at the school, because the remaining choices are plentiful. Let's consider for a moment the remaining available menu items based on the assumption that all the foods I listed above are off-limits: meats, fish, fruits, vegetables, legumes, most oils and fats, most grains (rice, bulgur, quinoa, amaranth, etc.). In my diet, that would mean I'd substitute some avocado for nuts in a salad at lunch. In the other 8 or 9 waking hours of my day, I'd eat dairy, nuts, and bread.

    I can think of three friends who are fashionably on an allergen-free/restricted diet. One is a "celiac" who eschewed gluten-free pancakes I made at a brunch in favour of farinaceous ones. Another is "lactose intolerant" but ordered a grilled cheese the last time we went out for lunch. The third is "vegetarian", but ate steak at my wedding despite being offered the vegetarian meal of her choice. This kind of ridiculous posing undermines the perceived legitimacy of real allergies.


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    Most school administrators and teachers default to one of two positions when you ask for accommodations related to a life-threatening food allergy:

    a) intimidation via name-and-shame-- they make SURE that everyone else knows who you are, and wash their hands of responsibility-- forcing you to deal with other parents and defend yourself with people who may know absolutely NOTHING about you-- as though they are entitled to, which is just bizarre, or

    b) accommodations that PUNISH the child. "Here, sit in the corner," or "go to the hall so we can do this art project," or "you can't go on this field trip," or "go to the principal's office."


    For people who supposedly love children, these kinds of responses are mind-boggling.


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    Irena, I am sorry to hear that other parents and teachers are so unsupportive of your child with the allergy. Our daycare is nut-free, and although we love PB and nuts, we have never minded that restriction. For us, it is same as you - we would never want to be in a situation where we would knowingly put another child's life at risk.

    I hear of parents that are so callous about a child's potentially life-threatening allergies, and I really don't understand it. It is definitely not going to kill my children if they have to refrain from some foods during the day.

    It may be simply because my mother made it clear when we were little that it is not a right that we can eat whatever we want whenever - one of my sisters' friends had serious allergy to milk and another had so many food restrictions for medical reasons (apparently an older sibling of that child either died or came close to dying hence they discovered the same medical conditions in the younger siblings) and my mother made attempts to ensure if they were at our house that they would be able to eat with everyone else, even if it meant some of our favorites were unavailable.

    I even remember her going out to buy new dishes and pots and making sure to get the menu approved when they had invited a few local friends for dinner and she found out they followed a kosher diet. It is not same as allergies, but it did really hit home that just because I love certain foods and combinations does not mean I should assume that my enjoyment of those foods trumps everything else - be it medical reasons or cultural reasons.

    I still really don't understand why it is so hard to respect the fact that there are fatal allergies and just refrain for few hours.

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    On a more unrelated note, what is with the crap food parade educators in the US seem to be throwing? You'd think they were part of the Duncan Hines market research team. Reward kids with an education and interesting experiences or--at least--tasty healthy food. These are supposed to be schools, not bakeries!

    Last edited by aquinas; 06/06/14 12:37 PM.

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