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.
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.
