Food incentives are also another area which is fundamentally different when you are a person with life threatening food allergy.
Oh.. yay.... a "pizza party." At the pizza place that I can't even go into. Wow, I'll be sure and work
extra hard for THAT treat for the class...
Oh... yay... if I read more books, I could get Ice Cream certificates!! Um-- except, kind of not that good an "incentive" since I don't want them, because then I'll just have to explain why I'm not all excited about it, and well, yet another opportunity for my food allergies to ruin everything for me. Great. I'm not going to turn my reading logs in this week.
I'm reminded of a classmate that
I knew as a child-- who was certainly MG, maybe brighter than that. She (I later learned) had juvenile arthritis that made recess a SERIOUS bummer. She used to routinely act out so that she'd be held in at recess-- and was quite successful at keeping her disability hidden when she was experiencing a flare. Reading a book was better than just sitting outside and watching the rest of us do things that she found too painful (or was forbidden from doing).
This stuff matters. A lot.
