Does having anaphylaxis make you the food police?
I’ve been getting some great questions from our newsletter subscribers so keep them coming.
I thought I’d start answering them on the blog, since they will most likely help others as well.
Jody of Canada writes this:
I have a seven year old daughter who has a severe peanut allergy. Is there any breakthrough news I should be aware of regarding this allergy? Also, the school which my daughter attends is “peanut Aware” not “peanut free”…is there anyway to change this and make it manditory for the school to make sure lunches are checked? For my daughter as well as another little boy in her class, someone bringing a peanut product to school is like bringing a gun and pointing it directly at her/him. It really is scary.
Yes it’s scary but you are thinking about this from the wrong direction. My son has dairy anaphylaxis and is therefore at more risk because more food contains dairy.
They are both as deadly as each other, just one has more exposure. Banning foods does not work. Period. You need to work on putting risk reduction measures in place at the childrens schools instead, and a solid action plan should something happen.
And something will happen, it always does, no matter careful everyone is.
We do not advocate banning any substance. This is the stance of the Anaphylaxis Australia, and most likley the Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Network (FAAN) and Anaphylaxis Canada as well (but I’m only guessing on that last two). Someone from America and Canada can confirm that for me.
Declan has been through 3 years of schooling now with Anaphylaxis to dairy, and every day we hope that he doesn’t have a trip in the ambulance to the hospital or worse come home in a body bag.
We train the staff yearly, and have a solid action plan in place. The children in the class are in fact the best line of defence in taking care of their classmate. Children are more accepting of changing and looking out for their food around there classmate than their parents are. It’s disgusting but true.
It is up to you to work with the staff and school administration to have the whole class learning and being educated by having a child with a food allergy in the class and the school in general. With the children in the class taught early in the school year about food allergies it’s amazing how they look out for food on the ground, or if someone spills food on themselves.
If you avoid the issue, you are asking for big trouble, not just now but in the future. The child has a food allergy, so teach everyone around you how to reduce risk and notice the signs of food allergy and your child and everyone else will be better off for it.
Granted, you may have to search around for a school that you feel can handle the challenge (we did), but it’s no less of a challenge for the school than having a wheelchar student, or a student with learning disabilities, they just have to learn and teach new skills.
Sorry for the rant, but you have to change your thinking, or you’ll go crazy (more so than the rest of us) dealing with anaphylaxis.
Aaron