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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
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Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Am I a moron??? re: school and food allergies.
I had no idea that honey nut cheerios were on the DO NOT SEND list for school. I got in trouble today... I feel terrible and embarassed, but I feel now that I have this huge burden of having to read EVERY SINGLE ingredient label to be sure my kids don't take something nut laden to school. Obviously, no peanut butter and honestly, even that bothers me a bit, but I'll oblige. I realize the allergy can be life threatening. But, are the restrictions too restricting? My neices school banned APPLES last year because ONE child had an allergy? WHAT????? Where does the responsibility begin and end?
Re: Am I a moron??? re: school and food allergies.
For real? for which part? I don't want to start a debate, shoot, i guess I do. I understand the school's liability with the allergy thing, I do, but I guess I'm just being argumentative because it puts an additional burden on me. I certainly don't want to offend anyone, and God knows, there are far healthier options for breakfast than Honey Nut Cheerios, but my daughter looked forward to that and now I have to come up with something else...
My intent is not to offend, I guess I'm looking to see what the spectrum is on what schools allow/don't allow. I'd think no apples is on the very far end of the conservative spectrum...
we are apparently a nut free daycare. not peanut - but nut.
yet, a kid in ava's class gets a nutella sandwich every single day. dh thought the kid was eating chocolate sandwiches (he didn't know what nutella was) and said "how lucky" and the teacher told him what it was. one of ava's teachers brought in banana nut cheerios a few years ago, and asked dh at drop off if ava was allowed to have some and he said yes but he thought they weren't allowed.
so, parents and teachers alike don't seem to notice the forms they signed or the posters on the walls - no nuts.
and those are the obvious items. forget the "made in a factory that may have peanuts" - i know that isn't enforced in our school.
no clue what public school will bring. i am just thankful that so far, my kids don't have issues and i am as aware as i can be. i imagine i'd be more informed if i knew it was something very serious in my kid's class.
I hear ya, and cheerios would never have crossed my mind since babies eat them. I think a better rule would be no food sharing, and let everyone bring what they want aside from class parties or other times when it's a group thing. Unless a child in the class has an allergy that prevents him from being in the same room as the allergen particles, then i think it's overboard. i can't believe they banned apples.
I'm not sure what our school is. I know you can't send in home baked items, they must be store bought, and treats can't have over a certain amount of the different fats. I don't know if it's nut free though.
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At my last job..we got an email that we could not eat apples in the office because we had someone who was allergic to apples. Supposedly just the smell could cause a reaction.
I thought that was BS also.
ok, well considering the second word in the name is Nut, maybe that was an obviousl one
that aside, it is getting a little silly, maybe more than a little.
i get restricting food in daycares since it's harder to control what the kids do but at some point you have to say, "f*ck it, then you feed them.", KWIM? i (theoretically) pay you a load of $$ to take care of this and i have to bend backwards like a noodle for the hypothetical food allergy.
i'm VERY curious about the apples thing. what age group is restricted? is it a real school or a daycare?
the "am i a moron" in the title was a nod to the honey NUT cheerios thing. I do feel like a dop because it never crossed my mind that there might actually be nuts in it... duh, dope!
as for the apples. it was a k-6 school. ONE child had an allergy... my SIL was furious!
Since none of you have kids with allergies it might seem like a huge inconvenience for you. But coming from a mom with a child with severe allergies, I would be thankful. My son's school is not allergen free. And 2 years ago he was given food with peanut in it by an aide. If he and another child had not been rushed to the nurse it could have turned life threatening.
If you have never had your throat close due to an allergy, you are very lucky. It is the scariest thing. I have had it happen several times. Imagine it happening to a child!
I am not trying to cause drama, just trying to give the other side here.
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i figured on the first part. my comment was a joke.
ok, and now that you say the apple-ban was in an actual School school, that's just plain silly.
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no one is arguing that a daycare should be loaded with peanuts, in fact i think pretty much everyone is saying they agree with it. the comment comes when you have actual school aged children with a food ban. when does it end? do you have the high school ban wheat, dairy and peanuts?
at what point do you have to tell your child, "this is life or death and you have to learn that in order to function in society".
my best friend's daughter carries an epi-pen for her peanut allergy but her daughter, who is in kindergarten, knows to ask if there is any sort of nut in whatever food she is being served. she's 5. surely if a 5 year old, whose throat has closed due to her allergic reaction, can function in society without an all-out ban on peanuts, other children can as well. and if they can't then i think there comes a point when you have to consider it a health risk for the child to attend school.
and again, i'll state that this is not about DAYCARE or pre-school, this is about REAL school.
A child in school (school NOT daycare) should be versued enough to know when to ask, his class teachers and other people they interact with need to be educated by the parent/administration on the nature of allergies and the nurse prepared if something happened. We are not a nut free school. We try to keep Ryan's parties nut free since his friend has an allergy. If you look, TONS of stuff have nuts, are processed in a factory with nuts etc. Its never difficult to be truly nut free especally in a large classroom/school setting. I feel for the kids/parents with allergies but honestly sooner or later your child has to learn to live with it and know how to handle it. Buses, trains, offices are not nut free.
I give an eye roll to the apple thing. Just like I give an eye roll when Reilly tells me she is allergic to peas :-)
I'm sorry but it is ridiculous to not allow grown adults to eat a fruit because one person (hell, I don't care if it's 5 people) has an allergy. Toughshit. What do they do on a plane? In a mall? On a bus? You can't go around foreboding apples all your life.
I have an allergy to Christmas Trees. Do you think once ever in the history of my life my parents fought the school system not to put a live tree up??? ***, WE HAD A REAL TREE.
Growing up there was a kid in school who had a limp left side. His arm kinda just hung there and he dragged his leg behind him. Did they cancel gym? Did they make us all not use our left side so that we didn't have an advantage? NO. He accepted that he had limitations. He accepted that he was different from everyone else and worked with what he had. So I'm sorry, if your kid can't eat nuts, (or drink milk or has an aversion to soy), then he should eat somewhere else cause the rest of the school can eat nuts and the majority rules. There I said it.
I am going to have myass handed to me but whatevs. That's how I feel.
I'm willing to bend to the rules in a daycare type setting because I know that allergies in a kid that doesn't understand has to be extra difficult. But in a "real" school, I think it's a bit over the top.
At some point a kid has to understand that this is a huge part of who they are. Its a huge deal and they need to learn to adapt: learn to ask if something has nuts, learn to use an epi/get help, learn they just can't have some things. I honestly think the rules at an older age HURT them. So there is a rule for now peanuts and the kid knows the rule and either doesn't learn to be careful or learns to trust people follow the rule -- either of these can be deadly.
And you can't expect people to know every item that contains what you are allergic to either. Because people don't.
Do I understand the scariness of having someone's throat close do to an allergy? Hell yeah. I watched it happen to my dad at my sister's wedding after he specifically asked if something contained onions. But even he acknowledged (after the paramedics helped him out) that mistakes happen. When I wanted to ban onions from any item at my wedding he told me I was being ridiculous.
As for learning to deal with his allergies... He knows the phrase "No onions. I am allergic to onions." in approximately 15 languages.
this reminds me of when my mother planted an live lavendar bush in the front of my house, right under my bedroom window. i have a TERRIBLE reaction to lavendar, sneezing, burning eyes and throat, the whole bit. i took it as the sign that i needed ot move out
(i am in no way equating this to anaphylaxis, i just thought it was funny)
THIS!!! These can be contact allergies and frankly I don't think it's asking that much to not send your kid in with PB&J. My child doens't have allergies but if she did I'd hope that other parents would share some compassion or maybe inconvenience for having to think of other lunch options.
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A co-worker of mine's son will probably never go trick or treating again this year. After eating a twizzler, they learned that he had a severe nut allergy and went in to anaphalatic (sp?) shock. Apparently, whoever gave him that twizzler was eating/touch something with nuts in it and the residue caused the attack.
My son's school also has a ban on any type of melon. Apparently, someone has a severe melon allergy. I have never heard of such a thing until now.
A foreboding apple.
DUM DUM DUMMMMMMMMMMMMMM. That sounds intriguing.
Ha. Foreboding.
And Turtle, your analogy to the kid with the limp side makes no sense. His life was not threatened in ANY way if someone else played gym.
If the dude could DIE just by SMELLING an apple, I kind of think you're (a general you) are a big giant *** for bringing an apple in to work. Eat an apple at home. Is it really that inconvenient?
My son is allergic to nuts (luckily it is not life-threatening) and it really upsets me to hear people complain about how inconvenient or annoying or "stupid" or "dramatic" is it to have to abide by peanut-free (or any-allergen-free) policies. I'm so very lucky that my son's allergy just causes him to puke everywhere, but truly, for some children, your PB&J or honey nut Cheerios or whatever could be FATAL. Is that snack or lunch or breakfast that important to you? (Again, a general you)
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The additional side is there are kids allergic to other things that aren't nuts and maybe nuts is the only thing that kid can eat. There are plenty of other conditions/issues/allergies that don't involve nuts. So when you single out nuts you're saying the nut allergy is more important than whatever other allergy, condition, or whatever is out there.
I understand that there is the nut allergy side that thinks the non-allergy side just doesn't care/understand but there is an issue that will come up as to "what about the other people?". It makes it very difficult on some others when nut is so broad as to what can't come into the school when it is strictly enforced. I forget what the girl had but a teenage girl wrote an essay or letter about whatever her condition was- her school went nut-free and then whatever she could eat ended up being severely limited because of the ban. You can't ban everything and I don't know the stats on what other allergies are popular enough to warrant taking a look at reversing the nut thing but the nut ban causes problems too. It's not like you eliminate nuts and you eliminate the whole problem- it just brings up other problems. It's not as cut and dried as- "well, you just don't understand".
I do agree with this, and I do agree that some of the bans are excessive. My son happens to be in a nut-free environment, but it wouldn't matter to me if he wasn't (he was in this daycare before we even knew about the allergy) - he's 5 and knows he's allergic and, quite honestly, the worst that will happen is that he vomits everywhere.
I guess my "but" is that once you involve an allergen that will cause a person (a child or adult) to DIE, I kind of think all bets are off. THAT'S when I think bans should be in place - when it will cause someone to DIE, not just have a reaction.
*always remembering Annaleigh Lucy*
At D's school (it's montessor, 3-6 upstairs and little guys downstairs), we have a list of snacks that are allowed in that the mom of the child with the allergy was kind enough to put together for us so we don't have to figure it out on our own. Honestly, I wish there were some organic options on there, but if I really cared I'm sure I could do some research and send the mom a list of my own to approve. It took a hot second to adjust to - we're not even to cut fruit at home in case a knife came into contact w/ PB on the counter. Which we actually love - makes lunch prep so much quicker, lol. The cild is THAT severely allergic. And you know way? I have no problem w/ the school being nut free - if it were my kid, I would hope other parents would understand that my kid could die from contact with the substance.
I get that it's an inconvenience, I just think we all have to live up tot he reality that there ARE serious allergies around, believe it or not - to carrots, apples, you name it (Yup, I've been in a carrot-free classroom) and have a little compassion for the parents who have to deal with it, especially the severe allergies. I'd never want to live with that fear - school is the place you send your kid to be safe.
I'm not talking about mere inconvenience. My thoughts are more- ok, how do you qualify what is a "more important" allergy? With SO MANY different ones, let's say you have a kid with peanut/nut then you have one other kid who's allergic to pretty much everything BUT peanuts/nut. This DOES happen. Let's say both sides have same severity of reaction. But, peanut seems to get more attention.
So, now you have a nut free environment for one kid but what about this other kid? Do you ban eggs, wheat, sugar, etc? Now what can you eat?
That is the question posed by a school nurse who lives in our district but works in another. One kid had a reaction that was luckily taken care of in time with nuts and that mother wants nut-free. The nurse mother is posing these other questions that I think have some validity too.