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Random question / devil's advocate re: severe peanut allergies
re: the girl in Florida where other parents are throwing a fit because of the accomodations the school is making: students doing extra hand-washing, mouth-rinsing, peanut-sniffing dogs coming in, etc.
I'm kinda torn on the issue, but there is a part of me that is thinking:
If your allergy is truly that severe, that accidentally coming in contact with a speck of peanut oil because someone didn't rinse out their mouth before speaking with you, then for your own safety, should you be in public at all?
or at least in any sort of close contact public setting, like a school?
what will you do when you are an adult and entering the working world?
If the allergy is this severe, then even interviewing for a job could be deadly, no?
It seems that some of the reports re: what the school has done have turned out to be exaggerations, or not. There are conflicting reports. But all reports seem to agree that this girl's allergy really is this severe, so let's concentrate on that.
If you, or your child's allergy really & truly was that severe, would you risk going in a close-contact public setting?
Discuss.
Re: Random question / devil's advocate re: severe peanut allergies
Like I said I'm torn, but if it's truly that severe, I'm leaning toward extremely limiting time in public, particularly close-contact public settings like school.
Initially I'm thinking homeschool for education, and then try to organize a peanut-allergy playgroup for socialization purposes.
As far as beyond schooling, and adult life, I'm at a loss. I've known some people with life-threatening allergies (peanuts, tomatoes, & bees in particular), who had to be very careful, and led a careful and inconvenient life as it was, but nothing to this extent.
While the mouth wash requirement makes me kind of
, I don't think the hand-washing requirement is that out of line. Really, wouldn't it be good for the health of the students to do that anyway? Especially since the pre-class periods and lunch periods are often when students are going to the bathroom and outside playing in dirt. Schools are not that infrequently shut down due to a flu bug sweeping through. I've even heard of an epidemic of pink eye shutting down a school. An EASY method of prevention to take is asking students to wash their hands before coming into the classroom.
I do wonder about the mouth-washing requirement: (a) what is going on in that room that the girl has to be THAT worried about being exposed to another student's saliva?; (b) are there a lot of spit-talkers there?; (c) are they requiring use of actual mouthwash or just using water? (d) if they're using mouthwash, who is paying for it? I think it would better serve the girl to teach her not to let people invade her personal space, stay a comfortable distance from classmates while talking to them, and use her own supplies ONLY (as in, no borrowing a pen). With school budgets being beyond constricted anyway, I'd object to the school spending money for however many students to use mouthwash twice a day because of one person.
If the allergy is that severe so as to worry about another persons saliva in normal conversation activities, I'll honestly say I'd homeschool until the child was old enough to respect/defend her own boundaries - and watch out for herself. The rest of the world will not be peanut free - and people in stairwells at work, coffee machines, college classrooms are not going to play by childhood rules on her behalf. So venturing forth without the rest of the world stepping aside has to happen at some point - but not when she's 7. As a parent, at least THIS parent with THIS outraged school - no way in heck my kid would be there. Not with her allergy being advertised. I'd be afraid some malicious person would think it would be "funny" to see what would happen or try to test the allergy boundaries just to see if it was really that bad. And then my kid is dead or in the hospital. Team Homeschool.
You don't spend much time with kids, do you.
This, pretty much. The bottom line is that schools are not allowed to force parents to homeschool a child, and many families need both parents working, so homeschooling isn't always an option. School districts are required to provide an education unless the parents choose otherwise.
From what I've read, it really doesn't sound that bad. The kids have to rinse their mouths and wash their hands twice a day. That's not going to hurt anyone or even take up that much time, and they're learning to accommodate others who have medical conditions that are out of their control. I'm not sure what the peanut-sniffing dogs were going to do, if such a trace amount could be deadly to the girl - don't tell me that dogs are going to find the kid with peanut butter breath.
Food allergies are such a big deal in schools nowadays - I visit a few elementary schools, and ALL of them have warnings about bringing food in, and I know of one that has signs by classroom doors warning that there is a child with a food allergy.
I'm sure some people will flame me for this, but I think this school is taking things too far. I don't think that 500 families should be forced to drastically alter their daily life to accommodate one child. I would say the same thing if it were my child (granted, I don't currently have children, but I hope I would keep the same attitude if I should have a child with severe allergies).
Allergies do not constitute disabilities (courts have ruled on this), so the school is actually not required to make accommodations. And if her allergy is as severe as reported, then these steps can only help so much. What if a kid eats peanut butter at home with breakfast and wipes his hands on his shirt, then goes to school and leans across a desk, leaving peanut butter residue behind? What if a teacher ate a peanut butter cookie the previous day and got a piece caught between her teeth; she could end up coughing that peanut fragment into the air the next day. There's no way to keep every fragment out of the building, and I see this ending in lawsuits if the girl were to have a reaction.
It's a horrible situation for the parents and the child, but if they're truly putting the girl's health first, then she simply cannot be put into close-contact situations like this, at least not until she's old enough to monitor her surroundings carefully (and of course carry & use an epi-pen).
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Courts have actually ruled both ways re: whether a food allergy is a disability, so there's not a clear rule on that.
Just like with any other disability, I don't think it's unreasonable to ask the school and other children to make some accommodations to allow that child to attend a public school. The idea that it is not fair to force 500 families to "drastically alter their daily life to accommodate one child" is precisely the backwards thinking that required the ADA to be enacted. That little girl has a right to a public school education just like anyone else.
I saw one once at the zoo, behind glass. It was sucking on a juice box and looking warily at the humans passing by it. If it hadn't been for that I would have considered them mythical.
For someone without kids, I spend a fair bit of time with a pair of 3-yr olds that seem to understand spitting, biting and licking aren't acceptable. I'd assume a group of 7-yr olds would have that concept down unless they were purposefully doing something they knew to be wrong.
This exactly!
Married 08/08/08
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I guess my take on this is, unless you have a child with food allergies, it's impossible to say what you would do. It's easy to say what you think you would do, but unless you've walked in those shoes, it's unrealistic to try to imagine what life like that is like.
My son has several food allergies, and I'll be honest, before this happened to us, I was really ignorant about some of the things that families affected by allergies encounter.
I'd venture to say the family is trying to give their child as normal a life as possible. I'd want to do the same thing, as much as I reasonably could.
Tyler Anthony arrived on 9.21.09
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I'd like to see how your opinion on this would change if your kid was subject to only being able to eat a handful of foods and prescription formula was his/her main source of nutrition for years.