Man, this board is dead lately. Here is a possibly flammable vent to liven things up.
DS is allergic to milk. It is not a life-threatening allergy, but it causes him really unpleasant digestive issues. We have a group of several friends that we hang out with very frequently. They all know about DS's allergy. I know that they all know because we are always talking dinner plans and trying to figure out things to eat that will fit our dietary restrictions (most of you probably know this, but in addition to the dairy issue, DD and H are vegetarians).
Last night we went to a big group event at a restaurant. Our friends were all there, and brought valentines to pass out. Two of the families gave DS (as in gave him directly, into his hand) valentines containing candy that he obviously cannot eat (milk chocolate).
If it were me, I would have made it a point to figure out what kind of candy he would be able to eat and passed that out instead, but maybe that is not what most people would do?
At the very least I feel like they should have given the stuff to us to give him so that we could at least take the offending candy out of the bag before giving it to him (one was in a bag with some other stuff, the other one was a heart-shaped box thing containing only candy). As it was, I had to grab a Hershey's kiss out of his hand as he was about to put it in his mouth.
Am I being unreasonable to be really irritated by this?
Re: Would this irk you?
Yeah, I see your point. My neighbor's son has allergies and cannot have regular candies or food. I make it a point to get him the specific fruit snacks, animal crackers, popsicles etc. that he can have whenever I make them treat bags over the holidays. (we all exchange things for the kids for valentines, easter, christmas, etc). I would be really upset if I gave him something that I knew he couldn't have, because that ruins the point of doing something exciting for him.
So yes, I'd be annoyed. I'd feel bad that your DS had to miss out on his candy treat while the other kids were scarfing theirs in front of him.
Yes, it would irk me but I would get over it pretty quickly. I tend to be relatively thoughtful about things like that - going out of my way to accomodate others in situations like that - but most don't.
I am sorry, that is rude.
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This is pretty much what I was going to say.
Ditto. I wouldn't have correlated a milk allergy with not being able to eat chocolate. Chocolate is just a popular candy to give for holidays; I probably wouldn't have thought twice before giving it.
I'm sure, as was already pointed out, that they didn't think about it (remember when I thought I had made something allergy safe that he could eat because the recipe had no milk or flour, except oops, it had chocolate chips in it?).
That said, I am somewhat annoyed when anyone gives my kid something to eat without checking with me first (and mine isn't even for an allergy, I just don't want him eating sugar because I don't want to drop another 2 grand on his dental work this year).
He can have some kinds of chocolate (though not very many - I'm curious about what kinds of chocolate your student is eating), but I figured since both things were milk chocolate, they would have realized they had milk in them. I also expected them to be more aware of it and to at least check the label since we do spend so much time with them and the topic of what he can eat and what he can't comes up a lot. Like a couple of you said, though, I was more irritated that they gave the stuff directly to him without asking me if it was OK first.
I think maybe I have been spoiled by other friends who have gone above and beyond to accommodate him and make sure he gets treats that he can eat. We went to a birthday party where the hostess made a dairy free cake in addition to the regular birthday cake so that he would be able to have cake too.