My 10 year old daughter is allergic to peanuts and crustaceans and our goal has been to empower her so she is in control of any food situation even when we are not around. In the age of entitled kids, I wanted to make sure she owned this allergy and would have the responsibility and freedom to be on her own without my husband and I hovering to make sure she was safe. She carries her own Epi-pen, will diligently ask at any party what has peanuts and what doesn’t, and if she can’t read the food label herself will avoid eating that food unless it was made by someone that she can personally talk to.
We found out about her allergies when she was a year old and read books like Allie the Allergic Elephant so that from the very beginning she was aware what this meant. We want her to understand that the world does not revolve around her, people will eat things she is allergic to in her presence and she needs to know how to handle herself so she feels safe. She is not paranoid but she is in control; so much so that when she went to her first day of preschool she told the teacher she couldn’t have lobster for snack, which the teacher assured her they could comply with.
Since we had empowered her though, Halloween proved to be tricky because she was hyper aware of what had peanuts and what did not. When she was five and we were trick or treating, she was completely stressed out standing in front of every bowl, trying to remember what she could have and what she couldn’t and it was heartbreaking when her two-year-old sister (who doesn’t have allergies) ended up getting double the haul since she ran from place to place grabbing candy.
That next year I decided to change the game for my oldest daughter. A few days before Halloween, I took her to Walmart and told her to buy four packs of her favorite candy. I told her the name of the game was “volume” and that on Halloween her sole purpose was to get as much candy as she could. If she got something with peanuts, then we would go home to THE CANDY EXCHANGE and she could swap out all the peanut candies with her favorites. At the end of the night she bounded home to the exchange and was so excited because all the stuff she was allergic to was traded in for Kit Kats and Skittles. Her younger sister was disappointed she didn’t have allergies because she was stuck with things she didn’t like such as candy corns and didn’t have an excuse to exchange it. This simple exchange has reinforced our message that not everyone will (or should) change to accommodate your allergy, but there are ways to work around it so that you are in control of the situation.
We found out how much she had internalized this message last year when I told her about a special thing that people were doing to support kids with peanut allergies. If she saw a teal colored pumpkin, it meant that the house was peanut-free and she could take anything she wanted from their bowl. Instead of being excited though, she told me that it wasn’t fair because one of her closest friend’s favorite candy was Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and if everyone decided to do this, her friend would not be able to have her favorite candy. Although she appreciated people doing this for kids like her, it wasn’t her friend’s fault that she had the allergy so she hoped that not many would paint their pumpkins teal.
My daughter understands that her food allergy is a part of her; she finds it annoying, but she’s on top of it in a way that I really don’t worry about her when she’s not with me. For those parents who are just finding out about their kids having peanut allergies, here are a few things we did to empower her from an early age:
- Read allergy books as part of your nightly reading.
- Let your child carry their own epi-pen and safe snacks.
- Ask the school nurse to help educate your child’s class about food allergies.
- Talk to the school about how she can sit with all the kids and not be relegated to a nut-free table and discuss with her how to ensure her safety in that environment.
- Have her order lunch twice a week at the school cafeteria so that she is making her own choices in a relatively “safe” environment.
- Eat and order like you normally would and teach her how to be safe when others around her are eating things that she’s allergic to.
- Have your child order their own food at restaurants so they can tell the server about their food allergies.
- Leave a restaurant if you don’t think the server or kitchen understands the seriousness of the allergy and avoid cuisines where it’s challenging for her to be safe, like Thai Food where peanuts are everywhere.
- Teach them how to read food labels.
- Share news articles with your child (even ones where kids have sadly died) so they understands those situations and share it with family members to remind them as well.
Photo by Clem Onojeghuo
Vanessa Chan
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