Peanut Free
My Grace has a peanut allergy. So far, it really hasn’t been an issue, as avoiding peanuts, peanut oil and such has been easy. Now that she’s in school, it’s starting to suck.
Different parents sign up to supply the snack each day (the politics of snack is another post entirely). Since Grace is peanut-free, we have to supply some alternate snacks just in case the parents bring in something questionable. No problem. When I pick her up from school each afternoon, there’s a little sheet in her cubby that outlines what they did on that day. Included is what the kids ate for snack. Today it said “cupcakes.” “Ooh,” I said to Grace, “You had cupcakes in school today?” “[teacher’s name] said ‘No,’” she replied. “I just had my snack.”
Perhaps I’m just projecting my own feelings onto her, but I felt terrible. All of her classmates are enjoying some nice cupcakes while she sits there with the damn Teddy Grams for the upteenth time. I told the teacher that cupcakes are really fine, but she said that they can’t guarantee that homemade snacks weren’t prepared with peanuts/peanut oil, or on the same counter/with the same knife that had been in contact with peanut butter.
The fact is, I should be glad the teachers are so diligent. They just want to keep my kid safe, and I do honestly appreciate it. It also bums me out to think of Grace, 3 years old and already excluded in a way. F’n peanuts.
March 6th, 2007 at 1:11 pm
Poor thing! It’s a fine line between watching out for a child’s health and restricting them to cover the school’s rear end!
March 10th, 2007 at 8:34 am
[...] I think we are also very fortunate we don’t have food allergies in the house. With 5 kids eating all at once it would be tough to have 4 of them be able to eat peanut butter while one couldn’t. We have been very fortunate. [...]