Mom Demands School Go Peanut-Free For Allergic Child

[Xithras]

164. My youngest son has a severe (contact) peanut allergy.

We've never asked the school to ban peanuts and wouldn't do so. My son is acutely aware of the dangers of coming into contact with peanut products, as are his teachers and school administrators. My son knows that he can't sit next to kids eating peanut butter, and the school makes every kid wash their hands after lunch before they can go play on the playground. He carries an epipen in his backpack, and his school nurse, his teachers, and the yard duty teachers all know how to use them. That's all the accomodation we need.

He's never had an allergic reaction from another kid at school, and there is peanut butter everywhere. In fact, the only problem we've ever had was an incident where another kid thought it would be "funny" to smear peanut butter on my sons shirt, knowing that he had allergies. The school was initially only going to give him a short detention, but ended up upgrading it to a 10 day "major assault" suspension after I called and reamed the principal on the phone. That was the first and last time any kid tried that particular "joke".

If this kid can't manage his own space, and learn to recognize and respond to peanut dangers on his own, then he has no chance. My youngest could do it at FOUR years old. Hand him a muffin, and the first thing he would do is ask whether it contained any peanuts. The word peanut was one of his first, and at three and a half years old he could recognize it in an ingredients list. He never eats cookies where the ingredients aren't known. That's simply LIFE for a kid with a life-threatening allergy.