Nightmare lunch box type ban at school

[lunchme]

DS is 7 and attends a special school.

They have a new pupil coming in and the new list of banned foods are things containing -

Peanuts
Cashews
Sesame
Milk
Wheat
Barley
Almond
Pork

They announced this on our class up this afternoon and no further instruction! But they insist on DS having packed lunch and not school dinners since he likes lunches better because he's seen other kids having crisps etc

My DS has an allergy of sesame and his other classmate was peanuts. The other allergies are all from one child

This isn't to slag off a poor child. I just wish they'd give more notice than a Thursday afternoon

Gluten free bread bounces in roughly the same way that a full nine yard skip does.

Thing is, though, it's one meal, not all meals that they are being asked to not potentially kill somebody else's child over. They can have all the allergens in the world for breakfast, dinner and supper. Do children at specialist education provision eat better than children who aren't? In the mainstream education sector, the vast majority of children eat the bare minimum (ie, the smallest and/or least healthy bits) of their lunch before saying 'I'm finished' in the hope that they get more time doing something more interesting for the rest of their break.

That's such a tough restriction list for a sn school. Best solution seems to be for those that can't adapt the lunch to sit with those eating school meals. When I was at school that restriction list would have meant no lunch for me

I was providing a response to a specific statement. I wasn't talking about what you feed your children nor was I casting judgement on you or your food choices for your children. You seem a bit triggered over what I feed my children and what my food experience with them is like.

Yes it would be hard. But I was responding to someone who said their child doesn't have additional needs. I would never tell someone who was a single parent, with a special needs child who had six hour meltdowns that their life wasn't hard. Of course not! That sounds very difficult.

I am curious where in my post you saw me say or imply that I feel single parents with special needs children aren't in a difficult position?

Did I say that?

@NeverDropYourMooncup are you meaning then that it doesn't matter if a significant amount of the children at this school then don't have a lunch mon-fri that's then OK?

Compared to dying of anaphylaxis, it's the lesser of the evils.

That's such a bizarre take

It isn't a workable solution, regardless of anyone's moral stance on the issue.

Not really. I have lots of foods that I can't eat and tend to rely upon a very limited set of things that have proven to be safe, including some of the allergens the child has in this scenario. If I were working in close proximity to somebody whom I could kill with a sneeze after eating my lunch or just by opening my lunchbox/the wrapping on an emergency snack bar and nothing else I could eat and was possible to have in their presence was available, I'd wait until I got home to eat. You know, because I don't want to have responsibility for ending somebody's life in a hugely traumatic way for them and everybody around them.

Well we clearly disagree u r suggesting the whole school all children don't eat for 7/8 could be more hours because of 1 child. The 1 child could eat completely separate from the rest of children and wouldn't be in close proximity. Most children in a special school use transport so their day starts earlier and can finish much later. So my daughter leaves at 8.30 and comes home 4.30 that is a long day for her not to eat! She also goes into meltdown when hungry , So yes it's bizarre to me.

What you feel comfortable doing is definitely the appropriate barometer for making decisions about primary aged special needs children.

No allergy specialist paediatrician would think this was a remotely reasonable approach.

If the child is that sensitive to airborne allergies then realistically you'd need to limit what the children and staff working with them had for breakfast too. If you're so worried that children eating separately/staggered times/cleaning tables/washing faces and hands isn't enough, then you'd have to ban people eating I'm the car in the way in and having to change their clothes in case they spilt a bit of cereal on their school jumper....

It's clearly bonkers to limit every single other person, adult and child, with absolutely definite detrimental impacts guaranteed for all of them, on the basis of something that sounds distinctly unlikely to happen.

Reasonable steps can be taken such as many suggested on this thread and a degree of risk found acceptable.

This child and family are highly unlikely to live a hermatically sealed existence in which they never mix with anyone who has ever eaten something on the banned list. Never gone on holiday/used public transport/been to a tourist attraction/eaten out etc. Even hospitals and day centres would not be able to subscribe to not having anything on the premises because one person is allergic to it. If the family genuinely do never go anywhere ever because of this, then clearly school is going to pose an unacceptable risk for them. I highly doubt that's true though.

I’m a bit at loss with that comment.
So for some (most?) of those SN children, there is no lunch.
I’m going to assume that quite a few if them hardly have breakfast either, like many of their non SN counter parts.
So that’s ONE meal a day.

If parents were withholding food for the whole day like this, they would be accused of neglect.
But somehow this is in this case 😵‍💫😵‍💫😵‍💫

This would be a difficult one. My son goes to a senior school. He leaves before 8am and doesn't return until nearly 5. He refuses to eat in morning because school introduced fun breakfast mornings but I can break his fast with milkshake and cereal bar. The o ly thing he would eat with that list provided would maybe be some carrots if I'm lucky. He has hypoglycaemia and If he doesn't regularly he could also die or at the least spend another week in icu as we have to do in the past. Sen children can often be a little bit more complicated then nt children

Sen school not senior

That's a really long list and some allergens that would be tricky to avoid in a packed lunch. Especially considering this is an SEN school so some children will be on special diets and restrictive on what they eat 😥Could the school perhaps not take the child with the severe allergies into a room to eat with a friend away from the majority of students?

I've definitely heard of meat but consuming, not being in a room with it. Also, why not any other meat? This sounds like a religious thing for it to only be pork, which is fine but I live in a Muslim Country and can still buy and eat pork without an issue at all

As has been said up thread, whilst it is rare, some people are genuinely allergic to pork.