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

@lunchme

What a nightmare, my DD is in a special school and she has packed lunch as likes the same thing everyday.

Her thing she will always eat is cocktail sausages and yoghurts so I would not be able to comply with their lists.

My DD'S school I don't think would send anything like this out without proper information. We have never had any restrictions on lunchboxes.

I think you need to have a chat with the head, but I am sure if it is like my DD'S school they will already have had lots of parents contact them.

People can be allergic to almost everything

Why can’t the child with severe allergies have their lunch separately and then the majority can eat whatever they want.

I hate all this pandering to a minority.

Bans should only be in place if the allergen causes an anaphylaxis reaction. Whilst it can happen I'd be surprised if milk, bread and pork were airborne anaphylaxis!

How do they cope in the supermarket?

Wait, so your child's needs are more important than the other child? Nope, doesn't work that way.

It's not about being more important though it's about making it work for everyone. If there are 10 kids having packed lunch of which 9 now cannot eat their normal food which is often very restricted to start with in children who attend specialist schools then the solution isn't to let those 9 children go hungry.

So you’d be perfectly ok if they isolated your child?

Are they saying that the new child allergic to pork, milk, barley and wheat to the extent that no one can consume these things near them? Like a severe nut allergy?

Is this really about supervision and them not being able to stop one child trying something from another child's food?

So you’d be perfectly ok if they isolated your child?

If it meant keeping my child safe then yes. Eating dinner with one chosen friend who can eat a lunch free of these things or the child eating by themselves with their support staff is a much more reasonable adjustment.

The child's allergies are clearly not that severe if those eating school dinner can eat the allergens.

I would like to see a medical evidence that child is allergic to PORK. Common sense - I could easily adapt to gluten free or diary free. Nuts too. But meat? That's insane. I'm 100% it's religious. You can't force other people to believe in your god! Crazy.
Maybe they should go to private (religious) school?

Surely it must be an error, they've put the list of things the specific child can't eat instead of the list of things they want everyone to avoid.

If they remotely stick to it, I think you just need to insist that your DS needs to be on school lunches. I wouldn't know where to start finding packed lunch foods without any of those. Let the school caterers do it, it's their job.

Of course! If they had a severe allergy I would want them kept safe!

Pork will be for religious reasons, not because of an allergy.

Surely you can manage to pull a packed lunch together for Friday without those ingredients and then get to the shops at the weekend.

I have a lot of allergies, I carry two Epi-Pens (Cashews, pistachios, milk/dairy, rye, pineapple, kiwi, latex and bee/wasp stings). As a child, it took a long time to figure out what all my allergies were, so the mitigations my school put in was I would eat my lunch at the teachers table and everyone would wash their hands after lunch before going out to play. I would ask for similar if my DC had similar allergies, it's completely un-workable to ask everyone else to adhere to my restricted diet. Even more so if they have additional needs which ultimately may limit their diet further! Have a chat with the governors/school nurse. Nuts and common allergies, yes. It's standard everywhere, but the rest is too restrictive and expensive to maintain.

I should add I was allowed to bring a friend with me each day to the table, and they just supervised that there was no cross contamination between us!

The OPs child eats a restricted diet. Restricting them further with this list will most likely mean a significant amount of the food they are happy to eat is now off limits.

That list seems totally unsustainable. I’d ask what the actual fuck they propose you give him. Or insist they let him have school lunches. Will those adhere to that insane list?

Is the kid so severely allergic that even in the presence of bread they’ll go into anaphylaxis?

It hardly seems right but that kid would need to be isolated surely, to protect them?

God these threads really bring the nasty viscous side out of people don't they.

Also pork. Not an allergy. I’d ask for a clearer breakdown of what is on that list.

Go to vegan restaurants I suppose.

Pork is an easy one to avoid. The others, not so much.

The no wheat and no milk makes it extremely hard. Even as someone who is wheat and dairy free….

One of my dc had a child in their class who was allergic to many things, more than those on the op's list. The school never sent out any sort of instructions or restrictions for packed lunches list. The child ate their packed lunch in a separate room, with one friend (usually a different one each time).

@Scalottia Another person who either didn't see that's a special school or doesn't understand anything AT ALL about children with autism! 🤦🏼‍♀️

No milk, or no dairy products at all? Literally I don't know what I would have sent with DC. DC had exact same lunches daily, ham sandwiches mostly, some cheese strings or BabyBels. They refused variety.

2 DC ate a lot of fruit, but not the others.

Crisps & Crisps & more crisps it would be , I guess.

I think it will be extremely hard to balance those requirements and the specific needs of the other children.
What is your child only eats ham sandwiches? Or Nutella sandwich as one of my dc classmates?

@lunchme is adhering to that list even manageable for your dc?