Food challenge - how to talk to ds about it

[heliotrope]

Hi,
DS (4) has cooked egg challenge coming up, after he appeared to tolerate a yorkshire pudding that he accidentally had. He is not keen at all on the concept of deliberately eating something that has previously made him sick and I am not sure how to approach this to convince him to go to hosp and participate!
He's pretty stubborn and if he deciees not to play i think it is going to be a waste of time going, espeically as I know how expensive they are for NHS.
Any advice from those that have been through it? We've been once before for milk challenge at 2 years but he failed that with only a drop in the mouth and I don't think he remembers it at all.

Thanks!

This is a difficult one. DS had wheat challenge when he was 3 and we explained to him that we wanted to know if he was still allergic to wheat because he might not be anymore and it would be really good if he could eat it again. He was very wary and very confused. He kept saying 'but I can't eat bread mummy' and I did find it difficult as I didn't want to undo all the hard work we'd put in with him making sure he never ate anything he wasn't supposed to. It did take a lot of encouragement on the day and I think bribery is probably a useful tool in this situation! Maybe promise your DS a gift if he co-operates during the challenge? I would also recommend taking lots of toys etc because it can be a very long process (and food/snacks/drinks for you). Good luck.

I bribed ds with a present if he participated , worked a treat.I didn't give him a choice though , presented it as something he had to do and he would get a reward for doing it.

Toys , games , playstation etc all were available on the ward for ds
ds had cooked egg challenge at age 3 or 4 can't quite remember

he had to eat a cupcake , very gradually
he ended up feeling sick by the time he had finished it but no other symptoms so has carried on having cooked egg ever since

they'll be used to children that age and have a play nurse to distract/bribe etc

ds has had 2 more food challenges since at age 8 and he enjoyed doing them..so it does get easier

he is not however looking forward to doing a test when he's 11 to teach him what the signs of anaphylaxis are by feeding him the allergen..eeek

Maybe find a list of food that he'd like to eat but can't and say it's possible he might be able to eat "ordinary" cakes/biscuits if he gets through the challenge. You could also point out the fact that they don't let you do a challenge unless they think there's a reasonable chance you'll pass it (waste of money and time for them and potential reaction for your DS).

We didn't have a problem with DD (failed an egg challenge early on at just under 2 then passed a year later). I thought she would have bad memories of the failed challenge but, although she did remember doing it, she was still ok participating.

We started our challenge this time with baked egg, then moved on to cooked egg because we'd failed the previous year, so the first part was eating cupcake (not exactly a hardship) then we put the cooked egg powder in a soya pudding that she loves. I made sure we did some trial run cupcakes (using banana and vitalite instead of egg and milk) before we went and got her involved with making them so it wasn't an "alien" food. The soya pudding she's had loads of so I wasn't worried that she would reject it.

We found the toys and dvd players there helped keep her occupied because it is a long day.

Just an update after your helpful advice - ds was really great and brave after we'd talked about it as an experiment and we were going to find out whether he could eat cooked egg or would still be allergic and he would be able to tell his teacher when he went back to school tomorrow (he's in reception). For some reason he was really interested in being able to report back to his teacher!
Sadly he failed the challenge as was sick so not such a great experience for him, its disappointing as had begun to hope about expanding his options but it isn't to be, not yet anyway. Luckily after 4.5 years of this we are experts in egg-free baking etc.

Sorry it don't go as you'd hoped. I know how rubbish that feels but at least you know now that there is definitely a point to avoiding egg and DS obviously handled it well. Maybe next time eh?