Is your allergic child made to feel different at school?

[tatt]

A mum is colelcting information about the experience allergic children have at school. Although she has a nut allergic child herself she is happy to hear from anyone whose child has an allergy about their child's experience. This is her message

"Over the last few months I've been contacted by a number of people who are having problems with their child's school.

The Anaphylaxis Campaign are running a brilliant programme educating school nurses so that they are trained to deal with nut allergy and we will support them all we can with that. I'm interested in the 'pastoral' side and the way children are segregated and made to feel different - and the effect that must have on them.

If you have had any experiences like that, I would love to hear from you. Please email me at It's Nut Free (angela.russell at itsnutfree.com).

I am hoping that between us, we can make a difference,

Thanks
Angie "

Bumping for you.

I know someone who might be able to help

My DS is nut-allergic, and my DC's school has a blanket ban on nuts. I think a lot of them do! The pastoral side seems great - DS is certainly not made to feel like a weirdo...

I got totally f'd off with school, who said they could not give out soya instead of milk as the school had enough 'problem children' to deal with.

How ridiculous.

Slightly different but similar. My ds is hypoglycaemic so has to eat regulalry (every 2 hours). He also drinks goats' milk not cows' as cows' gives him rhinitus / eczema.

His first school were completely useless at ensuring he ate regualarly - were always 'forgetting' and then saying it was too much trouble to remind a 4 year old to have a snack at 2pm!

His current school is fantastic, not only with ds but other similar children. He is not made to feel different but the class are encouraged to be aware of the issue and help as necesary. He has a seperate place in the classroom for his snacks (and fruit juice which he has in the morning when the others have milk as you cannot get small boxes of goats milk) and is getting much better at being independent but the teacher always remembers to make sure.

sorry to hijack but CARBONEL, can you explain what the symptoms your son has are?

WE have been worried about DD for some time. She is already coeliac so we are on the look out for diabetes too, she SEEMS to us to need to be constantly snacking on crackers (even overnight)and stuff to avoid feeling sick and feverish/shivery, to me it appears to be a low blood sugar thing, like I had when pg - we don't know what it is - she has had regualr bloods and nothing has shown up

Hi loobylou

Ds always needed to eat little and often but we really noticed a significant difference when hewas in nursery and doing lots of exercise fo 'Sports Day'. He would be really pale and extremely stroppy if not eating reguallry (which nursery struggled with); once he was given sugar his behavious changed instantly.

We had him tested - he wore a sensor for the weekend and we had to take regualr blood sugar readings to enter into it.

It transpired that whilst he is not diabetic, his blood sugar does drop too low (lowest should be 4mmol his goes to 2) before the adrenalin etc kicks in the level it off . Now we know for sure it is easier but it is still tricky to monitor - is always worst in theSpring or when running around a lot, or growing!

We saw Dr Stephen Rose in Solihull if that is anywhere near you - he was great.

HTH

I never had a problem and neither primary or secondary have a nut ban. The anaphylaxis campaign do not advise blanket bans in school anyway.

Hmm, thanks carbonel, might go back to the GP then, all we have had when we have described her symptoms is blank looks (though when she was vomitting regularly during the night they did do several food allergy/intol tests again), but the dr's best guess was the nausea (esp overnight -She will wake up shaking, sweating and nauseous) was caused either by over heating or by an acid reflux, we discovered for ourselves that eating when she was nauseous actually HELPED. This is what makes me think it could be a blood sugar issue. We have always known that when she was stroppy a sweet drink was an immediate remedy, totally different within minutes!