Nut allergic 5 yo - starting to ask questions/be unhappy

[Acekicker]

Any pearls of wisdom/advice/experiences from those of you with older kids and nut allergies.

Son is 5.5 and allergic to peanuts, hazelnuts and it looked at the last skin prick like walnuts/pecans were coming into the equation so we're 'nut free'.

He was diagnosed when he was just under 2 and has been pretty 'good' about it all until the last few weeks. At a party a couple of weeks ago I had lots of questions as the party bag had a lolly in with no ingredients and I said we'd swap it from the swap box when we got home. All the way home I had variations on 'but I could eat it and if it had nuts in we could just go to the docs', 'how do you know I'm allergic to nuts' etc...

Then yesterday I picked him up from school clearly in a sad/grumpy mood - I asked what the problem was and apparently a mum had baked an 'England Cake' for World Cup and 'everyone got some except me, I hate being allergic to nuts, it's not fair, why am a I allergic to nuts, I hate the pricky thing at the hospital etc etc' and full on heart-broken 5 year old sobbing in the middle of the street...

I guess this is a normal 'phase' for this kind of thing - I'm just wondering how you handle it and any tips etc. My biggest fear is that whilst he still doesn't have a proper 'handle' on the allergy and it's implications he could start being less cautious and one day he'll decide to just eat something... :-(

I nannied for a wee girl like this, I got her lots of books out the library and we chatted about it. Also I am allergic to kiwi fruit and she would bring that up alot - so I guess knowing other people had similar helped her.

They are right, it isn't fair and theres nothing you can do to fix it - thats hard. But letting them express how they feel about it and talking about it is probably oneof the best ways to ensure they don't go off and eat it.

What books did you get? That's definitely a good idea...Thank you!

The Anaphylaxis campaign have a DVD that I'm going to get, we're also going to watch Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs this weekend if I can get hold of it (think it's on PPV movies) - that has a peanut allergy as part of the plot and it shows the seriousness of the reaction - I remember when we saw it DS commenting on the character being like him.

Ds1 (4) is still quite accepting of his peanut allergy so I haven't reached this stage as a parent yet. However, I had various food and other allergies as a child and my parents had a good line in sympathetic but matter of fact: it wasn't nice, it wasn't fair but then life wasn't fair and most people had something 'different' about them. There was also a general family line of 'being grateful for what you did have rather than worrying about what you didn't' (tho this was not dished out when I was crying cause I couldn't have an ice cream like the other kids).

I intend to emulate this approach with ds1 as much as possible. My instinct is to prevent his allergy ever affecting his life and massively overcompensating when this is not possible, but I know this won't help him in the long run. It is hard though.

Sorry, should read

....and massively overcompensating when it does......

Oh it's a tough stage! There is no easy way here other than a miserable life lesson.
We've had some great help here:

• the school gave DS (aged 6) a 'bravery award' and he was taken to show every class how brave he'd been after a (pretty traumatic) reaction. Once he'd left each class, each teacher talked to the class about how to get help if they see DS in trouble. So doubly useful - DS felt a star and the school learnt how to help him.
• we keep an amazing bag of treats in school - they have to be WAY better than what might be handed out - haribo, enormous spider jelly sweets, kit-kats - the teachers judge what DS needs to have to save face and to make him feel at least equal to the other kids.

And finally I just try to make it up to him - tough gig though ... feel for you!

Sorry - been very busy, thanks for all this stuff, it's all very useful. Will definitely be making sure the swap bag of treats is amazing next term at school.

Am also busy ordering books online for ds to read...