mums going ga ga as nursery says no nuts/products

[thekidsrule]

hi,this isnt about me but happened at my sons nursery today and not sure if the parents ABU

as we collected are children a worker asked all parents NOT to include any nut products in their childs packed lunches as they now have a child with a nut allergy

Two of the parents went mad and were very rude to the worker about the ban

can see both sides but as my son dosent take in these products (peanut butter) etc it wont effect me and is probably why i cant make an opinion on this

so do you think the two parents who object to the ban are BU

I think that not allowing nuts or nut products into schools is fine. Happy with that as a general rule.
However I have come across someone whose child could only take in packets that had the line "Suitable for nut allergy sufferers". So they sent their child in with an apple and were told it was unacceptable because it didn't state that.
I think there has to be a bit of give and take on both sides. I once was leaving dd1 at a creche for a morning and they asked you to provide a drink and snack (nut free). When I turned up they asked everyone to remove all drinks and snacks because they had an allergy sufferer. So no child was allowed any food or drink at all for quite a long morning (several independent rooms in the building and it applied to them all including some babies of under a year). Seemed to be a little OTT. I would have been fine with them listing a small number of things you could send, or they could have provided a snack suitable for all, or had a separate room that was only used for snacks.

The thing that worries me about a ban, is that the staff might be complacent. It is important that ALL staff understand the symptoms of anaphalactic shock and know what to do, and where the epipen is kept.
I would also like to know, if a child who has not previously had a reaction were to go into anaphalactic shock, would it be appropriate to use someone else's epipen?

DS1 has asd and struggles to eat, I was still happy to find an alternative to his epanut butter sarnies when a child with an alergy moved into school (for a while that emant taking him home)

its standard at my sons school anad the nursery that no nuts or food that might have nuts in are allowed. Why would you want to risk the health or even the life of another child? little ones always share/steal each others food

Personally I think most of you are bonkers. This is a classic case of throwing the baby out with the bath water.

The daughter of one of my good friends has a nut allergy. We take care to make sure the food we make for her is nut free but what we dont do is change the entire diet of everyone else. The tail does not wag the dog.

Now I must say my friend and her husband have decided to go nut free but that's a decision they made based on solidarity with their daughter rather than on safety grounds.

Banning an entire nursery/school because a couple of kids have an allergy is frankly overreacting. Common sense dictates the sensible solution is to use good hygiene and precautions to ensure food is not cross contaminated.

I await a flurry of mums now saying I'm an unsympathetic barsteward and won't someone please think of the childrennnnnnnn.

niceguy2 - I'm a Dad and you're an unsympathetic barsteward

Our daughter has many allergies and for us, whilst she's young, a ban on the most common and severe foodstuffs is welcome. It helps to reduce the risk of the nursery worker having to stab her in the leg with an epipen and her having a trip to hospital.

"Our daughter has many allergies and for us, whilst she's young, a ban on the most common and severe foodstuffs is welcome. It helps to reduce the risk of the nursery worker having to stab her in the leg with an epipen and her having a trip to hospital."

Sanity at last!

We're not in the NZ school system yet, only pre-school, but I've not noticed nut or other food bans here in schools. I also don't remember them when I was at school in the UK - I definitely took nut butter sandwiches to school. Are blanket bans a very recent thing?

I agree with the anaphylaxis campaign, bans are not the answer. Babybarrister's post set out the reasons loud and clear. Everyone needs to learn good food hygiene and how to deal with a severe allergic reaction.

And at a practical level, children often have multiple allergies - for example, in a single school you have easily have children with nut, sesame, egg and dairy allergies. In that scenario, would you ban all those foods? The impact on a healthy diet for the other children would be huge, especially vegetarians or those with other allergies or otherwise limited diets.

This happened at my dn primary school too. My bil was told they should send their son to a "special school"..

He can go into shock if someone who has eaten nuts breaths on him it is that bad.

I find it unbelievable that someone would put someones life at risk so their child can eat peanut butter sandwiches at school....

Niceguy - I am definitely bonkers - that much is true. But I can see how someone who has a child with a severe nut allergy, who might go into severe anaphylactic shock if they touch a surface that previously had some nut-based product on it, might want all nut containing products banned from their child's nursery, or might feel safer if such a ban was in place.

How severe is your friend's dd's allergy? Is it as severe as the one nannyl describes at 09:52:30, where her friend died from touching a table that a snickers bar had previously been placed on? I suspect not, otherwise your friend's household would have gone nut-free purely on safety grounds, not just to show solidarity.

can any of you who think that the bans are a GOOD idea please answer my previous question

should the nursery and potential schools of my friend's child ban nuts, egg, milk and kiwi?

or is it only nut allergies that are worthy of bans?

ScroobiousPip DS1's school here in Oz does not have any banned foods, neither does DS2's creche.

In London though, there were two children with nut allergies (and one who also had an egg, milk and wheat allergy), but only nuts were banned.

There are no allergic kids in DS1's class, as they all take in birthday cakes and the question was asked and answered at the parent info evening.

Has the number of children having allergies changed in recent times? It seems less common now than it did a few years ago, I wonder what has changed?

ThisIs - I think there's a pragmatic balance to be struck here.

Banning nuts is (reasonably) achievable - many nurseries/schools already seem to manage it. Banning kiwis would be very easy indeed, so why not. Banning milk and eggs would probably be unrealistic.

Thisisyesterday - I think that schools should do their best to make the children as safe as they can. It is reasonable for them to ban something that can easily be left out of children's lunchboxes - ie nut products, kiwi fruit, but as it would be well-nigh impossible to exclude all products containing eggs or milk, it would be unreasonable of a school to ban these.

But if your friend's dc's school banned nuts and kiwi fruit, that would reduce the number of potential allergens in the child's environment, and that would be a good thing, wouldn't it?

so you can only safeguard chldren if it's "easy"

nice.

so all thje "but if your child might DIE from touching it then of course it should be banned" only applies if it's easy enough for people to leave out

good, glad we got that sorted

just to add, friend is fine with none of the substances being banned at all. her child takes his own lunch, he always sits at the same table which is cleaned immediately prior to him sitting down, and a supervisor sits at the table with him and his friends to ensure he doesn't take/touch anything he shouldn't;

works remarkably well and means that no-one else has to have stuff banned from their lunch.

Thisisyesterday - it would be well-nigh impossible for a school to exclude some foodstuffs, so banning them would be far too difficult. That is very different from saying that 'you can only safeguard children if it is easy'.

Do you not take my point that excluding some of the allergens that threaten your friend's dc would, at least, make the environment somewhat safer for them, and that would be a good thing??

I wondered at that too, Morloth. Reading this thread, it does sound like there's been a massive change of some sort in the UK in recent years - difficult to know if it is an increase in allergies or a change in the way they are treated by schools.

Grimma - Nut bans aren't that easy though, unless it's just a ban on whole nuts. There are often nut oils or traces of nuts in lots of unexpected products. And up the thread, one poster even talked about a ban on eating nuts at home before coming to school.

no... because the world is full of potentially harmful things- it makes no difference if his nursery is free of one or 2 of the things, esp as it cannot be fully enforced.

my friend's child is learning at a very early age not to ever touch any food, or eat anything that hasn't been checked by her first.

my own son has multiple intolerances and his nursery are happy to cater for him.. he has hot vegan meals. if they can make it for him they could make it for all the children and voila... no egg or milk!
so it wouldn't be impossible at all... it would just be harder and more effort

as I said, my friend is happy to send her son to a nursery that does not ban ANY of the things he is allergic too. that says a lot to me

Surely it would make some difference, thisisyesterday - even if it wouldn't make a big difference?

What I meant by the 'easy' was that the case of kiwi is a no-brainer - that I can't see any possible objection to banning them.

Nuts seem problematic to some people - but it is doable, so whyever not do it.

Personally, if DD had a schoolmate with a life-threatening milk and egg allergy I'd be insisting she took ham sandwiches rather than cheese - I just doubt that in practise you'd be able to enforce that on a whole school.

I think a nut ban at nursery age is reasonable. It becomes less reasonable and/or necessary as they grow older though, unless there is a child with an extreme sensitivity to even the prescence of nuts in the room.

Properly explained, I would have no problems with bans of certain food stuffs.

As I said in an earlier post, its not an either/or between banning some foods and vigilence. The bans reduce (not eliminate) the probability of accidental exposure.

Erm why would a nursery have children sending packed lunches in? Don't they provide all the food for them?

Happy to be corrected on this...

Nope - fair point, Pootles.