to challenge the schools nuts ban

[pigglewiggle]

The school has a strict no nuts policy. Apparently this is because someone in a higher year has a peanut allergy. I can understand banning peanuts if the allergy is severe but peanuts are very different to normal proper nuts and reactions to these are not to my knowledge anywhere near as bad as peanuts. It just makes lunch quite difficult as we are vegan and would love to pop something like a nakd bar in lunchboxes.

Aibu to go to the school and at least establish if a total ban on nuts is needed / necessary?

My sisters nut allergy is such that she can react to them being eaten in the same room as her. Someone at her school ignored the ban and decided to eat a snickers in class in secret - the teacher found out when my sisters eyes started swelling and she started an asthma attack.

I don't actually think any product should be banned outright in general unless there is a pupil for whom just being in the vicinity of the product could cause problems.

Steady on Redhead

The world is full of nuts. Full of them.

The Anaphylactic Society has guidelines for how to handle it in schools that doesn't include banning any kind of nut from the school.

The fact is that lots of foods can be contaminated or have traces of nuts in them. If the ban is total as only a small amount can harm, why shouldn't any food with a "may include traces of nuts" warning banned too?

Severe allergies need to be managed. Since you can't ban the whole world from eating nuts, eggs, milk, soya etc, banning nuts in one place seems pointless.

Surely it's better to properly train the schools and children to deal with what may happen - as they would need to elsewhere as you can't stop every nut.

My dc go to a school where only peanuts are banned.

I work in a school where all nuts are banned and the dinner ladies question dc if they're chocolate spread sandwich is chocolate spread or hazelnut spread and take the sandwiches away if the dc don't know! In this school there is a child with a peanut allergy but not other nuts.

readhead11 so does your child do nothing outside of school apart from sit at home where it's safe?

Some of the comments here are very harsh, pigglewiggle said that as fare as she understood the other child only had an allergy to peanuts. One of my DC has a peanut allergy but is not allergic to other nuts, so whilst allergies to other nuts, and lots of other things, can be severe if the child in question doesn't have them then the schools blanket ban seems ott. This may not be the case at all but I don't think there's any harm in wanting to know the rationale for any such bans. At no point was she saying that if a child at school did have a severe allergy would she flout a ban or that she's kick up a fuss at the school.

I'm really surprised that the anaphylactic society don't recommend nut bans in schools. Nut allergy isn't quite the same as other food allergies because nuts being in a room can cause severe reactions in the most severely allergic people. It's something to do with the nut particles being air borne which isn't something that happens in dairy and other allergies.
It isn't always about educating a child to not eat something with nuts because thy could be affected by a child across the room eating a bag of his favourite salted peanuts.

Apart from the wisdom or otherwise of imposing a total nut ban in a school at all, it might be worth checking whether the child in question has a nut allergy, a peanut allergy or both. I'd be a bit miffed if I wasn't allowed to send in food containing eg almonds when the child for whose benefit the ban was imposed was happily eating them himself.

My child lives away from home, as an adult, and almost died 3 years ago as the result of being given a drug by a doctor that triggered such a severe reaction that she went into respiratory arrest. She was excluded from many things at school because the teachers were not willing to have her in after school activities and getting someone to agree to her to go on school trips was always an adventure.

I would ban the 'may contain nuts' get-out used on 99.9% of food packaging. If you have someone who is severely nut allergic, you cannot afford to take that chance - ever. So unless you have lived with someone who has such severe allergies (blood allergy load should be 200 - DD1's is 6000+ and climbing) you don't know what you are talking about. And i have to be honest and say that most medical people don't know anything about allergies either.

So those advocating but bans would all be happy banning dairy, would they? No, thought not. My dd is anaphylactic to dairy. Why is her life worth less than that of a nut allergic child?!?!

In fact, as people have pointed out, the anaphylaxis society doesn't advocate nut bans. How many people know that groundnut oil is peanut too, for eg? Bans create a false sense of security.

the devil is in the details - "as far as she knew".
For all she knows the child could have multiple allergies to different nuts, of which peanuts is the most commonly known.

The child in question does not have to reveal all the things he or she is allergic to in order to justify one parent wanting to provide nutty treats during school hours.

there is a reason that schools take the cautious approach with children due to the risks of cross contamination. Perhaps Redhead's daughter is now old enough to assess risks for herself and take the appropriate precautions, Keema? Clearly that sort of level of allergy is very stressful for any parent so you might have a little empathy for her position?

keema one friend used to go to quite extreme lengths to educate people around her - I was her epi pen buddy for 4 years at Uni, so got to hear a lot of it.

Despite her having told us all the story of a woman with brazil nut allergy neasrly being killed by her ex (he had eaten brazil nuts before going out for a meal with her. They slept together and his semen kicked off her allergy) her flat mate thought having brazil nuts in a bag would be fine... unfortunately brazil nut 'oil' travels and a bowl across a sportshall would set her off!

So some people have to be hyper vigilant... they tend to die otherwise.

My dcs have various allergies, ds1 in particular has a very severe allergy to eggs and cows milk and has to carry two epi pens, piriton etc.

At no point has it ever been recommended that school ban all egg/dairy despite him having had reactions sitting at a table where milk has previously been spilt and wiped up or on another occasion where a child eating egg say next to him and he was ill.

Like a pp said the anaphylaxis society don't recommended banning certain foods.

"Fgs Quiero "For your own safety"? Lol it's only a website, they're only words on a screen. I'm assuming no-one cares about this issue quite enough to hunt the op down and kneecap her for having a gripe about lunchbox options!"

It wasn't meant to be serious James, merely a reference to the ridiculous nature of how these threads go...but thank you for clarifying. I'll sleep better now.

Ist, actually my dd reacts to dairy in the room, her nursery class made pizza once and although ds didn't go near it or the other kids, she still needed a hefty dose of piriton and her inhaler. It did piss me off that they wouldnt allow peanuts on the premises, despite there being no peanut allergic child in her room, but happily chucked cheese around the room. But that is just the crazy situation where nut allergies are somehow seen as a case apart by lots of people. I've even had people say to me 'ah well, at least you can't die of dairy allergy'. Wtf?!

Gah, dd not ds, bloody autocorrect does this to me every time!!!

So those advocating but bans would all be happy banning dairy, would they?

No, because fairy doesn't have any airborne particles. I have a child who is allergic to wheat, dairy, nuts, eggs, shellfish and pollen. I am fortunate that the nut allergy is the least severe and my child is fine as long as he doesn't eat obvious nuts but I do sympathise with those whose children are affected by airborne particles of nuts (which is very rare). I don't know anybody who has ever had an allergic reaction due to being in the same room as a glass of milk.

Cross posted zoe. I believe that your child had a reaction to dairy being in the room But it is the first time I have heard of it when the child hasn't touched it or ingested it. The school should work out a good allergy management plan for your child.

And yes Katie I think you do have to reveal the things you are allergic to in order to justify them being banned in school. Is that really unreasonable? I've got no problem at all having my food choices restricted in order to safeguard anothe person's safety, but having my food choices restricted if nobody would be harmed by them would be ridiculous.

Soup -no, nobody bans dairy. Because th dairy lobby is too fucking powerful. One of my kids is severely allergic to dairy, as am I. We just have to get on with it.

I think there is so much misinformation about allergies and their degrees of seriousness, the example zoemaguire gives is a case in point, those staff were probably used to dealing with people who had dairy intolerance an so assumed it wasn't as severe. I think that unjustified or overly broad bans are counterproductive because people think they can flout them without serious consequences. It should be driven by medical need and if there is the potential for a life threatening reaction then and only then should a ban be introduced and that should include dairy if that is the allergen. So I do think it is important for the child in question to reveal all that she is allergic to and for this to be communicated to all the parents in the school (without naming the child obviously) to impress the seriousness of the consequences.

well, 20 years ago, the anaphylaxis society suggested that you should be feeding small amounts of the allergen every day - without medical supervision - to try and combat the allergy. I was told to avoid their advice at all cost. Let's hope times have changed, but i wouldn't trust them as far as i could throw them.

Actually, OP should really be praising her child's school. Our local council decided that dealing with a child with allergies was too hard and she should be banned. It saved them the costs of implementing the protocols that should have already been put in place. Fortunately, the school came in to bat for me, as did the school doctor, who at that time was the only doctor in the region where i lived that new anything at all about anaphylaxis, and freely admitted that i knew one hell of a lot more than her.

A ban is useful because people simply don't think - even adults. DD1's teacher took her to a farm and allowed her to pet lambs. She was astonished when DD1 broke out into huge hives and started wheezing. The teacher honestly thought that an allergy to wool had nothing to do with petting lambs. you have to wonder where that moron thought wool came from.

Zoe - my son is allergic to dairy also, but only on contact/ingested, not airborne. If it had have been airborne, I would have requested a ban. (Especially as his nursery messed up big time and gave him ice cream to eat one day......)

In response to 'they must deal with being in the outside world' comments - I believe a school environment is different. Children are learning how to cope with their allergies and sometime will forget. They need to learn about it in a safe environment, so that when they enter the 'big wide world' alone they are better equipped to take responsibility. Surely there are other life aspects too that are safer in a school environment?!

Thanks for the apology op!

My DD has a pecan and walnut allergy. For her even being in the same room where someone has recently had nuts is enough to make her react. She carries 2 epi-pens as she cycles through and requires a second after the first has worn off. She is at high risk of developing further allergies. She has had 2 near fatal reactions at the age of only 5.

The school would not and could not tell you this. It's her medical information and won't be passed on. A blanket ban is necessary to keep her alive. If she moved schools their blanket ban would keep her safe and stop her medical information from being known to others in the school. (if she moved and they didn't have one it would be clear she was the reason for it)

We have Vegan children in our school and they have never found the need to pop some nuts in their packed lunch. They have coped just fine with the ban without questioning it.

I suggest you get better at providing your preferred lunches of your children without endangering others.

The Vegan children in our school have the best lunches by far. The mums tend to make extra at dinner and send that for lunch the next day in heat proof boxes. Seems to work well.

"I can't understand why the hell anyone would WANT to be a bloody vegan? Sorry. It's so restrictive."

Really? You are so lacking in imagination that you can't understand that some people care enormously about the suffering of animals in the meat and dairy industry and don't want to contribute to that? Is that really such a mind-bogglingly difficult concept?