To be laughing at this?

[Ilovecaindingle]

My ds12 has just started a new school and has his first science lesson today. We were catching up on his day and he said they had to do an experiment. The experiment was to heat a peanut up to a certain temp and record when it burnt etc. But due to school allergy advice they aren't allowed to use a peanut.

So he used a Wotsit instead!!
Now I am def not laughing regarding allergy advice obviously but what things do kids accept as normal now that didn't occur to us /happen when we went to school?

I don't understand how people can say they didn't go to school with anyone who had allergies or asthma, why would you know everyone's medical conditions? My sister has food allergies, non of her childhood friends realised until they were adults and started to cook for each other. I went to school with my husband, I didn't know he was asthmatic then.

I agree with oatsandraisens, I think quite a lot of anecdotes are based on faulty data; our perceptions as children of our peers. I bet if we ask children now if anyone in their class has 'special needs' they would not give a balanced and fully informative report, so why should we be able to 10/20/30/whatever years later?!

Allergies are definitely better diagnosed and treated now.
My mum was a teacher. I remember her coming home one day in the late 90s and telling me about a pupil with a nut allergy that was so severe they had banned nuts in school and were going to be trained to give emergency medicine (I assume an epipen). My mum was really quite anxious about it and this seemed to be the first serious allergy she'd encountered since training to teach in the 1960s.
I am now a teacher too and epipen training is routine at the start of every school year. We all know to sign out epipens for trips and to sign them back in as soon as we return to school and there of photos of the students who might need them in the staff room. It really has become a routine part of our jobs, although I still hope I never have to use one.

Just re-read my post and autocorrect changed epipens to pipes.

Clearly, autocorrect has much more fun than I do....

50 . I was allergic to pencilling and in later teens developed an allergy to cats. Thinking about it, the design of inhalers havent changed much over the years.

Notsure You could well be right, but if the parents, child with the allergy and the consultants' notes say no to chocolates with nuts in like Quality Streets, then I am not going to against their advice.
What I was trying to say, perhaps not clearly, was that those with genuine allergies react very differently around nuts to those who 'might' have one, if that makes sense.

I liked 'pipes'!

I also had a couple of parents phone up at school a few years ago concerned that their child was in a tutor group with a child with Down's Syndrome and another with cerebral palsy. They were questioning why their own child had been put in a bottom set. At the time I thought they were just ignorant but reading this has made me realise that when they were at school, those children would have been in the bottom set or remedial class. Incidentally the girl with cp went on to achieve amazing GCSE results which rather proved the point that she was not in any way "backwards" or "remedial"!

Rufus completely understand, and in your position you absolutely have to be 'by the book'. And completely agree that people behave very differently. I often found those that fuss the most are more the 'just-in-case-they're-allergic' types. Those with the more 'serious' reactions have to adapt quickly from a very young age, so tend to ultimately be more relaxed as a result of being confident about their abilities to make sensible choices (at least, that's what parents should be aiming for!). What lots of people don't realise is that when you have an allergy you can be so sensitive to it you can easily identify a risk by smell - certain foods just dot smell 'right'. But you need to be exposed to allergens to enable that skill to develop. Nut-free environments for kids with allergies today, have alway worried me as a nut-allergy sufferer, as it doesn't allow children to learn the things they need to about allergy management for the future.

'Pipes' made for much more enjoyable reading!

I completely agree notsure and rufus I think the thing is that everyone raises children with allergies slightly different.
I'm severely allergic to nuts, also carry two epipens and regularly have to pop piritons if there are chickpeas, lentils or pulses in anything I eat.
My parents always explained that if I eat them, I'd be really ill, but they never wanted to scare me by telling them I'd die (which was fine until I locked myself in a bathroom cubicle threatening to eat a snickers because "everyone else could eat them"). As a result, I've never had severe anxiety around my allergy.
A girl I met two years ago at uni had a much less severe allergy (not even any epipens- amateur!) and her parents had literally raised her to be terrified. She never ate in restaurants unless she looked in the kitchen, had never been abroad, never been on a plane, never even been to a Starbucks for gods sake, wouldn't eat or drink in cafes and never touched anything that said "may contain". That's literally no way to live, and it made me really sad for her.
Yes, it is terrifying to have something endanger you so constantly, to always be noticing what strangers around are eating and to rub food on your arms to triple check it's okay even if someone told you twice that it's nut free. And don't even get me started on planes and the dickheads who react like I've ruined their lives because they can't eat peanuts for an hour...

Also, my mum's a midwife, and she reckons it's a mixture of Caesarean section, premature babies and nipple creams etc that contained nuts that explains the rise in allergies. Also, the main reason people are more aware now is apparently because the head of the NHS's daughter died of anaphylactic shock in the 90s (she choked on her own tongue, I think...) and so he was a really big driving force in raising awareness.

If all these parents are making stuff up for financial gain, they are very very misguided. In fact I'd say they were incredibly stupid.

Disabilities and chronic illness have a proven effect on finances, and it ain't positive. It's significantly detrimental to both earning capacity and living expenses, and continues to be over a lifetime. Even taking into account any benefits or aid people might manage to get. The causal link to poverty is sadly not something that vanishes just because it doesn't fit with the ideology of the time.

(not even any epipens- amateur!)

Total imposter!! We laugh in the face of such faux-severity....

That's literally no way to live, and it made me really sad for her.

Absolutely this!!!! Glad to have found a fellow-sensible-nut-allergy-head ;)

I'm 47 never knew anyone with allergies or asthma I work with drs and they all say central heating food cleaning materials have contributed

I remember one lad (late 80's) who was labelled as 'thick' and often sent out of the room for messing about. He struggled with reading and writing and I think he developed a 'class clown' persona to deflect from his issues. I think I heard he was diagnosed as dyslexic much later on as a teen (In the 90's). I always used to feel sorry for him because he really did try hard and there was no support, the teachers just seemed to give up on him.

I don't remember anyone with allergies but there were several kids with inhalers. I work with teens now and we seem to have loads of allergies including things like fruit allergies which I'd not come across until recently.

Did I really just read that it benefits parents to make these illnesses up because they get more help/money??

We get NO HELP with my son and his severe eczema, it is a MASSIVE financial burden. The sleepsuits, the special mattress, the scratch gloves, the pure cotton eczema uniform, the creams, three trips to the hospital weekly for light treatment, the interrupted work shifts to pick him up from school because his skin has split AGAIN and he's in considerable pain!!! wtf ?

No, it does not benefit people to make it up. We are exhausted, skint, mentally drained and heartbroken AND I'd pay every penny I earn at work for him not to have it. We get no additional financial support.

I don't remember anyone having any allergies when I was at school (80s and 90s), though obviously there might have been some I didn't know about. A couple of people with asthma maybe.

I did have a test to see if I had coeliac disease when I was about 9, but fortunately I didn't have it.

Back in the 70s I had an allergic reaction to eating some nuts - swollen lips, eyelids and tongue. My mother told me to go to bed and I would be better in the morning. Guess I was just lucky. I even went to a GP a few weeks later and he said he didn't know what the problem was. I think we weren't well informed in those days! My father (born 1920) had very bad asthma all his life and there were certainly asthma sufferers at my school during the 70s. I remember one teacher telling off one sufferer because she was in the medical room instead of doing a test. She had had a particularly acute attack but no doctor or ambulance had been called. Medicine has advanced, as has the knowledge of the general public. Just as well.

I am 42 and looking back I realise that I never really drank any water? Also at school we were not alowed to drink in class at all - just at lunch time.

I was at school in the 1970s and 1980s - asthmatic, hay fever sufferer, covered in eczema.

You would have noticed me if you were at school with me - I was the one who shook (anyone had Ventolin syrup in the days before Ventolin inhalers became common? Horrible stuff, worked OK but made you shake), couldn't run in games and for several years was bandaged up for the day each morning before leaving for school, after that day's 'bath' in medicinal olive oil after removing the previous day's blood-encrusted.bandages

Tbh I think because treatment was much less good - Piriton for allergies, Ventiolin medicine for asthma (I eventually had a 'Spinhaler' which was some kind of preventative treatment with sodium chromoglycate, which revolutionised my life), greasy hydrocortisone and the aforementioned olive oil for eczema - there was no great push to diagnose it, and there was a lot more 'just living with a cough and a wheeze'. I missed a lot of school, particularly in the summer, because i couldn't breathe - but that would mean that classmates wouldn't have known that that was what asthma looked like IYSWIM?

My father had eczema as well, though asthma not so much - but in his case he was just told it was better than having polio like his dad so he should just get on with it...

I suppose what I'm saying is that it may well have been that children did cough and wheeze and get runny eyes and itchy skin - but that the diagnosis only happened at a much higher level, when it limited what you could do to a significant extent. My siblings have been diagnosed with eczema in adulthood, but weren't diagnosed as children because 'it's not that bad'.

"when I was at school (70s, early 80s) I can't remember anyone being asthmatic "

I had at least one asthmatic classmate in the 80s. She used to have hay fever as well, which I laughed as I loved the smell of freshly-cut grass. Guess who has hay fever now.

I find it difficult to keep up with PC nomenclature.

Oh fuck off. It's not about being 'PC', it's about not being a dick. Words are important, they inform how people are treated.

Why couldn't you just have said sorry, will remember for next time. Surely that's what any decent person would respond with. Makes me rage

Interesting thread. I'm 33 and asthmatic, but only diagnosed 5 years ago. Mine is cough variant, and I now realise I've always had it - some PE used to be torture (cross country running) even though I was quite fit. I guess people died more too. My dad had a cousin who died from an asthma attack :(

I think things are diagnosed a lot more now, and taken more seriously. I was also significantly deaf for most of my schooling and got sod all support.

My mum had several pupils with severe nut allergies, but there wasn't as much awareness.

"In the 70s, we certainly had children with adhd and asd in school, undiagnosed."

If they were undiagnosed you can't know what disorders/learning difficulties they had, can you?