Milk incident

[Sparklystarx]

My DGD (4) was given milk today by school. They know that she is Lacoste intolerant and this can make her very poorly but she was given it and drank it. I think school didn’t take it serious and seemed to laugh it if as a joke and just an accident but it can be very bad for my DGD. What would you do?

Point out to the school that this is a serious safeguarding issue and ask them to demonstrate to her parents exactly what they are going to do to ensure there is no repetition.

No worries @YukoandHiro, I could tell you'd got the wrong person!

I would speak to the school and get the facts. They should take this extremely seriously.

My DS has various allergies and the school have been excellent so far. We all know that of course accidents happen, but the school should have safeguards in place to prevent this, as well as clear procedures as what is to happen if a child does come into contact with something they are allergic to.

Presumably your DGD didn’t have a severe reaction? Next time another child could. Or indeed your DGD could, as allergies can change. This is why it should always be taken so seriously.

Also, yes such a young child should be protected by adults at school, but she needs to learn to question what she is given. It’s possible (but still unacceptable) that a different teacher didn’t realise and accidentally handed her a milk, but if she is able to say “does this contain dairy (or whatever)?”, then that will also help keep her safe. My DS has also had it drummed into him never to share food with others.

I hope you get some answers

Shocking how ignorant some people are of allergies!

Doesn't matter if the child was I'll or not school should not have allowed it. Doesn't matter if it was another child's milk or not school should have prevented it.

I work in early years. Had a kid with a big long list of allergies I was sure were bullshit (seen the kid eating this stuff at village gate with parents). Does not matter. Parents said child can't have these foods so child didn't get those foods and no child near them could have those foods. Allergies can be fatal

I find it extremely hard to believe that any school would treat anything to do with children's dietary requirements as 'a joke'. I am also sure that they have clear procedures regarding the supply of any food or drink to the children in their care. If your DGD's caregivers have approached the school formally and notified them about this 'intolerance ' then it would have been extremely unlikely for this kind of oversight to have happened and it would definitely not be treated like a joke. I'm afraid I don't entirely believe your story as you have presented it here.

Honestly I would hit the roof because this is actually very serious. It might not seem serious if she has a gut reaction allergy not an ige allergy but it is because if their protocols are so poor around allergies like this then they could do this to a child with an ige allergy and kill them. School do not seem to be reacting in a way that shows they understand how serious an error this was.

My son has a cows milk allergy. School accidently gave him the wrong sandwhich once. I had a call with in minutes of it happened. They were so apologetic. They recorded it as incident and changed their whole protocol around how staff know about a child's allergies and fed all that back to me. I would expect a similar response from any school that had made this mistake.

I would be sending a written complaint into school that I would expect to be followed up and if I wasn't satisfied I would be writing that complaint to the school governors

I wounder how many children with non-ige allergies this women made poorly by doing this. This is awful.

She could have a non-ige allergy in which case reactions tend to happen between 24 and 72 hours after ingestion