To insist on sending gluten free flour for DS's food tech lesson

[listsandbudgets]

DS is gluten intolerant. We've just had an email from school asking us to send ingredients for bread and also scones - fair enough not too complicated. However the email goes on to say that it's so they can look at the affect of gluten in cooking

I've emailed back saying that as DS can't have gluten I'll send the closest gluten free equivalents I can find so DS can at least participate and almost immediately got a response saying that it had to be gluten because that was the point of the lesson.

AIBU to insist? It seems very unfair to make him cook something he can not eat. I'm considering emailing back telling them that having a gluten free version will help illustrate the differences and actually enhance the lesson (but I don't want to be THAT MOTHER!!)

As a parent of a dc with refractory coeliac disease I'd be asking about the risk assessment they have in place for this. I would want to know my dc would not ingest anything and if safe would accept. If it was for educational purposes id be OK (but concerned), if any part of it was about eating I'd ask how my dc could be part of this. I've always accepted dc can't have school designed around them however there are times when teachers can/and have used the difference to the benefit of the whole class and if this is to look at gluten this would be a good teaching opportunity surely?

I think you need to go to the doctor and ask for him to be tested for coeliacs - if he is truly gluten intolerant than its more than he can eat it but suffers the consequences. I have diagnosed ceoliacs and I could eat a whole loaf of wheat bread and would not have any symptoms like your son has. I don't eat any gluten (wheat, rye, barley etc) because the long-term effect of doing so is autoimmune issues as well as an increased risk of cancer.
He might actually also be allergic to gluten rather than gluten intolerant so that would be helpful to know.

well DSs cookery teacher has come up with a brilliant suggestion. He's going to use the store cupboard fund (.which parents pay a small sum for at the start of every year) to buy GF flour and normal and then he's going give half the class GF and half normal and not tell them who's got what .. he thinks it will illustrate the role of gluten very well ( Obviously he will ensure DS gets the right flour)

actually very impressed and glad i didn't press the issue or insist.

think someone asked which year. it's year 7.

I think that's a brilliant solution and a good way to raise knowledge and awareness of dietary needs and allergies which should be integral to any cooking course now

Great solution!

Excellent suggestion by the teacher. Doesn't isolate your son and gives everyone a chance to participate equally- great compromise. 🌹

As his won’t have gluten you can therefore see the effect of having gluten against not having gluten therefore highlighting the aspects even more. Ta da!

This

This

How many children are there in these classes? Because I'm curious to see how many parents think classes should be individually tailored for each child.

If OP's son would be adversely affected by working gluten maybe he should be exempted

If he’s gluten intolerant I wouldn’t want him cooking with gluten. What if he doesn’t wash his hands properly or gets it under his fingernails and then eats his lunch or something? Gluten makes me sick so I don’t even touch it because the risk of cross contamination is too high. A lot of people who can’t eat gluten have anxiety about even touching something that makes them ill.

Even if you send him with gluten free flour, I still wouldn’t let him eat it if he’s used school bowls and tins that have previously contained gluten. It’s not worth getting sick for.

Ah yes. A child should be excluded from a lesson due to an untreatable medical condition. Maybe children with disabilities should be excluded from lessons if it's inconvenient to the teacher too, lest they make it all about them.

I am sorry as a ceoliac I don't think this is a good idea.

Gluten free flour is much more expensive than normal flour - and we all know the chance of gluten-free scones tasting nice is very low.

So you went from being in a position where you were upset about providing cheap normal flour for an experiment because your son could not eat the experiment - to other parents paying over the top for flour their kids don't need to make food they and are unlikely to want to eat.

The only way you can tell your son his flour is gluten-free - and therefore he knows he can eat it - is if you tell your son his teacher is going to do this or the teacher tells him his mum has been in contact and he's flour is gluten-free. My children in year 7 would have been mortified if I had of asked the teacher to single them out in front of their peers at this age.

Being a coeliac is tough - but the one thing I don't want to do in life is make other people also follow my diet and eat less nice food because of my problem.

I know you only wanted for your son to use gluten-free flour and you can't help the teacher's decision - but I hope you can see this solution is also not great for the other children. They only need one gluten free scone to show the difference between this and the other scones.

I think the random allocation of flour idea is great - from the perspective of the learning goal being to understand the role of gluten in baking. It’s a good way to make the difference really tangible.

From a coeliac disease point of view, I just never trust food tech outputs as ‘safe’ and neither does my DS. Even if he’s got his own GF bench (which he doesn’t), there is probably so much flour in the air with a bunch of kids sifting and mixing and spilling and everything else that comes with many children in a classroom
trying to cook that it’s best to just consider anything produced cross-contaminated.

I still think it’s important that DS gets to do
the cooking and uses ingredient that mean, if he did it at home, in an environment where he can ensure no cross-contamination, he produces food he can actually eat. It’s hard for the teacher though. Sometimes there just isn’t a GF substitution that can be achieved in a food tech classroom with the cooking skills of a young teenager. You can substitute flour in pancakes and it’s fine but it becomes much more of a problem if you’re making bread or pasta or something else where the process and the outcomes diverge more significantly.

Lots of people will go on to bake things not for them. The gluten containing flour is only inedible to people who cannot have gluten.

Talk about hyperbole.

People are talking about the danger of flour containing gluten being breathed in by that child with an untreatable medical condition. So, according to you, all the children in the class should miss the lesson, rather than all the others being able to do it and then tell the exempted one about the results.

her son has not been tested or diagnosed with ceoliac disease.

The teacher sounds most unhelpful and discriminatory to probably an illegal extent! Part of the teacher's job is to be working out how to include kids with disabilities and medical conditions in the lesson and she/he isn't even trying. Given you appear to need to do his/her job for her, I would give options:

• you send X with gluten free flour and he compares his creation with those of others in the group (this would be the safest for your son and would enhance all the children's learning)
• you don't send X with any ingredients and he watches another child

If neither of those satisfy - report further up the school. It is discrimination to make ONE child make something that they can't eat for medical reasons, while the other kids can all eat it. It is also discrimination not to have given thought to the needs of a pupil with a medical condition in lesson planning.