AIBU to be pissed off that the head teacher has banned nutella in the school for one child?

[eddiejo]

The story.... one boy (hers) has allergy to nuts so now nutella is banned . I totally understand the whole anaphlaxis thing but as mum to year 1 boy with multiple food allergies - i would never expect the rest of the school to stop eating what he is allergic to.

Nutella was one of the few spreads which he could eat and made the bread edible. not healthy I know but more important to get energy in him.

What do you think?

you are all being a bit harsh on the OP.

yes, the nuts should be banned. However, her frustration is understandable, and it is out of order to say that she is jealous, or others insults.

her son's diet is very limited, so for him, nutella is a healthy option. anyone who's fed a person with a very limited diet knows how difficult it is.

the school i worked in banned all obvious nut products too but one mum thought that her daughter didn't need to follow the same rules as everyone else and still sent her child in with peanut butter (pb) sandwiches.

We had to keep the allergic children out of the dining room and completely wipe all surfaces that the PB child may have touched just in case one of the allergic children accidently went near to where the pb one had been sitting.

YABU

YABU. My ds is allergic to nuts. Nutella and Peanut butter are oil based so residue stays on everything.

Your ds can have it for breakfast and after school. It is only one meal he has to miss it for.

Wannabe do you really think that parents of children with severe allergy issues don't "educate' them and just depend on everyone else to be careful on their child's behalf?

I agree with you that avoiding allergens is not a solution as such but it does help and save lives.

Wider issue is WHY so many kids are like this nowadays?

Yurt - it's all very well "educating" children about not sharing lunches - but the actual reality is much different. DS1's infant school educated them about not sharing their lunches, and DS1 knew all about it - but he still frequently came home with half eaten sandwiches that he hadn't taken into school.........

I always remember having packed lunches at primary school and we were always told not to share them - and they tried to watch us like hawks - but we still managed to successfully swap half our lunch box content with other people.

The boy who I nearly killed was usually extremely vigilant about checking what was in food, and the rest of us were too. But in the heat of the moment, the excitement of an imminent huge performance in front of a packed hall (over 1000) it was momentarily forgotten. It only took a few seconds of lapse concentration for it to happen.

It's not the nutella thing - it's the way it was only done when she wanted it to be - not for previously nut allergic children.

A child started reception 2 days BEFORE her 4th birthday this year.

Education MUST be age appropriate. My son would NOT have had the self control to refuse a bite of someone else's chocolate sandwich when he was just turned 4. I'm grateful he's allergy free. I'm even more grateful the school is nutfree so he won't have to see any of his peers go through anaphylaxis.

No, it's not the Nutella. It's jealousy. If you'd admitted that in your first post, you may not have got such a pasting.

Ah then you welcome the policy then because you appreciate how it affects anaphylactic children?

colditz I think you are being a bit harsh.

The op stated that her own ds has severe alergies.

She also stated that there are other childn in the school who have nut alergies.

And yet this has never been addressed until the head's own son has started at the school.

Now clearly the head is going to be more protective of her own child, but as the head she should be impartial, and if she planned to ban nuts for her son's alergy, they should have been banned before, at the point when other children with similar alergies have joined her school.

As the head she should be treating all children equally, and that includes her own child.

If she is not able to do that, then perhaps her child shouldn't be in her school.

No the message came home long ago. The timing just grated on me.

My son just has other food for lunch. He eats slowly and often doesn't finish his lunch because he chats too much

Nutella was the only filler that made his lunch dissapear each day. It is fine really he gave up asking for it now!!

Sidge if a child has an allergy they know they don't share. Even when my DS was 4 when all his allergies erupted, I forgot BurgerKing had seseme seeds on their bun, he already had his burger and he suddenly disappeared. I saw him at the counter and he was busy telling the girl that he couldn't eat it, because of the seseme seeds.

We live in a quiet cul de sac where all the dc's play out, I often had neighbour coming to ask me if he could have this or that, because they had offered him something and he told them he couldn't eat nuts.
There is no difference between an ordinary nut allergy and a serious nut allergy as all nut allergies can be potentially serious, each reaction can be different.
Adults who have never had an allergic reaction in their life can suddenly have an anaphylactic attack.
Nuts are available all around the world, they are good and nuticious food, do we ban them everywhere.
The case with planes is slightly different because of recycled air and being in a contained space.

Wannabe you are joining up dots about which we have scant information.

YAB totally U

As for those of you who are spouting that the children should be educated - yes of course they should be educated, but how quickly (and comprehensively) can you educate a school full of children, some as young as 4 years old?

My dd is 5, she knows she's not supposed to jump off the top bunk in her bedroom, she has been told and told and told till im blue in the face educated that she shouldn't do it ...she still does it ...because she's 5!

Surely its worth forfieting a nutella butty if it saves a little boys life, no?

no an adult can't always avoid those situations. However they will (hopefully) be much more aware of the initial symptoms of anaphylatic shock and possibly be able to react (with their epi-pen) quicker than a child would.

That boy although young enough to momentarily forget to check in the excitement of the moment was old enough to recognise the initial symptoms (itching, mouth and throat starting to swell) and legged it out of the hall as fast as he could and received his epi-pen literally within seconds of getting "off stage" . I should imagine an infant aged child wouldn't recognise the symptoms so quickly and so would be much more ill before action was taken/.

The plane thing is because it's a confined space where the air is recycled. One of my close friends is allergic to peanuts - every time he flies he has to ask the airline if they wouldn't mind ditching the nuts.

It's not being precious - I saw him once two days after he'd been to an Indian meal. His dish had no nuts, but somehow nut oil had got into his food. Looked like he'd gone ten rounds with Mohammed Ali. And this was two days later.

Why am I jealous? My mum taught me as deputy head for three years. She treated me exactly the same as other children even sending me to the head a few times for behaviour.

It's the principle of the way it was done. Highly unprofessional. Yes all children are viewed as individuals and as such should be treated in accordance with their needs - of course.

I think most of you understand my frustration but it is not the nutella, allergy, ruling but the timing.

I think Stewie might have a point: maybe this is the first time a child with a really severe nut allergy has started the school. My nephew has a nut allergy but not so bad he can't be in the same house as nuts; he just doesn't eat them. And he doesn't need to carry an epipen.

If this is not the case, but the head is just being unfair, then I understand your annoyance- but I still feel it is worth doing for the sake of the innocent child.

Haven't read whole thread.

DS's school has a 'nut free' policy, I actually thought this happened in all schools.

I appreciate your own dc has allergies too, but surely this would just help you to apprecaite the severity.

It's not unreasonable to find something else for your dc to have in school hours.

no not the first time a nut allergy child has been there.

Goodnight.

I can understand that you might feel a little put out, but really there is a huge difference between how a school ought to react to a severe allergy to those run of the mill ones.

You just cannot put up any credible argument that would lead people to believe that the school was being unreasonable in banning the nutella. Would you really want your child at a school that was cavalier with the lives of their pupils?

My DCs both have a dairy and egg allergy (thankfully on the wane at last) and I was happy for the children to self-manage this on the whole. They very occasionally misjudged the contents of things (often homebaked items) and were sick, but no long term harm was done.

My DD's friend OTOH has a severe peanut allergy and my DD understood fully that there were certain steps you took before this child came home for tea. You took the biscuit barrel out to the garage and you checked the labels on the food. The children were so incredibly thoughtful of this child's needs - party cakes were vetted for nut content and they would have been aghast at taking anything with nuts in it into school. They were 5 yo at this time - and already had good social awareness of the need to help others around them. Helped I am sure by the school.

Surely if a 5yo child gets it, it shouldn't be hard for an adult to!