Nuts? At what age are children allowed?

[lulu40]

After consulting a nutritionist for both myself and son who is five in November she suggested adding seeds/nuts to our diets. Not sure at what age nuts are OK - he has no allergies as far as I am aware?

My son who has a family and personal history of allergies is allowed to try nuts at 3. Your son should be fine now. Good luck!

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I gave my daughter peanut butter when she was about one year old as I believe its a great source of protein. Did you mean nuts as in peanut butter or nuts as in whole, chokable nuts? I don't know about the latter, but I would hope she could eat them by the time she was 5.

My son had peanut butter from 6 months, our next door neighbour who is a GP gave some very sound advice, which is that if you give it to them at home the first time, quite early on then no-one else will give it to them and possibly encounter problems.

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I heard that too Emmagee and did the same with ds, and now I cannot get him off the stuff! but it was all OK, I was worried though, but just thought well I am not allergic neither is dh and I ate peanut butter throughout my pregnancy (I found out later it was on the list to avoid) so I thought here goes nothing!

I agree with robinw, my dd had a lick of my peanut butter sandwich at around age 2 and had puffy lips and developed a rash around her mouth and throat, scared me half to death. After that I never gave it to her again (and made sure nobody else did either) and we had a blood test last year which confirmed she is highly allergic to peanuts. She has a medic alert bracelet now to this effect. It's really quite scary.

Having said that we have a history of allergies/eczema/asthma in our family. If you haven't I would think it would be fine. Maybe your ds has already tried peanut butter anyway, in which case you will know. It is very high in fat, but there are some nuts that are very good for you. Pecans, almonds and cashews are great...also sesame seeds and sunflower seeds are yummy. You can mix them up with dried fruit for a great nibbly snack. HTH

My daughter is 3 1/2 and will be starting nursery in September. By chance I got talking to one of the 'dinner nannies' at the school, who are responsible for first aid and she told me that they have a shelf full of labelled 'epi-pens' (I think they're called) as so many of the children are allergic to peanuts. I wanted to test her before she started school and so I parked outside of the doctors surgery and fed her 2 spoonfuls of peanut butter. We then sat there for 1/2 hour reading stories. She was ok so we went home and thought that was it! Most people thought this was really funny, but could see the sense in it. Then I discovered that the second time of eating them is the possible 'danger zone' so we went back a couple of weeks later and did the same thing and she seems to be ok! This probably was a bit OTT but we've had some bad luck in other 'health' areas so I wanted to be sure!

Sounds perfectly sensible to me Theresa, as a peanut allergic reaction can be very severe and swift. Some schools here have actually banned peanuts altogether as they had a number of students with high allergies (most schools would in fact have approx. 5-10% of students with this allergy!). So no peanut butter sandwiches at the canteen or in lunches from home...probably just trying to cover themselves legally I guess, but as mum of a child with a peanut allergy I would welcome it at my dd's school!