free fruit in schools. but no nuts allowed

[stitch]

another rant i'm afraid.

dc school has decided that they dont think the chidlren get enough veg and fruit, so will be providing evry child with a free piece of fruit. the school is a state school, in an affluent area, so full of poncy wannabe, organice lentil weaving moms, who frown on jam sandwiches and fruit as being not healthy enough for their lo's. needless to say that ballet lessons and gym memberships are almost derigeur.

but the same school declares itself a nut free zone. yet nuts are an extremely healthy snack. they are full of essential oils. minerals, etc. tiny packets of energy, they will be far better at keeping the kids going, than half an apple, or whatever.almonds are chock full of calcium, essential not only for good bone developement, but boossts immune systems wonderfully. etc etc etc.
the kids come out of class at least twice a week clutching crappy sweets full of artificial flavourings andcolourings becuaes it is someones birthday. a practice theschool positively encourages. and of course, the siblings also get given the artifical crap by the birthday childs mother.
surely a bar of chocolate would be healthier than the crappy chewy maom they come out with?

The children only have one meal a day at school. Breakfast, supper, and after school snacks can have as much nuts in them as you like. The school isn't depriving the children of anything.

I completely understand your point about the healthiness of nuts. You have obviously taken everyone's advice about not mentioning it to the school so there is some acceptance about your muddled thinking.

Message withdrawn

Well, until I read one of Kerrymums posts about her DS's nut allergies I did not know that a nut allergy can be so severe that even sitting next to a child who is eating nuts could make him extremely ill.

So, even if there was only one child in the whole school with a nut allergy then it is too much to risk.

I do understand your argument, but I think that you are being very unreasonable. The slight inconvienience of not being able to give your child nuts in school weighed against a child being hospitalised is insignificant.

Blanket bans are much easier to enforce than chopping and changing.

Surely there is a confidentiality issue here. A child may not want to be singled out as the one who has caused the nut ban to be brought into force.

Do you want to have kids going round saying "I can't have my peanut butter sarnies any more and it's all X's fault" (because X may not always be the most popular kid in school and doesn't need that held against them also)

I would never complain about a nut ban

but would moan in private to dh as I do about absolutely everything however trivial, poor bastard

But the school can handle it confidentially - they wouldn't need to say which child, or even imply that it is a child in the new intake, just 'a child has developed an allergy therefore....'

My dd had her first reaction to nuts a year ago, aged 5 1/2. Within 5 minutes of eating one tiny taste of peanut butter in a sauce she couldn't breathe. She was in intensive care for 3 days and now has to have an epipen, can't be left by me at parties and all kinds of other things have changed.

Thank goodness her school is nut-free. I can understand that friend's houses and parties can't ever be safe for her but if I had to send her to school each day thinking that she might die I would have no peace. This is far more of a worry than your concern that your children want a different snack to fruit.

Put yourself in my shoes and see if you think you're being unreasonable.

And for the record there's another girl in dd's class alone with a nut allergy, let alone the whole school.

I agree with PogMog.

Unfortunately the incidence of nut allergy is increasing- so there is likely to come a day when there will be another confirmed nut allergy sufferer in the school. And there always has to be a first reaction. That first reaction could occur in school as a result of nut exposure at school. Nut allergy is one of the most serious allergies around to a substance which is readily available off the shelf.

As has already been said the vapour off someones breath is enough to trigger an attack.

If the school has already put in the effort to make it a "nut free" zone...it makes sense to keep it that way ready for next time.

Furthermore, it isn't actually a hardship. If parents are happy to hand out haribo sweets then they shouldn't be kicking up a fuss being restricted to "jam sandwiches".

As has been pointed out a child has 1 snack and 1 meal at school...there is plenty of scope for variety to provide these without nuts. And there is plenty of scope to get the nutrients from nuts at other times of the day - breakfast, after school snack and tea.

You don't need to provide nuts at school - so it isn't going to kill her to have them at another time of the day. It might kill another child now or in teh future if they do have nuts in teh school.

I know you have serious concerns about this school stitch. Tbh you need to concentrate on these or you are just going to come across as a miserable whinger. If you're in there complaining about non-issues there is a big risk that the genuine issues will be lost.

A child who has to spend 6 1/2 hours out of 24 without access to nuts is NOT deprived. You can meet him after school and feed him nuts on the way home, you can serve nuts for tea, supper and late-night snacks, if you like. He can eat nuts all week-end. He will not suffer if he has to spend a few hours without them now and then.

Stitch I agree the policy is just stupid as they're handing out rubbish party bag sweets. The school can't enforce a ban as they can't be responsible if someone does bring in something with nuts.

One thing that gets me about fruit & veg is that it should be seasonal local fruit rather than flown around the world before going into the classroom bin.

It's a tough one.

On the one hand, it's not that big a deal to say no nuts because you can give your child nuts when they are outside school. So I couldn't get too worked up about the ban myself.

OTOH, for the sake of one or two children you are dictating to absolutely everyone else what they can and cannot take in their lunchboxes or for snacks.

As for other allergies, e.g. wasps, could the allergic children not have medication kept in teh office for emergency situations? My friend has an epipen at school at all times for her dd because has horrendous reactions to wasps (but you can't ban wasps from teh playground!).

I don't know, I'm just trying to see both sides. It doesn't really affect me as none of mine have allergies and they don't really eat nuts either tbh (except within other foods, seeds on bread - ah, so could htey not have bread rolls with nuts/seeds on?).

I actually thought that this was a joke but I see Stitch actually means it. I can't belive you really think that there is a serious dilemma here between the rights of your children to have nuts during the school day and the right for my child to go to school and not be in real danger of dying.

Sorry can't be as nice as PogMog about this. It makes me livid.

yES THEY CAN AND DO HAVE AN EPIPEN IN TEH OFFICE.

They don't exactly want to get into a situation of needing it though - it is a bloody dangerous situation to be in - even with an epipen. I suspect (but sorry I am not an expert) that using an epipen is not 100% guranteed of saving a childs life - so doing all you can to prevent an attack in the first place.

Remiving nuts will cause no hardship to anyone so not unreasonable to ban them

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It is fairly locally produced fruit (most seems to come from Kent or East Anglia) and veg...well, in the South East where I work it is anyway, apart from the odd banana and satusuma around December. Even get strawberries twice a year in June!

Schools have no choice but to be nut free. And am in full agreement about all the dratted sweets. Oh how happy would I be not to have to dole those out 30X a year and then to curse the fact that I have no more boxes of raisins in the cupboard as parents never consider there will be a couple of children not able to eat chocolate. And before you say they don't know EVERYONE knew about the diabetic Year 2 child and NO ONE ever sent an alternative for him! He must have been sick of my raisins by July!

That's my rant over on someone elses rant thread!!

My dd has an epipen in the office, in the dinner hall and in the classroom. But epipens don't instantly save a child's life if they have a severe allergy. Dd had two shots in A&E and was still in intensive care for 3 nights she was so ill.

It's useless to compare this to an allergy to wasp stings because they are ultimately unpreventable. If they were preventable I would expect a school to do something about preventing them.

dd2 has a severely nut-allergic child in her class, we all know which cereal boxes we can/can't take in for junk materials and respect the nut-ban in packed lunches etc. No real hardship.

But the ban causes a false sense of security and isn't actually enforcable

I'ther have a false sense of security than no security at all...

Why cupchar?

not a false sense of security, everyone still vigilant (the mum gave me a training session when she brought her dd to dd2's party) but just reduces the risk

I think the "false sense of security" is more of a safety net where primary school children are concerned. They can not be trusted to be sensible 100% of the time.

Your child would think it was a nut free zone but nuts are in some many things I wouldn't trust the other parents to actually check 100%

My Dds school is nut free every year, not just when a child with allergies is present. At the moment there are 4 children with nut allergies, one was rushed to hospital after the person across the table from her used a supermarket glue pen which contained coconut oil in it.

I work in a nut free school. Last year I was given a present of Marks and Spencer smellies by a parent. I used the hand cream without realising there was coconut in it. I went into a class where a child with allergies was. I handed over a piece of paper and left. 10 minutes later he was gasping for breath and we had to get and ambulance. Believe me it's not worth it, I felt awful for days.

True. My ds had been at school just 2 weeks when he came home saying he'd shared a friend's crisps and the friend (also 4) had said that they didn't have nuts in.