I believe its the decent, Christian and American thing to do..
Very quickly in this thread it became ‘those damn selfish spoiled peanut allergic kids are imposing on us’. And you’re dang right I take it personally. I cant separate out the fact I have to make a freak of my daughter when I take her to the playground by asking other parents if their kids had peanuts that morning. She cant just run out and play, I wipe down swings, I shower at work before going home because a co-worker thinks I’m imposing by begging him not to shell peanuts five feet from me.
Why do I do all this? As a young kid my daughter has a three or four year window where she can outgrow a peanut allergy, its very rare but it happens. But if she has any major reaction the odds of her outgrowing it shrink to almost nothing!
The other reason is because peanuts are the only allergy that can suddenly spike without exposure. To get a sever allergy to fish or soy or milk it takes allot of exposure over a prolonged periods of time (with very rare exceptions) with peanuts it can happen with just one.
Hell people have implied that this is some sort of ‘Im the center of the universe’ attitude rather than a ‘Id like to have my kid live long enough to take these precautions on their own mentality’s. I would trade almost anything to take that allergy away from my kid but apparently I’m some spoiled nanny stater who just wants to impose on others..
I only have a half dog in this race, my wife and I plan to home school but I feel for other allergic parent who have these worries more than someone who might have to spend 10cent more on their lunch.
Please pardon the delay in my reply, I had to take my daughter and her friend to their karate class and then run some errands.
I was 38 and my husband 43 when our daughter was born, so the “new to parenthood” claim doesn’t cut it with me.
I do believe it is an imposition for one child to be able to dictate the lunch box contents of every other child.
I’m truly sorry your daughter is embarrassed about you asking other parents on the playground about their children’s peanut contact. We don’t have an allergy problem, but we do have a time and distance problem, so we solved it by basically building a “playground” in our yard. Our daughter’s friends come here to play.
As I have said, I sympathize with your desire to protect your daughter, I do the same. However, my protection of my daughter does not extend to dictating what other parents feed their children.
The policy of this school district is bad policy, it is teaching the wrong message to all of the children. It also infringes upon parental autonomy to determine what is in their child’s lunch box.
What is next?
You and your wife have no dog in this fight because you plan to homeschool. My daughter attends public school, so I have a full dog in this, although not in this particular district.