School Parents Want 1st Grader W/ Peanut Allergy Sent Home/Home-Schooled

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To protect the girl, students in her class at Edgewater Elementary School are required to wash their hands before entering the classroom in the morning and after lunch, and rinse out their mouths, Wait said, and a peanut-sniffing dog checked out the school during last week's spring break.


*same link as above*
 
Ok, that is the MOST ridiculous thing I have heard! That poor girl. Way to make her feel bad!

ETA
Also, aren't these parents supposed to be teaching their children acceptance? So what happens when these kids grow up and encounter someone different or with special needs? They will think back to this and treat the other person like they are beneath them. Like it's not worth their time to help out or understand the other person.
 
I have mixed feelings about this, but I do have sympathy for the parents at the school. We had a child in my daughter's Brownies girl scout troop who had a deadly peanut allergy.
It got to be VERY stressful for the girl's to have to remember to wash their hands, use mouthwash, change clothes if necessary, all of the time. They could not have their lunch boxes with them, even in their backpacks, when we met after school. One day there was a bake sale at lunchtime and my kid had a chocolate cookie in her backpack that she forgot about. She did not know it had peanut butter in it but the other girl became instantly choked up and began to gag and the leader had to give her an emergency jab of the antidote. My daughter was inconsolable for the entire night and did not want to go to school the next day--she felt so guilty. She watched an ambulance take her friend away.
And I feel guilty about my reaction a little--but I felt angry that my 6 yr old was put in that position. What if the poor girl HAD died. To gamble her life on an entire school of young kids--who do not really have the ability to control everything like that.
Oh, and they outlawed ALL bake sales after that. Something else my kid felt guilty about, even though the parents were under strict instructions to use no peanut based ingredients. And the mom who made the choc chip cookies swears she used no peanuts in the baking.
So after that rambling, MY POINT is that when a child is truly deadly allergic to something as common as peanuts, it is nearly impossible to prevent them from having medical reactions occasionally. And that is a big weight on the communities shoulders, imo/
 
I know mine isn't a popular opinion, but I really feel strongly about this. It's up to her parents to protect her. The world doesn't stop because a child has a peanut allergy. Buy your kid a bubble suit, respirator, face mask, keep her home, whatever it takes. Even if all of the accommodations are made, what kind of stigma will that child have as a result? Why not just put a KICK ME sign on her back before ya send her to school?

To make everyone else responsible for the very life of your delicate snow flake is wrong. The child is a liability. If my child inadvertently doesn't wash his hands well enough, his mouth out well enough, some other kid could DIE? The teacher is now the rinse and spit police? PLEASE!

Disability act doesn't require the rest of the world to accommodate. They don't shut down highways so a single blind person can drive. YKWIM?
 
Are peanuts banned at this school? If so, then why do the children have to wash their hands and rinse their mouths after lunch? I could understand making them do that stuff when they come to school in the morning in case they ate peanuts the night before.

This little girl's allergy seems so severe that even if the school takes every precaution, it's very likely that something will go wrong. What happens if a little kid brings in a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup in their backpack? Does the school search the kids' bags everyday to make sure they don't have peanut products?

But how does this little girl even go out in public with an allergy that severe? I have never heard of a college accommodating a peanut allergy and requiring the whole campus to be peanut-free like K-12 schools have. What about the mall, movies, amusement park, beach, etc? We come into contact with strangers on a daily basis and anyone of them could have eaten a peanut product recently.
 
I bet 'peanuts' are banned, like they were in my kids school, but that is not the only problem. There are lots of products that don't have peanuts in them, but they might have peanut oil mixed in.
And I was really nervous all of the time when that poor kid was at our school. She passed out twice that I know of, once because of an innocent mistake my own 6 yr old made.
 
pghbrandi said:
Ok, that is the MOST ridiculous thing I have heard! That poor girl. Way to make her feel bad!

ETA
Also, aren't these parents supposed to be teaching their children acceptance? So what happens when these kids grow up and encounter someone different or with special needs? They will think back to this and treat the other person like they are beneath them. Like it's not worth their time to help out or understand the other person.
Click to expand...

Acceptance is one thing. But to have a child's life hinge upon the actions of hundreds of other children's every day activities is really difficult. Like I posted, my own 6 yr old NEARLY caused her little friend's death. And it wasn't even my kids fault. You can imagine how distraught and guilty she felt watching the ambulance coming to pick up the poor child. She was okay and breathing by then, but still, it was traumatic for everyone.
My daughter loved and accepted her friend, but can a 6 yr old really make certain that nothing with ANY minute traces of peanut compound has permeated their clothes or belongings every single day?
 
Do they really need to do all of that? Or is the school just being overprotective to cover their butts?

My niece has a very severe peanut allergy. She has to carry an epi-pen with her wherever she goes. When she was four her mother gave her a brand of candy bar that my niece had eaten before. She said my niece took a nibble from the corner, spat it out, said it tasted weird, and immediately started having a reaction. The candy bar had a new warning on it that it may have been produced in a factory with peanuts. A spit-out nibble gave her a severe reaction.

Another time she ate a cookie from school that had no peanuts in it, but had been baked in the kitchen at the same time peanut butter cookies were being baked. She ended up in the hospital.

My point is that her allergy is considered extremely severe, and the schools she attended never had any such precautions. They lived in Florida, too. Her parents never asked for special treatment, other than the epi-pen (which she didn't have on the cookie day, which is why she ended up in the hospital). Schools never required students to wash hands and rinse mouths. It sounds extreme and unnecessary. When she goes to the store will people be expected to do the same? The movies? Another child's house?
 
This is a tough one. My niece has a terrible peanut allergy AND she is homeschooled. Not for that reason, but it IS the reason she doesn't go to many outings with other friends. We all have to be very careful. My kids don't like peanut butter so when we're around them it's pretty easy. But she has jumped into my car at their house - and I had peanut M&M's in there. Luckily, I told her she needed to get out and there was no reaction.

I think that it is okay to have a "no peanut" rule at the school. And refined peanut oil is usually okay for folks with peanut allergies, just not unrefined which is more organic, etc, and probably not used in many things? I do think it's okay for the kids to have to wash hands, etc, upon arrival at school but not after lunch and all day long.

My heart goes out to her and her family - and I think the other parents need to figure out another solution with the school. If the district doesn't watch out, they could find themselves in a lawsuit, especially if a court rules that she is discriminated against b/c of a disability.
 
katydid23 said:
Acceptance is one thing. But to have a child's life hinge upon the actions of hundreds of other children's every day activities is really difficult. Like I posted, my own 6 yr old NEARLY caused her little friend's death. And it wasn't even my kids fault. You can imagine how distraught and guilty she felt watching the ambulance coming to pick up the poor child. She was okay and breathing by then, but still, it was traumatic for everyone.
My daughter loved and accepted her friend, but can a 6 yr old really make certain that nothing with ANY minute traces of peanut compound has permeated their clothes or belongings every single day?
Click to expand...

I understand what you are saying.
That must have been horrible for your daughter and I didn't look at from that perspective.
I just feel bad for the little girl is all.
 
It sounds like the school is doing what they can and some of the parents are the ones who have a problem with it.
I worry about who will be blamed if despite all the precautions, the child does die while at school. Somehow I feel the school district would still be sued, no matter how hard they tried to implement the precautions.
I don't think the parents should be concerned with the fact that the kids have to wash, spend time on that etc, as much as that their child could be considered the one who causes a catastrophic event, simply by a mistake or an oversight.
 
My son's daycare is a peanut free environment, as are (IIRC) all Ontario schools and daycares. They ask us to either not feed him peanuts before going or to wash him and brush his teeth thoroughly before coming to daycare, have no peanuts on the premises, and to make sure everything he brings/wears is peanut-free. I have no problems with that, because you get used to it, and, considering the consequences, it's worth making a habit.

But these seem to be pretty light regulations compared to other places, it would appear.
 
cluciano63 said:
It sounds like the school is doing what they can and some of the parents are the ones who have a problem with it.
I worry about who will be blamed if despite all the precautions, the child does die while at school. Somehow I feel the school district would still be sued, no matter how hard they tried to implement the precautions.
I don't think the parents should be concerned with the fact that the kids have to wash, spend time on that etc, as much as that their child could be considered the one who causes a catastrophic event, simply by a mistake or an oversight.
Click to expand...

THat is exactly right---none of us were bothered by having to wash the all of the kid's hands 3 x a day or looking over their lunchboxes every lunchtime. It was good over all for them to have those habits. BUt even with that, danger still lurks. The other time she had a bad reaction it was because another child had been on an airplane the previous night, and even though he did not eat the peanuts*, he was wearing the same hoodie that he wore on the plane. She sat near him at recess and passed out and needed an epi shot. [ * the poor kid was frightened about eating the peanuts on a sunday because he was afraid something like that would happen, and it did anyway. And some of the other kids gave him a hard time and he cried about it. ]
 
To be perfectly honest, if my child had such a severe allergy that any contact could result in death, I would make the choice to homeschool myself. I just wouldn't want to take the risk.
 
WhyaDuck? said:
To be perfectly honest, if my child had such a severe allergy that any contact could result in death, I would make the choice to homeschool myself. I just wouldn't want to take the risk.
Click to expand...

I think if a child has the MOST severe form of the allergy then they should take that route.
If it is the less severe form, and they just need a quick shot and they recover quickly, then going to a peanut free environment is fine.
From what I learned from that one friend, the allergies can get progressively worse and that is how it can progress and become more serious.
 
If this child's allergy is really that severe, how is she going to live very long? She would never be able to even go to a grocery store or almost anywhere else. What do her parents do when they get home from grocery shopping? Do they wash their hands outside before even coming into the house? The school can try to accommodate her (though as others have pointed out, even that is not a guarantee), but the whole rest of the world is not going to be able to do that. I feel bad for her because it sounds like she is going to have a really difficult life if it's that bad.
 
I don't see how this child's parents can let the child out of their sight, to be honest.

They are putting an awful lot of trust in the actions, mishaps, omissions, accidents, etc...that befall first graders on an almost hourly basis. Those kids all have busy, distracted parents too-what if a parent simply forgets that their child was eating peanuts the last time he wore his blue pants and the child wiped his hands on his pants, or has peanut butter on his shoe? So many things could happen, if this child is so seriously in danger.

I would never be able to allow such a vulnerable child into such an uncontrolled environment, even if they (the school) have the best of intentions.
 
belimom said:
This is a tough one. My niece has a terrible peanut allergy AND she is homeschooled. Not for that reason, but it IS the reason she doesn't go to many outings with other friends. We all have to be very careful. My kids don't like peanut butter so when we're around them it's pretty easy. But she has jumped into my car at their house - and I had peanut M&M's in there. Luckily, I told her she needed to get out and there was no reaction.

I think that it is okay to have a "no peanut" rule at the school. And refined peanut oil is usually okay for folks with peanut allergies, just not unrefined which is more organic, etc, and probably not used in many things? I do think it's okay for the kids to have to wash hands, etc, upon arrival at school but not after lunch and all day long.

My heart goes out to her and her family - and I think the other parents need to figure out another solution with the school. If the district doesn't watch out, they could find themselves in a lawsuit, especially if a court rules that she is discriminated against b/c of a disability.
Click to expand...

That would have been tough for my hubby's kids. They grew up not eating meat and nuts were a major source of protein for them. They ate peanut butter sandwich's everyday. The grandkids don't eat meat either so beans and nuts are again major sources of their protein. Not sure what my DILs would do if the kids couldn't eat peanut butter.
 
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