They can have my PB&J when they pry it from cold dead hand.
Those accomodations such as ramps, automatic doors, and special buses don’t generally inconvienence other children.
Marc
This school is very close to my house. I don’t mean to take sides on this issue, but here are some of the issues/items expressed locally.
He has a documented reaction to tree nuts. He has had serious physical reactions to exposures, that if not treated promptly would be fatal. This includes exposures from ingestion and skin contact. I have seen no mention of air born contact in the local press. Articles I have read inferred that the severity of his condition might abate over time.
The school has hired a nurse, trained personnel in administering medications/first aid upon exposure, and banned tree nut products from certain areas.
Parents are upset that they had no input on school guidelines, that they were ‘blind sided’ by the restrictions.
Are there going to be lunch bag searches?
What is the balance between a disabled persons right to equal access and a non-disabled persons freedom of movement/choice?
The school district cannot afford reading & computer specialists and some school supplies, yet has hired a nurse & conducted training.
Some have suggested home schooling, how costly will that be to the taxpayer? (This is a public school). Is forced home schooling a denial of disabled access?
Some of the play structures at the school have been paid for by the parents club. Can the school place restrictions on use of those structures, when paid for by the parents at large?
There are some of the issues. Taking sides now, I’m for protecting the individual’s life & safety over inconveniencing the population. To the students, this is a temporary situation, but to the individual this is a long term, potentially fatal condition.
That should work, and won’t make the child fel like on outcast. I think banning PB outright is a bit much.
I teach Nursery School and we have a Mid-Day program where the kids stay through the afternoon and bring their lunches. Every year there’s one or two kids who are allergic to peanuts, and we (obviously) have to know who they are. We’ve made up little bright orange tags for their lunch boxes (we attach it securely, and make sure Mom doesn’t take it off). When the kids come in, they all put their lunches on one table, and the tags make it easy to know whose lunch belongs to the “allergic” child.
We designate a Peanut Free table, and little Allergic Billy and Sally eat there, along with a couple of friends who have peanut-free lunches. Yes, we do check lunches to see who has baloney and who has PB&J so we can determine who sits there, but we’re not like a SWAT team, patting the kids down in search of contraband. 
We send home a letter at the beginning of the year (for both the regular class and the Mid-Day class) letting parents know there is a peanut-allergic child in the class (and most people by now know how severe the peanut allergy can be), so if they want to send a snack, it needs to be peanut-free, and that if their child wants to sit at the peanut-free table at lunch, they can’t have any peanut products in their lunch.
FYI Shalmanese you can’t do a reliable nut allergy test until the child is at least a year old. From what I understand almost all children under a year will test positive for a nut allergy. So you would have to wait until they were one plus before you killed them.
A peanut ban is completely overeacting. Cecil did a thread on this:
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/030613.html
I am sure way more than 160 children die annually being transported to school, whether by walking, or riding on bikes, buses, or in their parents’ car. What do we do then? Not take the kids to school at all?
Alot of people on this thread has made a lot of good points. I know it is an inconvenience to the parents of the other children, and the school staff as well. However, Reepicheep gave us some good examples of what the some of the reactions are for the “severely allergic” individuals. As for homeschooling the kid, it may not be an affordable option for them. I think they went to the extremes in controlling it the way they did because of the childrens’ ages and inability to understand how to be careful.
How many kids die of SIDS every year? Maybe we should all be sterilized and let the human race die out, then. I mean, if we can’t keep every single one of them safe, why even try any measures to protect them at all, right? : rolleyes:
This seems like such a knee jerk reaction to me. I see what milroyj is saying tho. There are many things more dangerous to children. Do we ban them all? No, we can only try out best to monitor the situations. There is a nurse there so this seems to be sufficient. Even if the child goes into anaphylactic shock the nurse could easily remedy the problem with epinephrine.
Other foods can and do cause anaphylactic reactions. Most notably are shellfish and milk products. However, they occur only about 1/10 as often as peanuts and tree nuts. But I have never heard anyone suggest that we take milk out of the schools.
Exactly. A rational cost/benefit analysis would indicate that banning peanuts is just plain silly.
If somewhat is such a frail little freak that the smell of peanut butter will kill them then they should stay home and live in a freaking plastic bubble.
It’s funny how this “airborne peanut” thing never hurt anybody when I was a kid. How come we didn’t have these little peanut wusses thirty years ago?
They should stay the hell home if it’s such a damn problem. It’s ridiculous to deprive everyone else of PB and Js because one kid has a couple of totally self-absorbed smothering parents. If this happened at my daughter’s school, I’d give her PB and Js every day and big bag of Reece’s Pieces for dessert.
You’re all heart, Diogenes.
With that said, I have to make a shameful confession and admit that I laughed at your post. Because I think you have a point–some parents, I suspect, overreact and act as if the rest of the world owes their kid a peanut-free life. That’s a self-centered and irritating attitude.
I think I recall someone mentioning earlier that for some reason, peanut allergies have gotten more common in recent years. Is this because of a heightend awareness, or something genetic that is making more kids be more allergic? Anyone have any cites on this?
I still think that little, little kids need extra accomodations and protection. But when they get older, they need to get a clue. The world is not going to cater to their allergies for the rest of their lives. They need to have it impressed upon them that they must look after themselves. The sooner, the better. However, 5, 6, 7 year olds–well, that’s too young, I think. (Well, I think someone mentioned that they knew of a 7 year old who knew what to eat and not to eat, so maybe 7 is borderline.) Age 10 is the age I brought up before, and it’s a safe age, I think. But age 8 - 9 probably would be fine too.
Exactly, Yosemite. The world is going to have peanuts in it. Kids need to learn to adapt.
Wow I agree with DTC for a change. 
Look, only 160 people, not just children, die from nut-induced anaphylatic shock. That number includes peanuts, and tree nuts, so even if we go with a very generous 75% caused by peanuts, that leaves us with 120 people who die by peanut breath. :rolleyes:
So now we have 120 people out of 280 million, or a number so small that my computer’s calculator can’t display it properly.
The peanut “problem” is a farce.
I’ve have plain silly before but I prefer the creamy variety. The crunchy variety is one I can just do without.
Marc
God God, you know Gotterdammerung is at hand when I agree with DtC.
Peanut butter is a staple food item. If someone has some freakish reaction to it, they need to take precautions; Not everyone else.
Diogenes the Cynic, you’re a piece of work. Allergies are on the rise, everywhere. Back when you were a tough little allergy-free Cynic, kids didn’t have them, well, because they didn’t have them. Or if they did have them, they turned into Les Nessman wimps cause their parnets couldn’t let them go out of the house.
With a little accomodation from parents who aren’t dismissive of documented medical conditions, kids can grow up in a more normal fashion.
My kid has allergies, smoke is a pretty bad one (asthma), so we try to keep him away and/or give him treatments for his reactions. And honestly, I lean to the over-protective end, but my wife is a good balance.
And no one better quote any damn statistics about deaths from allergies. Numbers are pretty meaningless if someone close to you is dead. There would be little comfort for me to know 279999880 people didn’t die of peanut allergies if DtC’s little angel stuffed her face with peanut derived food items. In fact, it might even incite a murderous rage, which would be leavened only by my own asthma-induced wussiness.
DaddyTimesTwo, I understand that you want to protect your child (and I completely empathize) but could you give a cut-off age where you would expect that your child (or any other seriously allergic child) should be expected to “be on their own,” without any external accomodations from the rest of society?
That’s the really tough part for me. My son has some other medical issues and his doctor says to treat him like a kid. So even the weight and authority of a neurosurgeon can’t turn off my over-protectiveness. And that’s where his mother comes in, always the practical-minded one. She has said that A (my son, I got tired of typing “my son”) is going to do everything he wants, activity-wise. He’s almost 4 and she’s already talked about his problem, although he doesn’t understand just yet. I like your number of ten. He’s a very smart kid and by then he will have gotten the goods in age apporopriate language from the doctor and from us. He’ll know all we can tell him and we’ll just have to trust him some. It’s an ongoing struggle with me not to pass on my worries and, well, neuroses to the boy. I hope I succeed.
No one is answering you, so how about I do, since I’m on the not over reacting side? They theorize the ablity to reason in the abstract (i.e. fully realize results of their actions) kicks in around age 12, at least according to texts from my psych classes, so probably not before then, anyway. What’s the minimal age for trying someone as an adult? That sounds like a reasonable cut-off between “too young to understand how to protect themselves from their own/others ignorance” and " Old enough to have the wherewithall to keep themselves from harm."