My 4 year old daughter is allergic to peanuts and tree nuts. When we registered her at her current daycare center, we told them this up front, and asked if they had a room they keep nut free. They said they absolutely did, that they had other children with peanut allergies, and this would not be a problem.
Today, my wife went with her to daycare because they were having a Valentines day party and parents were invited. There were open bowls of candy with peanuts, open bowls of foods that don’t have obvious nuts but have warnings that they may contain trace amounts, and other foods that no one checked the ingredients on. My wife was furious, and confronted the head teacher in the room. Her response? “I have these jello pops over here that are nut free for your daughter.” This is ridiculous - a room full of 20 3-4 year old kids having a party, and their plan was to restrict our daughter to the one nut-free snack? After they told us that she would be in a nut-free room? That even has a sign on the door saying “No peanuts”?!
This isn’t the first time this has happened. A parent sent in cupcakes a few months ago that contained nuts, and instead of sending them back (as they said they would), they gave one to every kid except our daughter. If you’re unwilling to commit to nut free, tell us up front, you baby-murdering fuckers. Don’t claim it’s a nut free room, then allow nuts and plan to keep our daughter away from them. And don’t tell my wife it’s a “learning experience” for her to watch out for her nuts by herself. Yes, we’re doing our best to train her to do that, but given she can’t actually READ THE FUCKING INGREDIENTS LIST YET, BECAUSE SHE’S 4 YEARS OLD, we depend on the ADULTS WHO HAVE TAKEN RESPONSIBILITY FOR HER to do so. I hope all those worthless shits who run the place go into anaphylactic shock, so they can learn what “difficulty breathing” actually feels like.
Oh dear god. Don’t they know that a lot of people with nut allergies can’t even be in the same room without a potentially fatal reaction?!? I thought that was common knowledge!
Got to be more than one daycare center north of Boston. And it’ll [del]probably[/del] totally be worth it.
I don’t want to blame the victim here, but why did you give them a second chance after the cupcake incident?
Anyway, good luck finding the new daycare. I’m sorry your daughter will be losing all of the friends she’s been making, but there’ll be a new set of friends at the next one.
Damn that really sucks. If they had not made promises of a nut free room I would not condemn the school but once the offer was made they have a moral obligation to live up to it and keep your daughter safe. I wouldn’t even be sure a 7 year could do an adequate job looking out for themselves on a peanut allergy. To say it is a “learning experience” for her to watch out for her nuts by herself is completely ridiculous for a 4 year old.
Do they at least have an EpiPen and the knowledge of how to use it?
kaylasdad99, you’re right, there’s lots of daycare. Next week (which luckily is school vacation week) will be spent finding a new one. She won’t be returning to that one.
We gave them a second chance on the cupcake incident because it was a sub from another room who did it - the regular head teacher was out that day. They swore up and down it would never happen again. In hindsight, it was clearly the wrong decision.
I’m going in on Monday to officially withdraw her from the center, and get my deposit back. If they give me any crap about the required 2 weeks notice for withdrawal, things will get interesting.
What Exit? they do have an EpiPen. When searching for daycare before, the first question was always “Do you maintain a nut free room?” If the answer wasn’t “Yes”, we’d thank them and move on. Clearly now I have to make sure we both agree on the meaning of “nut free”.
If you care enough to do so, you’ve probably got enough on them to drop the dime with the state. Nuts are absolutely not safe for kids that young; that they leave them out like that shows a disregard for safety. That they’re also willing to ignore their own policies is also worth looking into; if they’re going to ignore a posted “nut-free” room, what else are they willing to ignore?
For that matter, would they tell the parents of a diabetic four-year-old that they’re teaching the child to take responsibility for himself to avoid sugar? You might ask them that question to their face on Monday.
I would be pretty upset if I baked cupcakes for my child’s daycare and they sent them back because one kid in a room full of 30 had an allergy to one of the ingredients I used.
You’re absolutely correct to be upset that they lied about having a nut free room, though. It’s pretty outrageous to have bowls full of nuts that all the kids have free access to in a room that says “no peanuts” on the entrance door. “Here’s some jello for your daughter” is the weakest justification for that I can imagine.
I’d absolutely lodge a complaint. You are thoughtful enough and concerned enough for follow-up, but another parent with less resources might not be as lucky as you to find out the truth before it’s too late.
If the daycare is run responsibly, you would be advised beforehand if there was a child with an allergy. There’s a no nut policy at my son’s preschool that is outlined at the time of enrollment and in many subsequent handouts that the children bring home. The parents of children in my son’s class have been made aware that one child in the class has an allergy to strawberries, so if I’m in charge of the snack, I know not to bring strawberries. If I brought cupcakes with nuts or strawberries, I would have no one to blame but myself if they were sent home.
If the daycare is going to allow outside food to be brought in, it’s imperative that they ensure that no child is risking death if he/she eats it.
Just kind of a high-jack here. I raised a kid with severe allergies including the peanut* one and dairy and a bunch of other things. If you don’t want your kid to be ostracized by the other parents and kids be a bit pro-active yourselves. We did not demand that all the parents make or bring treats that our daughter could have. We did ask that we be told when someone was having a birthday or other celebration and what they were bringing in to pass around and then sent along something similar for our kid so she was never left out. At large family gatherings we put a sticker on her that said: “Don’t Feed Me.”
*We did a hospital run after they made peanut butter in her kindergarden class. She didn’t touch or taste it but the fumes were enough to swell her eyes closed and make her start gasping for breath. That was a scarey one.
**We always supplied our own epi-pen and did not rely on day-care or school to have one. That way we were assured that it would be there if she needed it and it would not be out of date. You might want to think about that.
sinjin - it is our EpiPen. You can’t get an EpiPen in Massachusetts without a prescription, so we provide one for the center.
The daycare did have a list of acceptable treats for kids to bring in on birthdays. Plenty of options, and all things you can get in any supermarket. They specifically said no home-baked goods, since there’s no way to control what ingredients they really used. It’s their unwillingness to enforce their own policies that has me up in arms.
I was just pointing out that it is not common knowledge. I knew that some people have an allergy, but I had no idea that you could be affected just by being in proximity. I would have thought you had to eat the peanut to get sick from it. Never assume what is or isn’t common knowledge.
BUT if the parents had told the daycare people and it was still brushed aside, then hell yes it’s outrageous. Now, since the parents did tell someone, I have to wonder if that ever got passed on to the other employees. Probably not.
Huh, I thought it had been more widely publized at this point. Nut allergies (including peanuts, even though it’s a legume) are somewhat unusual in that many people, like sinjin’s daughter, don’t need to taste or even touch them in order to have a reaction. Every year or so I see a news item about some poor kid who died from touching someone who ate a peanut butter sandwich recently, or sat too close to a cake being baked.
Still, if anyone should know that, daycares and schools should know that. I’m surprised that their insurance allows anyone at all to bring nut based products in, even if they don’t know one of the children has a problem with it.
To clarify - they told us they had a nut free room when we were searching for new daycare. And when my wife toured the place, the room she’d be in already had a “No Peanuts” sign on the door. So they didn’t set it up specifically for us - it was something they already had in place. It’s just that they seem to interpret “No Nuts” to mean “It’s OK to bring nuts in, as long as you tell us that you are so we can make sure not to give any to the kid with nut allergies.”