Really? You don’t think it’s a wee bit selfish for the parents of a kid with peanut allergies to ask 2,000 other people to change for that one person? Surely Sua’s post is right on target here.
You’re certainly right that it would be nice to respond positively to a request to make a minor change in order to drastically improve someone else’s life, but exactly how many such requests should we respond to? I mean, first it’s peanuts, then it might be latex, then something else. Death by a thousand cuts, until the school becomes a hermetically-sealed chamber where no-one is even allowed to talk to anyone else. Hyperbole? Sure. But do you get my point?
You haven’t seen the jar at the back of my fridge.
I do see your point, mhendo, and I think there is definitely room for debate. It’s not a huge honking obvious line, to me. But I think the attitudes expressed in this thread (ie. “You’ll get my peanut butter when you take it from my cold dead hands”) do not indicate a willingness to work towards a beneficial environment for all.
Well, I’m not sure you’re being fair. Yes, we should definitely be able to empathize with allergy sufferers and to make accomodations for them, but there are limits. Should all of society abandon peanuts as a food source because a few people cannot tolerate them?
If I knew a guest in my house had a peanut allergy, I’d do my best to find peanut-free food to serve (harder than you might realize because peanuts and peanut oil are often hidden ingredients in many prepared foods), but I’m not going to give up satays and kung pao chicken for the rest of my life merely because I might casually breathe on an allergy sufferer on the Metro.
What disturbs me about this and the other thread, is that I don’t believe the school is requesting this action in order to help the penut allegy sufferer. I believe they are doing this in order to protect themselves from a possible law suit.
The previllence of peanuts in unsussoected foods (peanut oil used in Chinese cooking for instance) is such that the only way to truly protect someone with such extreme penut allegy that a touch can be fatal, would be to provide special penut free places for them and fellow sufferers to be schooled. Though knowledge of nut allegies has spread, it is still possible to get hair and skin products that contain nut oils, and it would be impossible to insulate an individual from all such possible contact without restricting them to special nut free areas.
gobear, as I said to mhendo, no I don’t think everyone should have to give up peanuts all the time. I personally think that not bring peanut butter or peanut products to school isn’t such a huge sacrifice. Note, they aren’t saying that children can no longer eat peanut butter. They can. Anywhere but school.
As you said, there ARE limits. There are reasonable extents to which we should go to accomodate people, and not beyond that. But I think that there is expressed here an unwillingness to accomodate at all.
Loved that the OP thought that the way over-the-top hyperbolic statement was a real threat, then proceded to do the same exact thing against DtC at the end of the first post.
Methinks someone needs to review the stickies at the top of the Pit main page if they think that such statements are as good as a real threat.
Banning all peanut products from the school is not a reasonable accomidation, IMHO.
Laurange, I may be able to see your point if these schools were saying “Stuff it, sicky, we’re serving naught but peanut products and you can starve”…but they’re not.
Jimmy, who sits fifteen tables away during a DIFFERENT lunch period and doesn’t even KNOW the sick student, for instance, is being told he can’t have his favorite sandwich for lunch because there’s a 4 in 54,000,000 chance that one allergic student may breathe in a stray particle.
It seems to me that it’s the parents of the ALLERGIC STUDENT who have the “only I matter” attitude, which I imagine is easy for parents to fall into. When I have kids I"m sure I’ll want the world to fall in line to make life perfect for her, but I’m also aware that I RARELY get what I want.
To be honest, this is something that I have struggled with a bit. I had even posted a thread about it a while ago. My problem comes from wondering at what point “reasonable” accommodation becomes, well, unreasonable.
The spirit of reasonable accommodation, to me, is all about expanding choice. The person in the wheelchair can now choose to go to the movies, or even down the sidewalk to get some air. The hearing impaired person may choose to watch TV because most programs are closed-captioned.
What makes these accommodations work is that they do not have the side effect of limiting the choices of others. I can just as easily go in to a building that has a ramp and I can one with stairs. You see the difference. They are a reasonable accommodation because they do not impact the people that do not need them.
In the specific case of this school, I think that what it comes to is that the State has no place banning a type of food from the school for the sake of one child. What I think was really lost here is that we have come to a point in our society where they felt that they had to do so. Indeed, not very long ago this would have been handled at the community level. I.e. a letter goes out to the parents explaining the situation and the parents stop using peanut butter because they are kind and were asked to do so (not told to). Perhaps there is one parent that is a hold out, but this is also dealt with at a community level.
Parent of an allergic child weighing in. My son is allergic to ALL dairy products and has been to the emergency school many times.
As long as he’s been aware, we’ve taught him not to accept food from others unless he definitely knows there’s no dairy ingredients.
You’d be amazed at some of the accidents with things we’ve had with things that you wouldn’t think of as having dairy ingredients–items such as hot dogs (some do, most don’t), sweet and sour mix, and veggie burgers.
That said, it NEVER in a million years would have occured to us to insist that no one in school bring dairy products to eat. We just told him never to eat anything from any lunch but his.
The only problem we’ve ever had, was when some kid stuck a piece of cheese in his water bottle (deliberately) He noticed that though and didn’t drink any of his bottle.
I have to confess, the whole “airborne” thing gets me a bit, I don’t know how to react to that.
Ha! Back in the dangerous, fun sixties, I used to buy peanuts every day, right on campus. For a mere nickel I would get my bag of peanutty death and just laugh as my playmates dropped like flies all around me. Good times, man, good times.
