Balancing Safety and Fear
We’ve all been there. Just thinking about the spectrum of terrible things that could happen to your severely food allergic child can be scary enough to make you want to:
- prohibit them from leaving the house (going to the playground, the pool, or a baseball game)
- homeschool them ad-infinitum
- hold them close and never let them out of your sight.
It takes great courage for parents of severely food allergic children to come to grips with these fears and keep them at bay — for our children’s sake — so that they do not internalize our fears and become paralyzed by them. A healthy dose of respect for our children’s allergies is not only appropriate, but smart — because it can help to keep them safe. But empowering them to live safely while enjoying the world around them is even smarter, and healthier for your child in the long term. Too much sheltering can create fearful children who are afraid to live life to the fullest. This saddens me to no end.
These thoughts are on my mind because of two contrasting items I just came across.
- Peanut Free Mama points us to a wonderful NPR piece and a unique analysis of that audio clip essay and how it applies to parents of food-allergic kids. I highly encourage you to read and listen.
- KRDO.com posted a news clip about guard dogs for food allergic individuals. I had never heard of this before. While I feel this mother’s pain, I also feel for this child who is growing up thinking that the world is so scary that it cannot be navigated without assistance. I sometimes worry that we use food allergies as an excuse to be overprotective and not allow our daughter to try things that she can handle. But I never want her to think of her food allergies as an impairment that makes her different from (or dare I say inferior to) her peers in any way. And that’s why the guard dog solution frightens me. I’m concerned that the guard dog serves as a constant reminder to this child and to those around her that food allergies are a debilitating disability/weakness that prevent the world from being a joyous place. I hope that as she grows older, things will get easier for her and her family.
I’d welcome your thoughts on this.
August 19th, 2008 at 7:00 pm
guard dogs? That’s one way to keep the child from becoming their own advocate.
I’d say balance: out of the house with your supervision, your training of the people responsible, your gut instinct that tells you you’ve found a reasonable, worthwhile risk. And then rethink that balance constantly, because the child isn’t a constant factor - they grow, develop allergies, lose them, learn to protect themselves (somewhat), etc - and your balance shifts with them.
But I vote NO for guard dogs.
September 17th, 2008 at 12:40 pm
I totally agree. Our public school’s “solution” to handling food allergies is to have a para-professional follow the child around all the time. Talk about opening your kid up for ridicule. I think the long-term fear and compromising of social skill development that come out of that kind of “protection” do more damage than any risk of cross-contamination.
We live in the real world. My kid is now eating lunch with kids and who knows what they bring. I’ve done my best, but the kid deserves as normal a life as possible. As for me, well, I would sleep easier at night if I could always control her food environment, but I’d be depriving her of her childhood.
It’s a sucky, sucky situation. All I can do is educate people on it, do my best to create a protected environment, and pray she grows out of at least some of them and that she isn’t affected by managing the disease nearly as much as I am.