Kids Food Allergies Blog

Thank you for support on the birthday-snack craziness and for your very good ideas about peanut-free cookies.  As it turns out, the clinic aide tells me, my daughter’s cookies were the only ones distributed to the class because the other 3 kids with September birthdays brought in cookies manufactured in facilities that process peanuts.  So, my daughter’s cookies were a big hit with the class (happy point 1), and nobody got sick (happy point 2).

A couple of thoughts on your comments…

Thanks to  Jennifer B for letting me know about the bakeries — small and large, local and national — that can meet my needs.   By the way, I really like the Lemonade Bakery.  The main reason I didn’t order from her is that the school was pretty specific that it needed to be store packaged and store bought.  (I was afraid that the school would treat her goods as homemade and not allow them.)  On the mass-produced prepackaged front — I am so glad to know that Cherrybrook Kitchen makes ready-to-eat vegan and nut-free cookies.   Wahoo!!!!!!!!!  If I had known a bit earlier, I could have avoided this whole messy situation for a mere $3 per 6 oz (a small price for my sanity).

 I also appreciate Beth telling me that Back to Nature does in fact make peanut butter sandwich cookies.  Yet another “safe” snack down the tubes.  But I am glad to know.  I am also glad the school did not.  If she had any mild health symptom (headache, stomach upset, rash) after eating something that they suspected may have had a trace of peanuts — they would have used an epipen.

I really liked Aimee’s suggestions to bring a safe candy as a birthday snack — or to skip the food altogether and bring some other treat.  Both of these are wonderful suggestions.  But they weren’t the teacher’s idea.  And they fall outside the boundaries she set down for the class — so I can only imagine how they would be received.  If it is my daughter (and one other peanut allergic child) that they were trying to protect, I don’t understand why they wouldn’t talk with us before setting inflexible rules.  I would have told them how hard it is to find peanut-free cookies.   At kindergarten orientation, the teacher told me that when she has a student with severe allergies — she limits birthday snacks to store packaged/store-cut fruit.  To which I responded, good idea — but don’t do this on my account since I would send my daughter a separate snack anyway.  (I am afraid there might be sulfites or other preservatives on the fruit to which my daughter is sensitive, if not allergic.)  And that’s when the cookie decree was handed down via backpack express.

Liz asked why I didn’t buy Divvies cookies for the whole class.  It’s a matter of economics.  28 kids = 3 dozen cookies plus shipping.  These are kids she met 11 days ago.  Quite frankly, if I’m going to spend the money on Divvies cookies, I’d rather do it for kids we know, and who would appreciate it.

So — I feel lucky we’ve dodged the birthday snack bullet for the year.  The other celebrations will be easy, since I can pack whatever I want for my child.  I’ll be curious whether the rule might change for the rest of the year, given how hard it was to follow in September.  I’ll keep you posted.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 12th, 2008 at 8:37 pm and is filed under birthdays, food allergies, school. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.