When Is the Bullying of Children with Allergies Legitimate? When It's A Defence of Civil Liberties?

Slideshow of peanuts and allergy medication.

When I was little my brother used to rub soap over my pillow so that I would wake up the next morning with a severely swollen face, deep-red colouring and blisters. He would occasionally do the same to my clothing and bedding. I would probably have retaliated if it had been any easier to find blackcurrants and disguise them in other foods. You expect this sort of behaviour from young children. I have been very disappointed to learn that similar behaviours persist in some adults. It seems that direct bullying is not sufficient of a burden for some school-children with allergies, they now have to cope with indirect bullying from the parents of children who don't have allergies. It is particularly nauseating that some of these parents seek to cloak their bullying and viciousness in a defence of civil liberties.

The New York Times carries an article by Judith Warner on this topic (it's a subscription piece so there is no direct link): Domestic Disturbance. Allergic Girl of Please Don't Pass the Nuts carries both the full text of the article and a useful discussion in Mean Grown-Ups.

There's an absolutely horrifying article in the current issue of Child Magazine about the food fight now raging between parents of children with life-threatening food allergies and parents of the allergy-free. The latter, apparently, have started to push back against "peanut-free" school regulations to assert their children's natural right to eat whatever they darn well please.

The stories are downright chilling: One parent joked on a message board about having his daughter dress as "the Death Peanut" on Halloween. A North Carolina father at a parent-teacher organization meeting said he'd continue to send his child to school with peanut butter sandwiches and "tell his child to 'smear' the peanut butter along the hallway walls." Another father sent his child to school with a "disguised" sandwich that had peanut butter hidden in the middle of the bread.

There are many ways to read this behavior. On the one hand, it reflects widespread ignorance about the scope and severity of some food allergies, and it also reveals plain old laziness. Some parents and educators sense that peanut worries have come to verge on paranoia. And then there's a sense that some parents are going nuts about food generally.

I sympathize with that feeling – up to a point. There was a time a few years ago when I, too, conflated the anxiety of the merely food-averse with the fears of those whose kids were threatened by potentially fatal allergies. A teacher once told me about a preschool mom who took to following her daughter room to room, and screamed at staff members if they didn't walk the halls with EpiPens strapped to their bodies. The teacher felt that this mother was ridiculous, and I did, too. It's easy to turn a quasi-mocking eye on someone who behaves in this way.

That is, it was easy for me until another mother described to me the experience of watching her son nearly die in her arms after an accidental peanut ingestion. Getting into her skin – feeling the fear and vulnerability that drove her to, she admitted, sometimes maddening behavior – changed everything for me. I'd like it if all parents could at some point force themselves to do this kind of mental exercise. Empathy can be painful – but a little goes a long way.

And empathy appears to me now, in much of what I read, to be in particularly short supply, not only among different groups of parents (all those "wars," Mommy and otherwise) but in the increasingly punitive attitudes of school systems and legislators toward parents and, by extension, their kids. Frequently, I find, there seems to be a kind of studied harshness in the air, an in-your-face obtuseness that tries to pass itself off as some sort of virtue or push for justice...

In every case where there are breakdowns of empathy, children are the ones who really suffer. Whether it's the peanut-allergic kids Child Magazine found ostracized in classrooms and cafeterias, or those whose newly-revealed B.M.I. scores crash-landed them into the world of the "fat," or those whose parents are additionally alienated from school districts that consider them near-criminals – it's the kids who fall victim in the crossfire of adult self-righteousness and officiousness.

Allergic Girl also links to an interesting discussion by Mrs Zum: It's A Sad, Sad World. Mrs Zum discusses a news item about a local debate that has made it into the Connecticut press:

A Connecticut 6-year-old's extreme allergy is pitting concerns about the boy's safety against the right of his schoolmates to enjoy an American classic - a peanut butter sandwich.

Mrs Zum has reproduced some of the breathtaking comments that were posted to the paper. The rebarbative attitude in this comment is typical:

Perhaps if the child is so medically fragile that he cannot be present in a school where peanuts are, he ought to be educated in a different setting - perhaps homeschooled or in a private school.It's a shame he has an allergy, but why make everyone else suffer?

Children suffer because they can't eat a peanut butter sandwich between the hours of 9-3? I've run workshops in pre-schools where more than half of the pupils have a declared food allergy. I don't think that it is possible for schools to ban all substances for which their pupils declare an allergy or even anaphlyaxis. However, I do think that children can readily live without being bullied by proxy by the parents of other children. I agree with one of the blog commenters who writes:

my viewpoint is slightly different than the norm I suppose. I haven't asked my son's school to ban any foods. You see he is ana [anaphylactic] to dairy. Can you imagine if I asked the school to ban all dairy products? So if a school has a "no peanut policy" in place due to allergies and then my son comes along with a dairy allergy (which is just as serious for my son) and they then have to ban that too. What about the next child who is ana to egg, then that has to go too. You can see that it has the potential to become very complicated.

It is unquestionable that when children have allergies, it is psychologically gruelling. In the US, several hospitals are devising support programmes for affected families.

In a study of 17 families with children with anaphylaxis, the authors describe the profound psychosocial impact on parents of knowing an illness can cause death. "I was completely shocked and surprisingly emotional," says Stefanie Jones, who burst into tears when daughter Darby was diagnosed four months ago with egg, milk, wheat, and peanut allergies. "I realized I'm going to have that weird kid at the party with the dairy-free, prune juice cookies."

Children, of course, bear the brunt. "The emotional toll is huge," says Muñoz-Furlong. "It tends to wear them down, particularly after they have a reaction." Some children lose the ability to trust people. They may want to stay home all the time within a controlled environment. If they have a reaction at home, they may become afraid that even their parents can't control the allergy. Others are fearful of food or develop eating disorders. They might become hypochondriac, phobic, or suffer from panic attacks or post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms.

Parents can be exhausted by the effort involved in proving a milk/peanut-free playdate for their children. Paradoxically, because so many parents claim 'fashionable' allergies for their children, it may undermine a full understanding of how deadly serious allergies are for other children.

I don't know what a satisfactory solution to the issue of allergens in the school and wider environment is. I do know that asserting your own right to send peanut butter sandwiches into school and bullying children under the cloak of civil liberties is not even a vague contribution to the solution.