Let them eat peanut butter at school?

[astrid]

I risk sounding like a completly insensitive bitch but here i go anyway
all over the world mothers watch their kids die from bad water, lack of food , bullets in the head, raping bastards etc
we worry about allergies
if a child is allergic to anything they know, at least by the age of primary school , not to share food, they should know how to use an epipen.
these kids can be exposed to nuts on a theatre seat or a swing on the playground.
I have a friend who is a haemopheliac, as a child ,???? happened
I have a son with a bone condition, possiable amputation of leg if exposed to trauma of life.
do I blame scouts when leg fractures again , no
do I try to balence his problem with reality, yes
do I expect the rest of the community to have a complete understanding of risk, no
all I can do is take reasonable precautions and cross my fingers

we all love our kids
to expect the rest of the community to be 100% alert is asking them to be vigilant about problems that they have no understanding of.
these are our problems to bear and we live with it
it is our responsibility to educate our own kids.

astrid
PS schools keeping a supply of common use Epipens might help.
PPS my son has foregone peanut butter sandwitches in school and kinda

[Wood Butcher]

PS schools keeping a supply of common use Epipens might help.

Sounds like a good idea but they cost $100 each and only have a shelf life of 12 months. I know as I carry one due to a rather severe allergy to bees. (If I get stung I sort of have trouble breathing )

[AlexS]

I'd be surprised if schools don't have them. The pre-school where SWMBO worked had them and staff had to be trained how to use them.

[astrid]

I know
a single patent at our school requested that her two highl alergic sons carry their pens in their bags
school response was that this was a danger to other kids and she had to provide two each, one for school nurse, one for classroom. which by the way is locked at lunch and recess.

so a single parent has to find 400 per year in case another child pricks themselves.( i understand that this usually results in a short period of hyperactivity)
this demonstrates the point I am trying to make, that fear of the few a s o l s that threaten to sue, makes the rest of our lives a misery.

Public institutions need to stand up to this or we will end up like england, where teachers and the general public are to afraid to go to the assistance of a child in distress for fear of being accused of child abuse.
the courts in fact, rarely get it wrong and these threats rarely get heard.

we have to be responsiable for ourselves

astrid

PS this is not to take away public responsibility to help those in economic need.
homeless, refugees, mentaly ill, abused men women and children, indiginous you get the idea

[Wood Butcher]

The epipens are on the PBS, so as a single mum she would get them for $5 each.

[Gingermick]

Now every school has at least 2 kids with allergies to nuts not to mention the raft of other things and it seem that about 1 in 10 kids have asthma......What the hells going on??????

I agree with the too clean sentiment. My youngest (3.5yr old girl) hardly ever gets sick. And she doesn't seem to eat any meals, so I assume that she must live on bits of food she picks up off the floor and they give her little doses of germs and she builds antibodies.
My eldest boy has nose problems and the middle one is better, but the youngest is very robust.

[Sebastiaan56]

I worked with a guy who had a severe nut allergy, I was his manager but I didnt know this fact. Another staff member was chopping hazelnuts 1 metre away from him and his face started swelling as we watched. He had his pen in his bag and we got him out of there really quick. Ended up taking three days to recover. He was ready for the reaction, we werent.

Some people are severely allergic,

[bsrlee]

Fairly recent thought in researchers into allergies IS that we are too clean. Seems that all those intestinal worms & bugs produced a wide range of anti-allergy chemicals in self defence, and the result was that humans didn't react to a lot of things.

As one example (from Science in the City, Australian Museum 2006) is the treatment of Chrone's Disease - an immune system malfunction that results in the immune system attacking the body - is the regular application of Pig Whip Worm eggs. The whip worms can't reproduce in the human gut, but can live for a month or so, and produce suitable anti-allergen chemicals that cause the immune system to quieten down.

Strange to say, all those 'Third World' countries who are too poor to have allergies also have a wide variety of intestinal parasites.

[Justin]

Knew 2 kids with asthma when I was growing up both were sickly looking kids with curly hair and parents that smoked heavily. Don't know if the smokes had anything to do with it.

My best mate's an asthmatic, he swears that it's because of his smoker dad - lots of trips in the car with his old man smoking at the wheel.

Justin.

[black1]

We had to fill out a form giving our 14 y.o. son's High School permission to put a Band-Aid (or presumably any equivalent product) on cuts or scratches which warranted it.


Andrew

my son cant use bandaid but can use elastoplas and the war office cant use elastoplas but can use bandaids.

[Bleedin Thumb]

Getting back to the asthma theme - I developed asthma about 3 years ago, fairly severe.

About 8 weeks ago I went on a diet that deleted any processed carbohydrates from my diet, no pasta, rice, bread, alcohol! etc. Not only did I lose 5 kg in two weeks but for some reason I could go for days without the Ventolin!!!

Unfortunately I have since fallen off the diet...damn my love of beer! (though still off processed carbs), put on some weight and have a chest infection, that I put down to 3 weeks of renovation and painting, still don't feel like I have asthma though.

This begs the question, Is the amount of process food that we consuming making us sick?

The answer for me is an emphatic yes, as I have proven it. Try giving up total carb intake for a two weeks (except those in salads and vegies, except spuds etc)and you realise how much our diet is composed of processed food.