We have had a little Maori boy and his family staying with us this and last week who has a bad possibly fatal reaction to peanuts.
His parents do not insist that our children refrain from peanut butter or that we ban peanut products. They appreciate it is their responsibility to alert us and to ensure that he does not eat what can harm him. We help as best we can and life has been great. We all go out eat out and all has been fine.
My daughter has a severe skin allergy to some products possibly gum or latex based. She is eight. It is HER responsibility to avoid band aids, some face paints and so on. We tell the teacher but appreciate that she may forget (and she has) but don't freak out. My daughter comes with me into the bush where there are plants and things that can cause very severe reactions and enjoys life. She also has moderately severe asthma but does what she wants and is not restrained. She has to find her limits herself and manage it herself.
The solution is not to inconvenience others and mess up our world by making it ever more artificial and causing children to fail to develop strong immune systems and yet more allergies because they did not play in the dirt and so on.
If you have a boy in a bubble, love and look after him by all means, but remember it is you who made the choice to 'let' him live so it is your responsibility to look after him not other peoples.
I'm sure that was the very same policy for all those kids whose toys, cots, and doors were painted with lead paints. It did not work then and it does not work now. Kids who have a mild reaction sure, they get a second chance, those whose reactions are more extreme, don't.
There was a chap on a TV programme, who knew he had a skin reaction to peanuts, and as you suggested he took great pains to avoid them, he was on a cycling trip along the Kennet and Avon canal. He stopped to have a bite to eat at a small shop. Bought a sandwich, took one bite, and despite treating himself with his eppie pen he died. 30 minutes from happy to dead.
All it took was a combination of factors; the sun, the exercise, the peanut oil on the glove of the person he served him his lunch. As you will be aware, most of the near deaths from anaphylactic shock are caused by things that are outside of the normal routine of the sufferer.
I’m not one for wrapping my child up in bubble wrap, nor am I one for exposing her to foolish risks. She is lucky that she is not allergic to anything, and from when she started to crawl, she has been exposed to all kinds of dirt. Other kids are not so lucky, and they are the ones who deserve the chance to be entertained safely.
If you want Mr Balloon man at your party, and you know that your kids are ok, or even if you know that they are not ok, but you are willing to take that risk, then that is 100% fine. However, if you're just some Joe going shopping with you family then I do not think anyone has the right to expose Joe’s kids to an unknown risk, a risk that Joe did not ask to be exposed to nor given a chance to prepare for.
Some old granny off shopping does not want to have to postpone her shopping as the entrance way is covered in soapy water from Mr Bubbles bubble machine, same goes for pregnant women.
I mean the one about the old lady was from the daily mail (so it must be lies all lies) and yet it was on a bbc show (beacons of truth and journalistic impartiality) so what is the true picture??
And jojo is probably right,tescos probably do sell party ballons. Why sell crackers, the bang might give someone a hart attack! Why sell bikes someone might drop it on their toe.
