It sounds stupid but I was genuinely socially ostracized by my allergies throughout elementary/middle school because, even though my teachers did follow the rules, I was the only person at the “nut free table” and I had two (2) people who’d sit with me (later 4 total when I was in a class where one other kid had an allergy and his one (1) friend came too.

By default I became the “person no one sits with” which ofc is a great way to get yourself more broadly ostracized, and the consensus among teachers was basically “Yeah that’s what you get,” which looking back now is a bizarre attitudes

It’s an extremely common setup in schools to literally just physically put a kid with allergies in a space off to the side which makes everyone else choose between spending time with The Whole Class, or that one kid, because sitting with them means you don’t get to be around anyone else! Of course most kids would pick the group.

In addition to regular school lunches, I’d end up separated out and usually not eating at all on field trips unless I managed to convince a teacher to bring my own food. Any packed-ahead field trip type lunches were NEVER safe, even if I requested a nut free one. The last time I had a “you’re not allowed to bring your own food, you’ll have a sack lunch. It’ll be allergy safe :)” and then they didn’t do the accommodation was my sophomore year of college.

The thing is, adults were and are always worse than kids, who very much acted how they did because a) they were in a system where they had to go to extraordinary measures to be around me and b) they were taught that following social norms > the safety of people around you*

Parents (of friends, classmates, or chaperoning school stuff) regularly got mad at me in public for “refusing” food I didn’t know was safe and demanded to my mom that I just try it because it was rude to say no. They modeled that behavior for their kids. There were people whose houses I couldn’t go to play dates for because they were actively hostile about food. I was told multiple times that someone would have invited me to their birthday, except that the allergy was “too hard to deal with”.

What having an allergy as a child taught me, actually, was that I can’t trust most adults with my safety even if they’re otherwise nice because they might view precautions as Rude. Even if they are the adults kids are told they should always put their trust in.

It absolutely fucked me up and made me weird-to-disordered about food in a way I wouldn’t have even if other people—ADULTS—would’ve watched out for me as a child. Schools are one of the worst places that can happen.

I want to apologize. I was a mom who told her kid that if she wanted a certain birthday cake she probably shouldn't invite the kid with the allergies.

My kid set me straight. The seven year old pointed to a poster in the laundry room and told me to shovel the ramp.

So I bought a cookbook. I bought the right ingredients. I did everything as though my child had the allergies I was working around: all nuts, eggs, and strawberries.

That little girl's mom hugged me.

She had snacks in her purse because she fully expected for no accommodations to be made. She cried. She told me that she knew her daughter was excluded from birthday parties. She knew she sat alone at lunch most days. But my kid, who adores peanut butter, would eat something else so she could sit with this woman's daughter.

The kids are alright. And, if we listen, us old people are capable of new tricks.

Heck yeah! Good on your daughter, and good on you for putting in that extra effort! It’s especially important for kids to have adult role models like that, because that’s where they learn whether something is “too much trouble,” when it’s “okay” to ignore or get mad at people, etc.

And it really means the world both to kids with allergies and their parents to know that, hey, this person gets it and can be trusted to be kind and safe. The experience my mom had of trying to talk to other parents about “please be careful or she will stop breathing,” and essentially getting “well that’s annoying and inconvenient of her!” in response were rough on her as well, so seeing people do that extra bit of work and just… be responsible for the kid they’re looking after for a few hours is super meaningful!

That sigh of relief knowing you don’t have to worry about it is joyous.

Thanks so much for sharing :)