Reply to Please don’t let your children eat common allergens while playing on public playground equipment

Forum Index » General Parenting Discussion

Reply to "Please don’t let your children eat common allergens while playing on public playground equipment "

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]When my kids were playground age I never let them have nut butters on a playground. It just seems a common courtesy. They can have it at home plenty; they don't "need" it for a snack outside. I'm sorry your kid has such severe allergies, it must be terrifying :([/quote]

Why stop at ON the playground? If the nut allergy is so deadly that whatever is eaten at home can find it's way to the park, then OP really needs a complete ban on these foods. Because the magical thinking that the park equipment is clean as long as nobody is currently eating peanut products while ON the equipment is bizarre and nonsensical and sounds dangerous to kids like OPs child. Why risk the park at all?
[/quote]

This is so moronic. I don't get why you PPs are so triggered. Someone's kid could die. She's asking for courtesy and awareness. You lose your mind bc someone asked you to be considerate. You create an outlandish hypothetical about banning peanuts. Other PPs bemoan the loss of FREEDOM. It's a MF nut. It's not the end all be all. No one is asking for a ban, just awareness of the other kids who could die from it.

Though given how hard it was to get folks to mask during COVID when millions died, I understand that asking for courtesy for children with allergies is next to impossible

[b]I'm just in constant awe and what total self absorbed jerks Americans are. We're really freaking terrible to each other.[/b] [/quote]

Ok but- there is a big difference between "do you mind not giving them that nut snack on the playground/ not giving them milk on the playground because my child is allergic" and "no one should ever eat foods in public because someone could be allergic".  OP isn't saying she has asked people to put snacks away and they've refused.  She is saying that they should pre emptively put all snacks away, and wash hands well, prior to playing in a public park.  Which is unreasonable.  If she asks someone to please put the snack away because of an allergy, most people who aren't jerks would comply. But no I'm not going to tell my kid he can't eat his granola bar at the park because it's possible that someone, somewhere, is allergic to an ingredient in it. [/quote]

I think the problem is precisely what you are seeing on this thread. Can you imagine having a child with a severe nut allergy in this world and dealing with the litany of PPs who have insulted her kid as "gene deficient" "Immunocompromised - in italics to insulate non-existence", and the other completely cruel, below the belt taunts at what is a preschooler? I just cannot believe what people with chronic illnesses and/or conditions are up against. So yes, she is asking for consideration and keeping the nut products at bay. It is not unreasonable. It offends no one's sensibilities as it is a quite relatively small ask considering.

But in light of the pages of DCUM terrorists, I think this pretty much sums this up - [b]I'm just in constant awe and what total self absorbed jerks Americans are. We're really freaking terrible to each other.[/b][/quote]

NP. I agree we should all exercise a bit of common empathy, but OP's post wasn't exactly looking for friends. And THAT is the problem with America. You can't find two people who can agree to compromise on anything. Rather than being willing to come to the middle and acknowledge that given how common peanut allergies are we probably shouldn't let our kids eat PB&J sandwiches while playing on the playground equipment, we have the two sides of "my kid has an allergy so you need to alter your entire life to accommodate them" and "I don't give a flying fig about anyone's kids but my own so if you kid dies because they're allergic to my kid's favorite snack then, well, survival of the fittest."

It's the same issue with anything - gun control, abortion, you name it. People say things that are inflammatory and/or obnoxious and it just drives people to their separate sides instead of promoting compromise. OP could have posted asking for people's ideas about how to handle the situation. She could have acknowledged that her kid isn't any more important than anyone else's kid (I'm not saying the desire to eat a PB&J outweighs the risk of death to a kid, but you have the mom of the autistic kid saying that's all her son eats, which we all knew was coming...). But she didn't. Instead she posted with a judgmental tone about kids eating some sort of high-end sounding food (I've never heard of these products before so maybe I'm just not cool enough) and she assumed that whoever let their kid do that was overtly flouting the safety of OP's kid, instead of acknowledging that parents who don't have kids with allergies spend little to no time thinking about allergens on a regular basis.

So I'm not dismissing OP's concerns for her child. That genuinely sounds like a very difficult way to live, and I'm sad OP and her child have to deal with that. And I'm not dismissing some PP's points that the onus is on OP, not others, to shelter her kid. But rather than running to opposite sides of the spectrum, why can't everyone, starting with the OP, find a way to be more reasonable and compromise?[/quote]

This is such a reasonable comment.

Also, I find it interesting that you can find comments on this thread saying “Only in America are parents so selfish they won’t accommodate a kid with a deadly allergy” and “only in America can you find parents so entitled they think they can force everyone to change to accommodate one kid.” Both are exaggerations, and there’s also a kernel of truth in both. We live in a highly individualistic culture the creates conflicts like this by always putting one individual’s needs against another’s, instead of looking for common sense solutions that serve the vast majority of needs.

It’s also very American to assume the only solution to this problem is the yell at individual parents to fix it themselves. In many other cultures, the obvious answer to this would be:

- make sure playgrounds have designated eating areas away from equipment
- provide a sanitation station so kids and adults can wash hands after eating
- post informative signs to make people aware of the importance of washing hands before and after eating

In other countries, the well-being of children is viewed as a common good and instead of expecting individual parents to solve everything themselves, there is an assumption that society plays a collective role that can relieve burdens on families.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics