My children don’t have food allergies but several of their friends do–and from those children and their parents, I have learned a lot about the day-to-day concerns (and fears) that food allergies involve. I reached out to some of those parents for a recent blog post I did for Parents magazine, “What Parents of Kids With Food Allergies Want You To Know” and one of them wrote so passionately about the topic in an email to me that I asked if she would guest post here.
By Erin McIntyre
My son has life-threatening allergies to several foods, and I recently had an experience that brought my deepest fear to light.
I thought that I was handling everything perfectly. It turns out I was wrong. It turns out that I am way more scared than I ever thought. It turns out that a few words from strangers have the power to make me crumble in a way I never expected. It turns out that the ignorance of others can’t just be brushed off as ignorance, because ignorance and lack of empathy on the part of others could be fatal for my son.
Recently, I saw a woman post an allergy alert on a Facebook community forum. She had been served peanut sauce at a restaurant even though she had alerted them that her son had an allergy. She spoke to a manager then left without eating.
Anyone who knows how dangerous accidental ingestion is understands how frightening that experience would be. It would be like the kitchen staff accidentally pouring rat poison on your food instead of Parmesan cheese. The difference is that if you accidentally ate the rat poison, you would have more time to react before it became fatal than my son would if he ate a food he is allergic to.
I opened the comments section of the Facebook thread. I thought people would chime in about which restaurants do a great job with special allergy requests (and which do not). But I was shocked at what I saw: people were shaming the mother for even taking her child to a restaurant that has peanut items and a warning on the menu.
There were restaurant employees complaining about how hard it is to work in a restaurant. One commented, “I would recommend never going out to eat…it’s important to think about what the workers have to deal with too.” That comment got 14 likes, while the woman’s response (“We still eat out because we want our kids to learn how to manage their food and survive in modern society”) got just one like.
One man wrote, “I assume all who consumed the food are dead now?” (13 likes) He went on for more than a dozen additional comments. He called the woman a “whiny allergic type”. (16 likes) He said he didn’t “see it as the rest of the planet’s responsibility to bubble wrap itself to protect my beautiful snowflake”. (10 likes) I felt physically ill. Trolls are a fact of life on Facebook—but why was the community I live in encouraging this type of ignorance on the subject of life-threatening food allergies?
I’ve known for a long time that there’s not enough awareness of the dangers of food allergies. But I had no idea it was this bad. I had no idea that parents of food-allergic children were actually hated by some people. We’re just trying to keep our children alive. I’m always scared in public eating situations, but I have never been more scared than I am right now.
Yes, my son is mine to protect. But maybe you would want to protect him too if you knew a little about him. He is seven years old. He is my joy, my angel, my sweet boy. He has a curious mind and asks deep questions about the world, about science, about animals, about the Bible. He cried the first time he saw someone kill a bug. He threw a fit when I killed a wasp to protect him. He thought there was a better way, where we all could have survived. He won the school’s “empathy” award. He has empathy for you, so please have empathy for us.
I am moved to tears by the few very wonderful people who do take on my son as theirs to protect, like the parents who pack special allergen-free lunches for their children who do not suffer from allergies, just so that my son has friends to sit with. For those parents, I am grateful beyond words. And I am grateful for the EpiPen, a wonderful tool that we carry with us everywhere we go. But I also know that there have been cases when the EpiPen wasn’t enough to save someone’s life.
I promise to respect your children. I promise to protect your children from whatever may harm them when they’re in my care. But please respect us too. Please don’t roll your eyes when we order his food. Please know that we don’t want to be annoying, that this isn’t a choice. Please think twice before you criticize us online, because it hurts more than you can imagine.
I cannot bear the thought of losing my son to food most people get to eat without fear of death. And there is so much misunderstanding, much more than I ever realized. So I will keep trying my very best to help people understand. Because that’s the job I have been given for the life of my son.
Erin McIntyre is a full time mother of two during the day. At night she is a full time manager of a bar, as well as a stand-up comedian and public speaker. Occasionally she sleeps, but that is very rare.
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Great post!! Have also encountered surprising hostility when talking about severe food allergies. I’m one of seven children, and only one of us has a severe allergy. We all grew up in the same environment, eating the same things, but only my brother’s throat closes when he encounters peanuts. Yet, people still blame the allergy sufferer and/or their family… as if we did something wrong to bring this on. I think, generally, people are becoming more informed and aware. It’s just the vocal minority that scares me!
Thank you.
It’s the bravery of being out of range. Most people troll because they can be anonymous or feel free of being targeted. I often have to go directly at a person and ask if the roles were reversed, what would they do? I used to use the analogy of a car speeding don the road and THEIR child stepping off the curb. Any real parent would pull the child to safety, but something isn’t right because I honestly think people do not realize the true danger of anaphylaxis.Which also makes role reversal impossible for them to understand what they would do if their child had a severe allergy.
You also had to polar opposite responses that probably the sam people “liked.” One was to keep your child home and never go out to eat, and the other was about all who consumed the food are dead now. There is no logic (obviously) if the same person likes both these comments because on says just eat it, and the other says protect the child yourself. They are angry at the world and are lashing out at what they perceive as the weak. Little do thy know how strong you have to be to continue to advocate for your child, for all kids with allergies, for everyone. People are often ignorant of how strong it takes to be compassionate in the face of adversity. As noticed by the trolling, it’s easier to lash out and believe it will never affect you.
Stay strong Erin. You know you’re raising the right kind of person when they have compassion for all.
Thank you.
Thanks so much for sharing this post. I’m someone that doesn’t have to consider food allergies, for me or my child. I’d never write what was written but I have to admit I have lacked empathy. I don’t think we can dismiss your experience as “a bunch of trolls”. I think they are people that feel stretched and unseen and unheard and don’t have the energy or ability to extend to others what they don’t feel they receive. It doesn’t make it okay but it also means that it is far more complicated than a group of “mean losers”. Unfortunately, I don’t know that what you wrote will move them, but it did move me. All I can assure you is that I promise to do my best to protect yours like you would protect mine, because yours and mine are really all ours. And maybe that way we can touch someone lashing out from the shadows. Empathy always makes sense, food or otherwise.
Thank you.
I know firsthand that restaurants are bad about this. My son had extensive (but not life-threatening) food allergies when he was younger, and I found that when you ask a waiter a question like, “Is there dairy in that?” even if they mean well, there’s simply no relying on their answer. They’ll confidently assure you, “No, absolutely not” and then if you say, “Hmm. . . that kind of looks like butter” they say, “Oh, well yes of course the chef put butter on it.” My son is still allergic to wheat, and when we order his hamburger without the bun, about 50% of the time it shows up with it. Luckily, he’s not celiac, so just having touched a bun isn’t going to hurt him.
So I understand how frustrating it is to be unable to eat out, especially on car trips, etc. – in our case, for a long time our only option was sushi, which we could rarely afford – but on the other hand, if it’s truly life-threatening, I can’t see taking the risk on what happens behind the doors of a restaurant kitchen. Having worked in one myself, I sincerely doubt any restaurant can guarantee you no cross-contamination unless the whole restaurant is free of that allergen across the board. (On the other hand, pouring peanut sauce on the entree after being told no peanuts is a different level of problem, I have to admit!)
I suspect some of the nastiness might be coming from frustrated waitstaff . Customers often treat them like dirt, and more and more people with mild allergies, food intolerances, and lifestyle food preferences hassle servers about them, and then the servers are tempted to dismiss all such issues as imaginary. I’ve read that celiac sufferers are having the same problem: so many non-celiacs now claim they can’t eat gluten that food servers don’t realize how serious an issue it is for a true celiac, and they’ll say something is “gluten free,” even though it was cooked in the same deep fryer as the breaded stuff, for instance.
In all fairness, many of the people who “liked” the criticism, the people some of you call “trolls” because they disagree with you, these people are making a reasonable point. Why do you insist upon bringing your impaired child into restaurants you know serve “rat poison”, as you call it? Why must everyone conform to your standards? If your child was sight or hearing impaired would you insist on sending them out to cross the busiest streets alone in defiance of normal traffic patterns? If your child was physically frail would you demand that he/she must be allowed to play on a basketball or football team, and all other players on both teams must simply tone down the game to accommodate? There are reasonable limits to how much mileage you should expect to wring out of your child’s infirmity. You really cannot expect affirmation from people who have normal busy lives of their own to live. And perhaps worst of all, you are conditioning your child to believe people are out to poison him/her. Your sense of entitlement is sad, and that I can understand and empathize with. Surely my comment will be censored to protect everyone’s delicate sensitivities from another mean “troll”, at least the sensitivities of that small minority of families who would prefer to live in a sheltered world and the even smaller minority who would force the world to conform to their own arbitrary standards..
Your analogies don’t make sense at all. A blind person being forced out into traffic or a disabled person playing sports is completely different than requesting food at a restaurant. I don’t like mushrooms, and when I order veggie pizza I ask them to hold the mushrooms. No one explodes at me for having preferences or admonishes me for forcing them to, as you call it, conform to my standards. Come on. And then you attack her “sense of entitlement”? I think we’re all entitled to eat at a restaurant without DYING, hello. I expect that the chef cooks my chicken fully no matter his busy schedule so I don’t get food poisoning, why shouldn’t she request that they don’t put peanut sauce on the dish she ordered? I just went out to eat with a friend who is extremely allergic to bleu cheese, so she asked that her chicken wings come without it. Did the server huff and sigh and criticize her “infirmity” and scold her for even ordering wings with her allergy? No, asshole; he said, “ok” and brought it how she asked. I think you need to educate yourself so you don’t come across as a total lunatic before you comment on subjects such as these.
Maybe the “trolls” are reacting badly to being disrespected like this, being called “asshole” and so forth. In my experience waitstaff doesn’t huff or puff when treated respectfully and when asked courteously. But get up on your high horse and make a scene, bludgeon the waitstaff into a pissing match over your so very special needs and, yeah, you’re going to get some blowback. Which, I suspect, is just what you are looking for. Nothing makes a spoiled brat feel more special than to be at the epicenter of a public tantrum. Grow up. Become responsible. Become respectful of others and see if they don’t react in similar fashion. Act like an entitled ass and see if you aren’t treated like one. Too bad small kids have to be dragged through this. I isn’t teaching them a very good lesson. So there are two sides to this issue, even if you can only see your own side all the time. This “discussion” may feel uncomfortable but clearly it is necessary.
I feel very disappointed with the direction that these comments have taken. The point of this post was that we should have empathy for each other, but now it has devolved into name calling. If people want to yell at each other, they can do it elsewhere. I am closing the comments thread of this post.
I find it amazing that on an article asking for a little empathy the author is STILL being attacked, called entitled, having her child called a “spoiled brat”. This is exactly why the article is written!! My child has a life threatening food allergy, if we find that we are going to eat out I research, will call and speak to staff, and am EXTREMELY respectful of the waitstaff. I have been very lucky, everyone I have dealt with has been very caring and nice, but then again I treat them respectfully. I routinely over tip because I know we’re not the easiest table to have, and I always appreciate waitstaff going the extra mile for us. I know lots of food allergy parents, NONE that I know would barge into a restaurant making demands and “wanting blowback”, what we want is for our child to not have an allergic reaction. To peoples solutions that we should “not take our children to restaurants, on planes, or out in public”, give me a break. People live with ALL KINDS of disabilities, and shouldn’t they be allowed to? Should a person in a wheelchair not be allowed to go out in public because they might get in your way? Maybe we should take everyone with a disability and put them on an island as not to inconvenience you? I hesitated to even comment because I’m sure I will be attacked, called entitled, have my child called a spoiled brat, etc. As for “becoming responsible”, oh believe me, I am responsible. I live in constant fear of my child DYING from something as small as a peanut. I don’t ask people not to eat nuts around my child, I remove my child from the situation. My child’s friend are SO empathetic, they constantly look out for her and will make sure the food is safe that is around her. In my opinion, the adults who are commenting with such venom should take a lesson from a some 9 year olds on the subject of empathy. Hopefully the next generation of children will be more tolerant and not so vicious to a person who is unfortunate enough to be born with a life threatening allergy.
H Kristen–thanks for your comment. I’m publishing it because it looks like you hit submit at the same time I posted that I was closing further comments to this post. So in fairness, I am approving it but will not be publishing any additional comments after this. I appreciate people’s perspectives but this has taken an ugly turn and I’m done.