Anxiety and Kids with Food Allergies

To Live In Fear or Not to Live In Fear: Dealing with Allergy Anxiety

The other day, a friend of my daughter’s came over.  My daughter was thrilled to have this gal pal spend several many hours at our home however I felt terrible that her friend, a kiddo with a severe peanut allergy, refused to eat a single thing in my house!  Yes we are not a peanut free household. My food allergic son is allergic to tree nuts, sesame, fish and coconuts however I’m pretty darn thoughtful and aware when it comes to kids and food allergies!  I mean, I’m super allergy mom, right?  The founder of AllerMates – makers of the cute allergy aware products for kids!   You can pretty much count on ME being very cautious but this particular girl happened to be anxious about her food allergies to the point where she would rather starve herself all day than eat something from anyone else home but her own including mine (despite my offering of a variety of safe options).   And while I pitied her for the fact that she lived with such anxiety in regards to her food allergies, I think at the same time I was maybe even a bit envious.   Because unlike this girl my son – the one with the food allergies, in my opinion seems to have the opposite problem. Caution is many many times thrown to the wind.

So today I want to pick your brain about allergy anxiety—or your kid’s lack thereof. Is your kid anxious, or not anxious enough when it comes to their food allergies?  I know from this girl’s mother that her allergies causes her a tremendous deal of anxiety.  Her one time experience with anaphylaxis at a very young age was all she needed.  At 12 years, I’m still reminding Ben to read food labels. He’s just a throw-caution-to-the-wind kind of kid despite two incidences where an EpiPen was warranted.

I’ve been thinking about how kids react to their allergy. Where their attitude toward it stems from. Parental influence, perhaps, or their own memories from a scary reaction? Maybe it’s as simple as plain-old personality traits. But I have to wonder, what’s the best way to be, if you could have your child be one way or another? I think it’s obvious each of us wants our kids to not live in fear, but to always be disciplined when it comes to food choices. Balance, you know? But how do we get there? How do we help them get there?

Moms – what have you done with your own kiddos?  Where have you had successes and even failures

–Please share your experiences..

Iris

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