An Open Letter to Parents in My Child's Classroom about His Peanut Allergy

Dear Parents,

I am the mother of the child with food allergies in your child’s class at school. My son’s particular allergy is peanuts. I am so sorry this often poses an inconvenience for you. I realize that shopping for Halloween candy or Valentine’s candy or classroom birthday treats is a pain because you have to bring peanut-free food because our children’s classroom has been deemed a peanut-free zone. I know that’s an imposition. I love Reese’s and Snickers and Butterfingers. They have always been my go-to candy, too. I’m sorry that you are always reduced to Dum Dums and Smarties and Tootsie Rolls when you’d rather bring “the good candy.” I completely understand how annoying it is to add one more rule to the foods you can bring into the school. At our school, it can’t be homemade and they ask that snacks be “healthy.” And then in our classroom they can’t contain peanuts. I know. Ugh. I truly apologize for making snacks and treats that much more complicated.

But I also thank you for sticking to the rules. I thank you from the very depths of my heart. You see, we live in fear every day of the peanut allergy. It’s not that we cower in a corner and never let our son leave our sights. But we are tempted too. As a parent of a young child with a severe peanut allergy, you realize a simple mistake could be made, a completely innocent oversight on his part or someone else’s, and your child could die. In fact, peanuts would kill our son faster than if someone fed him arsenic. And that’s not a metaphor or hyperbole. That’s a plain fact. A terrifying fact.

Just the other day, a very sweet mother of one of the kids on his baseball team offered him a sugar cookie after the game. We have, of course, taught him to always ask before he eats. He did, and the mother casually said, “Yeah, they should be fine.” It was a busy scene, eager little boys grabbing for their treats. I understand why she didn’t investigate in more detail. They were sugar cookies, after all. Fortunately my husband was there and saw the treats being handed out and got to the box before my son took one. My husband read the ingredient list, and to his horror found peanuts listed as an ingredient. He was startled and had a moment of panic for what might have been, and perhaps too eagerly expressed to the mother that the cookies do have peanuts and we just always have to read the ingredient list before we can give our son a food item, even one that “seems fine.”

She blew him off. No harm no foul. And I completely understand her response. But to us it was a brush with death. Had he bitten into that cookie, his first reaction would have been itchy lips. He would have swelled around his mouth and tongue. He would have started to salivate profusely. He would have known immediately that something was wrong. Without immediate intervention, he would have vomited, and the swelling would have gone to his throat and other parts of his upper respiratory system, would have closed off his airway, would have suffocated him while it sent him into cardiac arrest. At the first symptom, we would have administered his first epinephrine injection and then called 911. If the symptoms didn’t abate before an ambulance arrived, we would have administered another epinephrine injection. We would also have been praying with every ounce of our souls that God would get the ambulance there fast enough to save him.

For a family in Sacramento, California, in 2013, it didn’t arrive fast enough. They were at a family camp and their daughter, 13 years old, had a known allergy to peanuts. In the tiniest unthinking moment, the girl took a bite of a Rice Krispie treat. She knew immediately it had peanut butter in it. She told her mother. They administered Benadryl and three epinephrine injections. She was in cardiac arrest by the time the ambulance arrived. Her father, an MD, was unable to save her.

Just weeks before this incident, in St. George, Utah, another young boy, age 11, popped a pretzel in his mouth at a friend’s house. He did not know it was a peanut butter-filled pretzel. He died three days later at one of the finest children’s hospitals in the western United States.

For both children, these were such simple, innocent missteps. For us, it was the mom at the baseball game who assumed the cookies were fine, the woman at church who kindly made peanut butter bars for all the kids, and even my own father who very innocently handed my son a peanut butter Girl Scout cookie as a treat from grandpa. In each case these were completely innocent. We don’t harbor an ounce of ill will or blame for any of these circumstances. And in each case, we thank our Heavenly Father there was an aware adult who saw the situation and was able to intervene—my husband, a nurse practitioner, and my sister—before the allergen reached his mouth.

But when we think of what could have happened in each of these scenarios, it makes our blood run cold. Our child could have died, very quickly, if peanuts had entered his mouth.

We promise we are doing everything we can to protect him and to minimize your inconvenience as much as possible. We talk very openly to our son about the dangers of his allergy. We are teaching him to read ingredient lists himself. We have rules about never eating anything away from home without asking an adult to first read the ingredient list (not just the packaging describing the food – the actual ingredient list on the back). Often if we are unsure going into a situation, we will give him lunch or a snack to take with him and instruct him not to eat anything else. 

But he is young. So I do understand the inconvenience it poses on you as you bring food into the classroom or if my child comes to play at your house or if your child wants to sit by mine at lunch. I am so sorry, and I do everything I can to minimize the inconvenience to you at school by providing special safe treats for him in the classroom, by leaving his epinephrine in the classroom, and by training his teacher and other school staff to be an intermediary while he is still young enough to need one.

But I hope you also understand that I don’t impose this inconvenience because I’m “that” mom or because I don’t know how to relax. I do it because it a life-threatening condition. A little glob of peanut butter could literally take his life. In less than 30 minutes. Right in your child’s classroom.

Until we understand the peanut allergy better, and until techniques and treatments are perfected enough to be used in clinical settings (and there is hope that they will be), it’s what we live with. I am sorry you have to live with it too because your child is in my child’s class. But I thank you for your simple help by keeping this danger out of his classroom. If your child’s life were threatened and I could do something small to help, I assure you I would. With all of my heart I would.

Thank you for doing that for mine. Thank you.

Sincerely,

Lisa Ann Thomson