Friendly Support
Keep your food allergic teen safe by letting others know when, why and how to help in times of need
Keeping a food allergy a secret can be deadly. This crucial fact made international headlines last November when a 15-year-old Canadian girl died after kissing her boyfriend, who had eaten a peanut butter snack a few hours earlier. She was allergic to peanuts but hadn't told her boyfriend. Had he been informed, he might have avoided contact with her after eating food that contained peanuts. But he didn't know. The kiss sent her into anaphylactic shock and she died a few days later.
Secrecy about food allergies puts food-allergic people at risk and leaves friends feeling helpless in the wake of an emergency. Yet some teens with food allergies are reluctant to share that information with their peers. Add that to a strong desire to fit in and a penchant to take risks — both part of adolescence — and the mix can be a dangerous combination. So what can parents, families and friends do to help a food-allergic child become a teen who respects his or her allergies?
Starting Early
Acceptance of food allergies and education are instrumental in avoiding tragic outcomes like the Canadian incident, according to experts.
"The key is to start early and teach your child this is a medical condition. It's nothing to be ashamed of." says Anne Munoz-Furlong, founder and CEO of the Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Network (FAAN). You want your child to respect his or her allergy, she adds, while living life to the fullest extent possible.
Acceptance, knowledge and vigilance have been the mainstays of Tom and Kaye Kelly's approach to dealing with son Kevin's multiple food allergies and asthma. The Western Springs, Illinois, resident was diagnosed with egg, dairy and peanut allergies along with asthma at 5 1/2 months old. Now a 19-year-old freshman at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, Kevin has outgrown the egg and dairy allergies and the asthma but still copes with a peanut allergy. Experts say the peanut allergy, which can prompt reactions that range from mild to life-threatening, tends to be a lifelong condition.
From the outset, Tom and Kaye took the necessary precautions to keep Kevin safe, eliminating foods containing those allergens from his diet, making sure he always had safe snacks available at school and when visiting friends or traveling, and from the time Kevin was old enough to understand, teaching him about the foods he needed to avoid. And, of course, they educated family members, friends, caregivers and teachers about Kevin's allergies and how to care for him.
At a young age — before he could read — Kaye and Tom taught Kevin the scientific names for ingredients that signaled the presence of his allergens. That way other adults could read a food label to Kevin and he would know whether he could eat the food he was being offered.
Letting Go
All this was done with a proactive, matter-of-fact attitude, which helped make Kevin comfortable and confident about his ability to cope with his allergy. "You have to let it be a part of who you are," he says.
Munoz-Furlong says that as children grow, parents need to give them more responsibility for their allergy so that they feel comfortable with the condition. The goal, she says, "is having someone who can successfully manage their food allergy" by the time they leave home for college or work.
That's what Tom and Kaye did as Kevin grew up, although they've encountered their share of unexpected incidences. What they all agree was the scariest accidental exposure to peanuts occurred when Kevin was in sixth grade — and halfway across the world from his parents. |
