Hello, Everyone, and thank you in advance for any guidance/suggestions you can provide.
Our son will be entering 9th grade next school year. We are meeting with the school this week (Wed.) to discuss his PA. As of right now, the school allows students to eat in the classrooms - not just lunch... anything, anytime, as long as it's OK with the teacher.
Our son is contact reactive.
By this point, we thought our son would be handling his PA himself at school, but with this school's policy we don't think that's safe enough.
What would you do?
My highschool was the same way and I never understood it. I think anything besides a bottle of water is unnecessary in the classroom. My 3 yr old daughter has PA and is also contact reactive and lately I have been wondering what I will do when she gets to HS (I know it's a long ways away!).
Have you been able to talk to the school about his PA? I read on one posts that someone took pictures of people reacting to PA to the school and that frightened them enough to ban peanuts.
How does he feel about it?
chelle.tovar,
Thanks for your response. :)
Our son is very self-confident. He isn't concerned about any potential "fall-out" from anyone; nor is he concerned with how anyone thinks of him. When asked about what he thinks we should do, he says, "Whatever you think you need to do."
However... he also has OCD... which totally stems from his PA. When his OCD flares up, he's afraid to eat... ANYthing. He washes his hands A LOT, and he won't touch anything with his hands. It can get VERY bad. Over this past summer, he lost 6 pounds in 2 weeks from refusing to eat. :(
So, this could get difficult on at least a couple levels. (I won't even go into his Tourette's...)
We will be meeting with the HS assistant principal on Wednesday. We have an IEP - for all the above mentioned reasons, and then some - so that will play into this significantly.
We don't want to have to be the trailblazers AGAIN, but we will, of course, if need be. We just thought this would have started getting easier by now.
As for your daughter, you're in the right place. This site is the BEST for support and information. You're never alone in this. Not here. :)
I absolutely agree! I love this website. Forgive me if I'm getting off subject of your question but, you said your son doesn't want to eat anything at times.. Is he even afraid to eat things that he knows 100% don't have peanuts? Yesterday, we bought my daughter some Valentine's day candy and she refused to eat any of it. She kept saying that it has peanuts and only Dumbo(the disney movie character) can eat it. We thought it was strange she was refusing CANDY and not trusting us. She did just about 2 months ago accidently eat a peanut given to her by a friend and we spent the night in the ER. At the time she didnt seem that scared of the whole incident but now I'm thinking otherwise.
In a word - yes. :(
I'm sorry to hear about your daughter's reaction and, now, fear. Maybe she just needs a little more time to process the whole ordeal. Or maybe she's already processed it and made some "decisions" based on what happened. Not not to trust you, but maybe not to trust certain foods for right now. And maybe that's not a totally bad thing.
Then again... thinking about the mess my son is in... geesh... such a fine line. :(
I'll post about the meeting tomorrow, if I can.
Looking forward to hearing how it goes. It seems like my daughter might just now be afraid of candy. And I guess like you said, that's not such a bad thing! She is still eating her normal food but won't touch any of her Valentine's Day candy!
I hope everything goes well tomorrow! Good Luck!
Sorry I couldn't post last night.
I'd like to say the meeting went well, but, truth is, the meeting went FAST. As soon as we all got settled (about 10-15 minutes after the official start time of the meeting which was 2:30), the AP announced that she had another meeting to attend at 3:00. :(
So, we conveyed our concerns - quickly - and agreed that we would all keep in touch. The basic message was, "Our son is coming and you need to be ready for him. We're getting his IEP ready."
That sounds confrontational, but it really wasn't. It was a fine first meeting; it was just so fast. I hope all our meetings aren't the same way.
I'll keep this thread up-to-date. Thanks, Everybody. :)
Update:
A few weeks ago, we had another meeting to start setting up our son's IEP/504 for high school. At that time, we were informed that the school would not be changing their "food allowed in the classrooms" policy. We were encouraged to go to the school board and request that the board adopt a "No Nut" policy.
Just FYI, this high school will have been the 4th school we have had to work with (elementary, 2 middle schools, and now this), and we have never been told to go to the school board.
So, we went to the board meeting and explained our situation. We explained that we are not asking for a "No Nut" policy, only that the food be taken out of the classrooms. There were no questions or discussions. I guess now we just wait...