With an Allergic Kid, You Prepare, Educate, and Pray

By Sean Kelley

For the last four months, my wife and I have become virtual experts on our son’s severe food allergies. We’ve learned new ways to cook (flax-seed meal makes an excellent egg substitute), we’ve become good at evaluating situations (”That kid’s got peanut-butter crackers!”), and we both know how to treat anaphylactic schock.
But the most important thing we’ve learned? How to relax. Read More

How Do You Get Your Kids to Eat Their Veggies?

By Sean Kelley

Despite our son’s rather challenging food allergies, my wife and I have had it easy as parents. In the four-plus years since our daughter’s birth, we’ve been to the emergency room just once. There have been no scary choking moments, no broken bones, no serious bouts with the flu.

Both our kids sleep through the night and take naps (they’ve even been known to request them). And they eat their veggies—or at least they did until recently. Four-year-old Elise, who would eat peas, corn, green beans, and carrots as a toddler, began putting up resistance around age 3. She now eats only green beans and refuses to try anything new. Read More

News of Allergy Cures Doesn’t Get My Hopes Up

By Sean Kelley

The week that my son was diagnosed with severe food allergies, Duke University Medical Center researchers reported that a peanut-allergy cure might be only five years away. At the time, I reacted the same way I do to claims that scientists are on the verge of curing diabetes: I’ll believe it when I see it.
I’m not a natural cynic. I tend to trust people in general as well as information from authoritative sources. Want to play a practical joke on someone? I’m your man. Read More

Food-Allergy Challenge: Putting Comfort Food Back on the Menu

By Sean Kelley

There is nothing like sharing comfort food with family, especially children. In our house, the two staples of comfort—peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and mac ‘n’ cheese—have taken a beating since our son Graeme’s food allergies were diagnosed.

PB&J seems completely beyond our reach (since Graeme is violently allergic to peanuts), but we’ve been working on the latter. A reader of this blog suggested we try Amy’s Rice Mac & Cheese (which doesn’t contain any ingredients that Graeme is allergic to), but I was skeptical. First, we had already tried using rice pasta, but it was not popular with Graeme (some is still stuck to the ceiling near his eating area, where he launched it in protest), and it was not popular with me, either (I resisted throwing it, but I thought about it!). Read More

Finding Our Son an Allergen-Free Day Care

By Sean Kelley

The first day of day care or school can be a traumatic event for both parents and children . When we dropped our daughter off at her day school two years ago, my wife and I were moved to tears. But, facing this decision recently for our son, who has severe food allergies, was not only emotional, it was scary.

At the end of June, we sent our son Graeme to day care for the first time. Before then, he’d been in a few parent’s-day-out programs, but for the most part he was in the care of his grandmothers or us. Initially our daughter’s facility looked like an option, but it soon became apparent that, while it was a great place for her, it was not the spot for a kid who can’t be within a football field’s distance of an open jar of peanut butter. We had to look elsewhere. Read More