Eh, I confess to being jaded by moms who are way bonkers over “protecting” their child. We have had moms who refuse to bring their child to the office if we cannot guarantee that there are no kids who have eaten peanuts recently in the waiting room, who want to know if I have eaten gluten in the last couple days before I can examine their child. Her request to have a couple rows peanut free is not unreasonable, and it does sound, from her telling, that the response from the flight crew was out of line. But I agree that there is probably more to it. My response to helicopter parents is not usually positive, but that is a professional hazard.
(I have to confess I chuckled at “No Nut Traveller.” Yeah, I’m 12 at heart.)
I am surprised, in that I thought tiny, dry pretzels had replaced peanuts on every flight I have been on for ages. I couldn’t get a peanut if my life depended on it.
For sure you see way more of this crap than I do. And at least in my corner of academia, we’ve begun referring to some of them as “lawnmower parents.” They’re hovering so close in that they make helicopters seem far distant.
Heard the term “bulldozer parents” the other day. They crush everything ahead of their kids so they never have to struggle or overcome anything. The consequence is the first time they do run into an obstacle, they are clueless.
One of my daughters spent two years in a class with a child with multiple allergies and medical issues, and the mother informed all of the parents that no one who entered the classroom at pick-up or drop-off, including the parent(s) involved, would be allowed to have eaten peanuts, any type of tree nuts, any type of soy (and I think I’m forgetting a few other basic ingredients) for breakfast, and nothing with those ingredients could be in anyone’s lunches.
As a vegetarian family, lunches were usually leftovers from dinner the night before, so this hit us extraordinarily hard. Imagine not being allowed to eat a significant part of your diet for all 3 meals a day, 5 days a week, for 2 years!
Well, according to the teachers, it was a requirement. And they wouldn’t let me transfer her out to a different class.
ETA: I suppose I should point out that the other family was well known, powerful, rich and connected, and I was a single mother, and (heaven forfend) vegetarian to boot. We were in very different places in terms of rights.
I guessing if the shoe had been on the other foot, and your kid had the allergy, that the ban would not have happened for the entire class… You would probably have been told to suck it up or get out…
Multiple examples over the years of our family not being treated equally to others. Nothing that would ever hold up in court, it just made things unnecessarily difficult.
the article quotes the airline as saying they don’t serve pretzels. i think it’s that the mother was requesting the crew inform the rows around her son in case those people brought food or snacks with them.
serious question: can a peanut allergy really be that bad? at that level, it seems you could never eat in a restaurant, go to a movie theater, etc.
It can be. I can’t be in the room when my wife is making peanut butter icing, the mixer aerosolizes enough to make me ill. Eating at 5 Guys was out of the question (not sure if they still have bags of peanuts everywhere now-a-days, but the used to.) Walking past the door would make me wheeze. It can be pretty severe.
I told my spouse any one with severe peanut allergies can’t come in the house. I was mostly joking. But if a person has that severe an allergy, we’d probably need to say no. Peanut butter is a major component of our kid’s diet and she’s 6, so messy.
We do make sure no peanut butter before school. Just in case.
