Managing through the Valentine’s Day candy frenzy
I’ll be honest; I never really thought about the impact around all of the candy during the holidays until I became a parent and even more so when we found out about Matthew’s allergies. We successfully made it through the Christmas holiday without a reaction or use of an EpiPen. We all celebrated. However, not even a week into the New Year; I see the Christmas merchandise being replaced with Valentine’s Day candy.
My perspective on holidays is to use them as another opportunity to educate people about food allergies. Yes, I get really nervous during any type of holiday celebration. However, I embrace the time to reconnect with Matthew’s teacher and classmate families.
I am lucky that Matthew’s teacher is extremely supportive. We talked through the best way to manage the classroom celebration and communicate to the parents of his classmates. I honestly think that my energy in providing education about what he can eat has an impact to making these celebrations not such a daunting task. We pull from this list and then for the special dessert, I provide it for the full class. Yes, I’m baking more but I’ve reduced the exposure and make it easier for everyone.
Additionally, I’ll be providing a note that requests not to put candy in the cards for Matthew. I thought about providing the parents a list of candy that is safe for Matthew but then thought against it. In all honesty, do our kids need candy in our society where we have a child obesity problem?
Just maybe, we as allergy families can help make that shift to helping people really realize that we may have gone too far in the commercialism of unhealthy food.
