Image via Unsplash
A guest post by Anna Brian.
Do you see her over there, waiting in the pick-up line? It’s your food-allergy1 mom friend! You can recognize her by the crazed look in her eyes (hint: it’s because she just had to explain to a twenty-something aftercare worker that a kindergartener can’t be expected to administer their own Epipen2). She’s running late, of course; she’s been all over town getting paperwork signed by the pediatrician (school AND aftercare AND every activity all have their own individualized forms), scouring pharmacies to find the best price on Epipens (still too expensive), and buying out the local supply of MadeGood bars to stash in the classroom AND aftercare AND every activity so that when birthday treats arrive and inevitably have peanuts or tree nuts or dairy or whatever it is her kid is allergic to, said kiddo will still have something to munch on as they enviously eye everyone else’s cupcakes.
Maybe you've known her for years and remember when her kid(s) first got diagnosed (and yes, when we say "food allergy mom" we typically mean the kids have the allergies, not the mom) ; maybe your kids are just now buddy-ing up at the start of the school year and you're having to explain to your own child why their new friend might be sitting at a special table for lunch or why their mom is a little extra hesitant about planning a playdate. Either way, she's so glad you're here; so grateful that you are part of her and her child’s life. There are, however, some things she (lovingly!) wishes you knew:
Clear canisters can fill her with dread. She knows it’s considered aesthetically pleasing to decant snacks and cereal into neat little jars; in fact, she agrees! Yet the sight of them on your counter at playdate drop-off sets off that little twinge of worry. Is this what the kids were planning to have for snack? Oh, it is; do you remember what the snack was called, what brand it was? Assuming you remember, is the ingredients list online the same as on the now-discarded box? Probably it is, almost certainly it is—but the anxiety is so hard-wired now that it’s tough to push those nagging worries aside, even as her kid gives her the stink-eye and silently begs her to be cool.
Birthday invites can fill her with dread too, even as she is excited for her kid to be included. When the party invitations first started rolling in, she tried her best to ask the hosting parents about the cake situation (usually beforehand, to avoid the millions of distractions inherent to a child’s birthday party): is the cake coming from a bakery? If so, which one? If not, who is making it? What are the ingredients? Yet over time, she got tired of giving the third degree to parents she often barely knew, trusting that their responses (if they responded at all) were accurate even while realizing that if food allergies aren’t someone’s day-to-day reality, they probably don’t know much about cross-contamination or how to interpret an ingredients label. Eventually she started bringing her child’s own allergy-safe cupcakes to birthday parties as a default, which works well except for those rare times her kid REALLY wants what everyone else is having and she has to explain to a melting-down four-year-old that no, picking the walnuts off of the frosting doesn’t mean they can eat it.
Your food-allergy mom friend wants you to know that some of the time, she looks at her kids’ pickiness as a blessing. You may roll your eyes at the fact that her kids almost never venture beyond cheese pizza and chicken nuggets, but do you know what cheese pizza and chicken nuggets very rarely have? Peanuts. For her, the fact that her kiddo is resistant to trying new foods might come as a relief, even as she feels the usual mom guilt over their unvaried diet.
Speaking of pizza and nugs, she wants you to know that “let’s just grab lunch on the go!” is rarely that simple. Depending on the family and the list of allergens, there may be a very short list of restaurants they feel comfortable dining at, if any at all. Even if the family does frequent outside eateries, there’s always a dance: does this place have something allergy-safe that her child will actually eat? Is the restaurant accurate in the information they’re communicating to us? Is the information about the allergy getting accurately communicated to the kitchen? Sometimes it can feel overwhelming to place so much trust for her child’s safety into other peoples’ hands.
She also wants you to know that she might be a recovering people pleaser, and that this is all tough: asking the clarifying questions, ignoring the eye rolls. Way down to her core she wants to say “Oh, ok—it’ll be fine.” But she has to listen to her intuition, and to try to separate that from her anxiety. And she has to be prepared to walk away even if her kid really, really wants the thing.
Your food-allergy mom friend wants you to know that every allergy family handles their allergies differently. To some allergy moms the experience described above will seem unnecessarily restrictive; to other families, it will seem overly permissive.
She also wants to say THANK YOU, for so many things. For all the sun butter you’ve bought, because she knows that it’s expensive and your kid probably likes it less! For the times you let her vent about her experiences, even if you couldn’t relate to them. For every time you sent her a picture of a label and asked “will this be ok?” Thank you, thank you, thank you. She remembers it all.
You might be asking (she hopes you’re asking), what else can I do? You can ask about allergies ahead of any event you’re planning where there will be food, and try to accommodate these as much as possible (she knows it’s not always possible, but she always appreciates the effort). Before cooking for her child, talk to your friend about the precautions she takes in her own kitchen and be honest about if that’s something you can recreate. Don’t worry if it’s not; just tell her kindly, and she’ll be relieved you told her the truth. If you spend a lot of time with her child, you can learn more about reading ingredient labels, what allergic reactions can look like, and how to use an Epipen. Most of all, you can listen to her experiences, even if this aspect of her motherhood looks much different than your own.
And don’t even get her started on Halloween.
Anna Brian lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband, two children, and a cantankerous senior dog. Right at this moment she is either a) being used as a jungle gym b) wiping a butt, probably not her own c) having a conversation with her husband that’s been interrupted 500 times OR d) all of the above! She occasionally putters around Bluesky and Substack.
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