Allergy kids can still have fun

Allergy kids can still have fun !!!

Having one child that is diagnosed with food allergies is tough enough on a family especially when neither of the parents suffer from any allergies. It means a complete lifestyle change depending on the severity of the allergy and then there is the possibility that the food allergy could be life threatening. All of this takes a substantial adjustment period and it never gets easier because you are constantly worrying about your child’s health and safety. When you are worrying about one child, as an adult, you can understand the reasons for not having the particular allergens in your house but when you have other non-allergic children, it gets a little more complicated.

The toughest part for me as a parent of an allergic child has been that I have older twins who are not allergic and were able to eat anything we thought fit for the first four years of their lives until our youngest came along. She was diagnosed with a dairy allergy, soy intolerance and immune deficiency. So even though her allergies are not life threatening, we realised our older children’s lives would be affected and would change for as long as their sister was allergic.

We however made ourselves a promise that we would do our best to ensure that their little sisters allergies would affect them as little as possible. This has obviously been a struggle from day one as the resources we have at hand and the foods we have available to us are minimal. I could find heaps of support on the web based in the USA, UK and Australia but nothing here in SA.

We knew our littlest would one day want the forbidden food her sisters were eating but we had no idea it would as early as 19 months old. We were driving back from holiday and I gave my girls a breakfast bar to snack on and our baby started performing. I had just about offered her every snack in the box until I realised what the performance was all about. She wanted what her sisters were eating, except the breakfast bars were so full of dairy that a single bite would send her into a snot spiral that would last for days. Thankfully I had just discovered dairy free cocoa snack bars so I took a chance. It was brown like her sisters ones and I rolled the wrapper down like I had for her sisters. She gave it a serious once over while we looked on with baited breath. SHEW she approved.

And so our troubles began. After the breakfast bar incident, months went by without any further serious tantrums with regards to what her sisters were eating until she decided that she needed to have yoghurt like they do every night. Panic struck, a yoghurt, seriously no ways. I suddenly thought that she has no idea what the yoghurt actually looks like so I emptied a yoghurt container and filled it with a dairy free baby dessert and handed it to her. Again, it WORKED! She ran off to sit with her big sisters as proud as punch that she also had a “yoghurt”.

Thankfully we have only had one Festive Season to deal with so my first trick was to open the Advent calendar I bought for my baby, remove the plastic mould and replaced each of the chocolates with a jelly sweet that she could have. With this tiny “adjustment”, all three of my girls got to squeal with delight when they got to open the windows and eat a sweet straight after breakfast.

We have explained to our older girls that their baby sister can’t eat everything that they can and they understand, but I am slowly but surely building my list of “Alternative” foods.

Have a look on the Alternatives food page and if you have anything to add, please either drop me a mail or add it on our Facebook page !!!

We wish you all well and hope to hear from you soon !!!

Bon