The Peanut Diaries: Navigating Social Events and Celebrations with Food Allergies

“Raising a child with an allergy is tricky at times. As they get older and grow more independent, it is natural that as a parent you have less and less control over your child’s diet. My son is only five years old, but we’ve already been faced with difficult situations and choices, and as parents we know this is only going to get trickier as they get older.

It’s so important for us that our son understands his allergy and that we trust him to make good choices as he grows up. We teach him about peanut-containing foods, what they look like, and encourage him to have the confidence to ask for allergens in restaurants or other public situations. I really can’t believe how confident and knowledgeable he is!

For the moment, his life is mostly impacted in little ways, that he is unlikely to notice. For example, we always make sure we have a ‘back-up cake’ at parties or other social gatherings to accommodate his dairy allergy. We could probably take foreign trips without our son having to come near a peanut, but we instead mostly choose to holiday in the UK so we can bring our own food and avoid the effort and worry. We also recently had to decline from travelling to Thailand for my best man’s wedding, which thankfully he was understanding of.

As time goes on though, the things that his allergy affects will grow in importance. When it came to making school choices, we only considered schools with a nut-free policy.

What worries us most though is his adolescence. We know we won’t have the same control over the choices he makes as he gets older, and nor should we. We want to help him grow into an independent young person so he can enjoy his life unburdened and unshackled, but the reality is that he will always have the shackle of his peanut allergy to some extent. We know there will come a time where he has to take full responsibility to manage his allergy, and we also expect that with that comes endless anxiety as parents. Thankfully, we’re a good few years away from that, but whilst the days are long, the years go quick.”