In kindergarten, Owen Kellogg came home sobbing one day because another boy at school had told him that he had a peanut, and that he was going to force Owen to eat it.
Owen, now seven, is allergic to peanuts and tree nuts, said his mother, Haylee Kellogg of Cedar Hills, Utah. In reality, the taunting boy did not have a peanut, but Owen didn't know that-he just knew that eating a peanut could make him stop breathing.
It's hard for parents of food-allergic children to keep them safe at school when there are so many opportunities to eat snacks and meals with unsafe ingredients. For some kids, just touching a certain food or inhaling particles of it could cause a reaction.
But on top of the safety question is a social one. A study released last week suggests that almost half of children who have food allergies have been bullied-sometimes by having food thrown at them.
"Clearly, it's an issue for these school-aged children in terms of how they interact with their peers. Immediately, when there's a diagnosis of food allergy, there's a little bit of a stigma," said Dr Clifford Bassett, director of Allergy & Asthma Care of New York. The new study furthers the mounting evidence that many kids with food allergies may endure social ostracism while also trying to eat safely.
A 2010 study in the journal Annals of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology said that 35 per cent of kids over age five with food allergies have endured bullying, teasing or harassment. Parents of children with food allergies reported in the study that these incidents-both physical and verbal-happened because of food allergies.
Food allergy is a growing problem in young people. As many as eight per cent of children in the United States have at least one food allergy, according to research data. There is no cure for food allergies. The only way to stop a life-threatening reaction, called anaphylaxis, is an epinephrine auto-injector, which allergists recommend that everyone with severe food allergies should carry. Allergists offer skin or blood tests to see what specific foods may cause reactions, but they cannot know how severe those reactions will be-some people may have only mild symptoms, while others may stop breathing.
Owen's family moved nearly 30 miles from Spanish Fork, Utah, to Lehi, Utah, when Owen was in kindergarten, so that they could live in a school district with some peanut-free accommodations. Peanut products aren't sold at lunch at Owen's school, said Kellogg.
When Kellogg learned about the peanut taunting incident, she went to see the school principal. The result was that the other boy, who had also been bullying other kids, was moved to a different classroom. At the bus stop, Kellogg met the woman partly responsible for food allergy awareness at Owen's school: Jessica Norton, whose 11-year-old daughter Grace is allergic to peanuts, soy and various kinds of beans. Grace is the only one of three siblings who has food allergies; so is Owen.
When Grace was in first grade, she had to eat her lunch in the principal's office on days that the school served peanut butter, to avoid a reaction from coming into contact with it. This solution was not optimal, in Norton's view. She petitioned the school district to stop serving peanut products, and was successful.
Like Owen, Grace also experienced bullying because of her allergy. A boy would often chase Grace around with peanut butter in hand-once, he touched her face with it, making her break out in hives. She only told her parents a couple of months after it stopped happening. These days, she doesn't get picked on that way, Norton said.
Norton was surprised by the negative reactions reflected in the CNN.com reader comments about provisions for allergic kids in schools.
In a story about the recent bullying study, user "Brad Heddan" wrote, in response to one reader, "how about you keep your sickly kid home? That is what homeschooling is for...we don't have to accommodate your sick kid."
These sentiments were also seen on the comment board on a 2010 story about food allergy bullying. At that time, Norton chimed in explaining Grace's school's situation and adding, "My only thought is this, teaching children compassion for others is a good thing. And frankly, it seems a lot of adults that have made comments on here could use a little compassion too. (cnn.com)