So, the Kid starts school on Monday. Once again, we have to go through educating a new teacher about our diet. I guess the one semi-good thing is that her teacher this year is a little younger than I am and maybe, just maybe, has heard of the vegan diet. I was truly amazed last year when her teacher had never had a student with an allergy before. The dairy allergy is the easy part. She cannot have any dairy or dairy derivative or she will be sick. So how far do you go? “She cannot have any animal ingredients” does not seem to suffice. Last year, we thought about giving a list to the teacher, but didn’t want to insult her. We just told her what candies she could eat and also sent some snacks to keep in the room. The Kid is old enough to know what she can eat and not eat, but she can’t read ingredients, you know? But, I don’t want her to eat junk food either. We try our hardest to keep processed foods out of our house. But I hate to tell her no, you can’t have those Pringles (even though they are her favorite) or no, you can’t have smarties or Skittles every day. So what do we do? We teach her to ask questions of the food that is given her and make the right decisions.
My kids have chosen not to be vegetarian so that part isn’t a big issue. But we have dealt with trying to avoid artificial colors and will be dealing with no dairy for one child in the Fall. Its so difficult. The best thing has been moving my kids to a magnet school that generally avoids candy as treats because it was a HUGE issue. I don’t think my daughter’s teacher really understood the food coloring thing though until I gave her M&Ms for breakfast and sent her to school. The teacher said she had never seen anything like how my daughter acted that day and she finally understood. I hate the idea of needing to do that. At my kids’ school there are kids with allergies and kids who can’t have pork due to their religion and the teachers just ban those things from the class.
Indie, unfortunately, I do not have the option of sending her to a magnet school. But, I have thought of sending her to a private one (at least until we move).