Happy Nut-Free Holidays! Tips for Navigating Holiday Parties, Baking Resources, Class Parties and More!

Have a sweet holiday by planning ahead for
potential food allergy pitfalls.

We're in the heart of the holiday season and if you have kids with food allergies, that can mean extra stress. Everything from holiday parties to visiting Santa at the mall takes on a new dimension when dealing with life-threatening nut allergies, but you don't have to let food allergies stand in the way of enjoying the holidays! True, food is everywhere but if you plan ahead and are prepared for it, you can keep the allergic family members healthy and happy and best of all, keep yourself healthy and happy.

If you are just starting out with severe nut allergies, finding a balance can sound impossible, especially dealing with holiday parties. Take a deep breath, realize you can't do it all and then check out my best tips for a nut-free, stress-free holiday including advice on navigating holiday parties.

Here's one tip I didn't include in that post but realize I should have. When you attend a cookie exchange, potluck, or really any holiday party with food of unknown origin, I do not recommend the following: asking everyone in the room whether or not the food has nuts in it as a basis for evaluating whether or not you should feed it to your allergic kiddo.

Why? Because, even if the food doesn't have nuts in it, cross-contact could have occurred during the cooking/baking process. Or the cook or baker could have used ingredients that have a cross-contact warning. Or the cook/baker's kitchen might have a lot of the allergen present and cross-contact can occur that way. Or one of the kids could have eaten peanut butter and stuck their finger in the batter when Mom or Dad or Grandma wasn't looking.

I could go on, but I think you probably get the gist: you have no way of knowing if a food is safe if it's unlabeled and made in another kitchen where the family does not deal with allergies. I know it's hard but it's best to avoid these home baked items of unknown origin.

What if Santa is giving out candy?

Recently, a reader wrote to me regarding how to deal with Santa at the mall when he's handing out candy and such after the kids visit him. This is a tough one because kids believe that Santa knows everything about them, so why would he give them unsafe candy?

Ideally, you have taught or are in the process of teaching kids to question any candy they get -- even if given to them by a trusted adult. Santa is no exception and you can tell the kids that he is very busy and occasionally makes a mistake. If your child gets candy from Santa and you can't determine if it's safe or not (for example, it has no label), one thing you can do is to immediately switch it with something from your own pocket. If your child questions you, you can say, "Oh, Santa gave you the wrong thing by mistake. One of his elves gave me this candy. I checked it and it's safe for you." Or whatever works for your situation -- you're a parent, I'm sure you're creative.

A lot of us will be baking, so if you have vanilla extract questions? Click here for baking tips and ingredients info. For those of you with general baking questions, this post has some thoughts for those without allergies who want to bake for us, while this post is geared to the families personally dealing with nut allergies.

Need nut-free Christmas dessert recipe ideas? This archived post has some good ones, plus check out my Pinterest board, "Christmas Sweets (Nut-Free)."

For some general advice on nut allergies and the holidays, check out these 6 excellent tips from SunButter sunflower seed spread: they quoted me and shared some of my fave tips for parents.

Looking for nut-free candy finds at the supermarket? Here are some that you will see on store shelves.

School parties this week? Click this link for an article about food allergies and school parties that I wrote for Chicago Parent magazine.

Please feel free to share your holiday solutions in the comments below. All best wishes for a very happy holiday season!

For more parent-to-parent advice on successfully navigating nut allergies, click here.

Food Allergies: Taking a Minute to Reflect on the Last Day of School

Today is the last full day of school in our district and as I always am when a school year goes well, I am thankful and grateful that my daughter enjoyed a reaction-free year. School can be filled with many food allergy-related pitfalls and regular readers of this blog know that I've covered many of these in detail. (Just search key word "school" in the search bar to the right for several articles on managing food allergies at school.)

However, as the year draws to a close without a reaction, I like to take a deep breath and enjoy what went right. For those of you who have sent your children to school for the first time this year, you are probably feeling a special sense of relief now that it's over. As someone who has been managing and helping my child manage food allergies at school for nearly 8 years now, I can tell you that it does get easier,  especially as kids get older and more able to speak up and care for themselves. That doesn't mean I never have worries, and now we have new challenges like an overnight field trip next year for 8th grade.

But for now, I've got all of that on the back burner. I'm simply thankful that things have gone well. I encourage you to thank your child's teachers and any others who have helped you child manage allergies and/or asthma this year. It's always nice to say "thank you" to the health office workers, too. They've probably gotten to know your child well because they of their formal health plans and medications at school. Let them know that their concern and care are helpful.

On a housekeeping note, don't forget to bring home your child's medications and any new health forms. If you plan to go to a new school or are going to school for the first time next year, please click this link for some helpful information. Most school offices stay open for a few weeks after the last day of school, but after that it may be difficult to speak to anyone at school until the fall. So if you have anything you need to take care of, now is the time!

I'm sure that all of us have things we wish had gone differently but hopefully summer will give us some perspective on how things can be better handled next year. One tip is to join your school's PTO--if you can, get on a party committee. You'll be in a much better position to navigate food allergies and voice your concerns. So many times, people just aren't aware of the role that minimizing food plays in keeping kids safe and included.

If things went well for you this year, it's no accident. It means that you and your child did a great job of handling things and it also means that you have established good communication with your school. And let's be real: some schools are more allergy aware than others. If you found yourself in the position of food allergy "pioneer" this year, then I know you had your share of challenges (I've been there!). Hats off to you!

Life with severe food allergies can be challenging, but as you meet each challenge, it's great to celebrate the little victories. Tell your kids that you are proud of them--and be proud of yourself, too. Whether it was communicating with school staff, providing allergy-friendly food, educating your school about allergies or even sharing your story with other parents, you did your part to help your child have a smooth school year. I admire you all!

Happy Summer!

For more on navigating life with severe nut allergies, click this link for my complete e-book guide.

How Food Allergies Affect a Marriage: My Guest Post on Reboot This Marriage!

Today, I'm excited to share a guest post I wrote for the web site Reboot This Marriage by Tanja Pajevic, my college buddy! Reboot This Marriage is a terrific site dedicated to the topic of how kids affect your relationship. It has lots of good info on parenting, relationships and life in general.

Tanja's son has peanut allergies, so she wanted my input on how this can affect the relationship with your spouse. In fact, this is something I talk about in my e-book. It's a big topic! How you and your spouse work out the details of food allergy management makes a difference in everything that you do together. Naturally, you want to have a system everyone can live with, but it also has to be one that keeps your child safe and healthy.

It's not always an easy balance to strike. In fact, many of you have e-mailed me, commented on this blog or posted on Facebook about family and spousal issues with regards to food allergies.

Here is the link, if you want to read the complete article:

With the holidays coming up and family issues on the horizon, it helps to have your spouse on your side, no question.

Thanks again to Tanja for the opportunity to write about this issue!

Food Allergies and Seasonal/Pet Allergies...Triple Whammy

Even though I've been dealing with my daughter's food allergies and seasonal allergies for years, I still find myself having to make tough calls about her health vs. socializing. We are fortunate to have so many understanding friends and neighbors but sometimes we just have to say "no" to one thing and find a different solution. And that doesn't have to be tragic.

I want to share a quick story because I sometimes feel that parents beat themselves up over the things their kids have to "miss out on" due to food allergies or other allergies.

My daughter and her really good friend have been trying to arrange a sleepover at the friend's house for several weeks now. This was supposed to take place this coming weekend. Well, right now, seasonal allergies are really taking a toll on my daughter's health. She's on medication but the pollen count is giving her a lot of stuffiness and breathing problems.

Last week, she hung out at her friend's house (the one who wanted to host the sleepover) and when she got home, she was stuffy, wheezing and needed her asthma inhaler. Turns out that the seasonal allergies that already existed were being aggravated even more by an apparent allergy to her friend's pet guinea pigs.

What to do? The date was arranged, the plans had been made, the hosting family couldn't be nicer or more accommodating with our daughter's food allergies.

I decided that we needed to host the sleepover at our house and try again at the friend's home when spring is over and the pollen count subsides. (My daughter is a lot better in the summer than the spring). My daughter has hung out with the guinea pigs in the past and not suffered intense symptoms, so I figured she just couldn't take the pet allergies and seasonal allergies all at once. I worried a little bit about offending the parents of my daughter's friend, but knew I needed to make the call.

Well, when my daughter came home for lunch, she had already taken care of it. She spoke to her friend, explained the problem and they decided the sleepover should be at our house. I didn't even need to sweat this. Obviously, it's no fun for a kid to have an asthma attack, so my daughter advocated for her own situation and it was resolved.

Everyone knows that it is more fun to attend a sleepover at someone else's house, so I did feel a little bit bad that my daughter couldn't do that this time. But you know what? She was OK with it.

I frequently hear from parents who are really sad that their child can't visit an ice cream shop like they, the parent, used to do as as a child. Or they worry that depriving their child of a treat at a birthday party will damage their child's self-esteem. I'm not saying that this can't happen, but kids are smart and resilient. Don't make a big deal about it and there's a good chance they might not, either.

My biggest obstacle now: deciding on an appropriate movie for the girls to watch. That's OK. Sometimes it's nice to be faced with a parenting challenge that's non-allergy related.