Do kids age out of peanut allergies? It doesn't seem to be a thing in high school.
Typically not peanut. I think the change in high school is letting them take responsibility for their own safety.
Our kindergarten (university-affiliated) is peanut free but the elementary schools aren't.
One thing that I don't think has been getting mentioned much is that at all Title I schools breakfast and lunch are free this year. So likely higher demand, too, just as the supply chain broke.
I heard that they changed the recommendations on the timing of when to introduce peanut. Now a I think some were even talking about peanut powder as early as 6 months. In the 80's he only food allergies a I remember people having were to chocolate. And they got hives; it wasn't life threatening. I think seafood allergies have been a big deal for a long time, but other than tuna, kids didn't bring seafood to school.
I think you can work with an allergist to re-introduce the foods, but you need to be prepared for trips to the ED, and that's a medically intensive intervention. I hope we can work as a society to better prevent these allergies.
There's probably someone running for school board on "mandatory peanuts."
4: yeah. It seems that gradual sensitization works for most kids (i.e., don't restrict peanut butter until 5 for low risk kids) and allergist-directed therapy is really great. A friend of the Calabat's had horrible allergies to pretty much everything - milk, eggs, nuts, wheat - and now after therapy just has to eat a maintenance cookie every day.
The methadone patients in the clinic probably give the kids coming in for that a funny look.
Isn't there some story about how in Israel there is a super common children's snack that babies all get made of peanut, and the early exposure has knocked the incidence of childhood peanut allergies way down?
I was also surprised that our public school has no nut restrictions. I think there's a table in the cafeteria (back when they ate in the cafeteria) where allergic kids can go sit. That kind of segregation always felt a little off to us, but it's the way they do it, and PBJ is always a backup option for any kids who don't like or can't eat whatever the main meal is.
IANAExpert but my understanding was that peanut allergies have been roughly stable at a low number over time; the change is standards for safety of others and an understanding of the likelihood of cross-contamination. Maybe I'm wrong? They aren't allowed at my kid's current school, but I couldn't be sure from memory about the previous, less UMC one.
They serve PB&J at the middle school and possibly at the elementary school? Inexplicably, none of our kids like peanut butter very much.
No our weenie liberal enclave has PB&J as a default option. Our vegetarian kids often end up eating that if the other meals are meat.
The free lunch thing is awesome. Of course I could afford to either make at home or pay for school lunch but not having to think about making it or tracking account balances for kids is one less daily thing to worry about that's worth more to us than the money saved.
Doesn't free lunch for all make it hard for the school to know who's parents are poor?
The free lunch thing is awesome.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
6: I looked up the guidelines, and it breaks kids down by family history and whether and what kind of eczema kids have. It recommends (1,) some kids get tested for peanut allergy (2.) some kids have it introduced gradually (3.) other kids can go wild.
8: it's called Bamba. Because obviously more than minute amounts of peanut butter mixed into other puréed foods would be a choking hazard.
I think that inspired a song in Mexico.
12: There was a profile on the BBC's food programme of a school that had made a commitment to this as well as preparing wholesome food onsite and incorporating food prep education into the curriculum with the idea that some kids might be interested in working in that area.
Every kid had a card to pay for their lunch. Some kids had funds put on it for free and other kids their parents paid. I don't think this school had the budget to make meals free for everyone, but what I loved about it was that it wasn't obvious to kids who was getting free meals based on how they paid. I remember when food stamps were stamps and not cards. I remember seeing someone pay that way; it took a long time and held up the line - way to stigmatize aid recipients!
The free lunch thing is awesome.
It's the best. Also free breakfasts.
At our school you just give your name and they bill your account which is either filled by parents through a website or credited if you get free/reduced lunch, so it's invisible to the kids. The bigger problem is that the free lunch forms are a hurdle that blocks eligible families from receiving benefits they're entitled to.
21: yeah, I think it should be provided to all to avoid that, and because universal programs are generally better. More people are invested in making sure school food is good if they don't see it as a separate expense and just decide to pack a lunch. If you pack a lunch for other reasons, fine, but general funds should pay for everybody's lunch.
I think this particular school was similar to a charter school, and they were trying to do something innovative but could not set policies for lunch funding throughout the whole region.
We get charged if our kids go back for seconds.
Literally every single child hosting venue that xelA has ever been to, ever, has been nut free. Complete with dire warnings about what kids bring as snacks and lunches. xelA does have a friend who carries an EpiPen because he's allergic to nuts.
Luckily, xelA is allergic to nothing and happily eats every single thing that's on all of the common allergen lists. We did introduce to almost every food when he was _really_ small, though, so there may be something in that, and he did the fully baby-led weaning thing where he was gumming away at solid food, and more or less the same food we were eating, from the point that he was eating solid food at all. We do feel quite smug about it, but compared to every single other child we know, he's amazingly unfussy about food, and also fairly adventurous. He'll happily eat loads of things his peers turn their nose up at: raw fish (in sushi form); squid; shellfish; spicy food, rare meat, etc. The only straight refusal is cruciferous vegetables, which he's always hated.
re: 18
That's how it is here, yeah. The kids give their name, but it's invisible to them who is paying and who is not. xelA stopped eating the school food about a year ago, though. He insists on a packed lunch because he prefers it and he's less hungry after it. It is universally funded until they in their 4th year of school, at least here in London. After that, the parents charge up their account via an online payment system.
21: yes. The change this year was no form needed at all, so every kid gets free lunch. The Calabat still packs a peanut butter sandwich every day because he doesn't like the school lunch. Utah's standards seem permissive to me, but we also don't seem to have kids going into anaphylactic shock regularly, so whatever they're doing seems to be sufficient.
We did a modified version of baby led weaning (aka give kids what you're eating) and mine still go through picky phases.
We have free breakfast and free lunch (maintained throughout the pandemic. No one was attending school, but you could go everyday to get both, packaged for take-out. Some of our public library branches gives them out as well during winter and summer break.).
I sortof love all that and I straightforwardly love not giving lunch one single thought. But when Steady was bringing them home, I was kinda appalled. The packaging was so MUCH. The food quality was lower than my exceedingly bougie farmers' market and co-op preferences. Also, Steady's acquired tastes. He won't eat the school blueberries despite loving blueberries because the school ones don't taste like much. I honestly don't know how much of school lunch he eats and am determined not to find out, especially if that would mean that I should provide an alternative.
They clearly have an intention to provide fresh fruits and veggies. One day last spring that meant sending home a fresh, uncooked zucchini. I was amused.
Steady is a consistent and adamant picky eater and it is crushing.
Zucchini is horrible. I'd rather eat at an Arby's that failed the health inspection.
Contra smug ttaM, I don't think there's much you can do to influence how picky they are. My older son is what I'd call a compliant eater: put it on his plate, and he'll likely eat it, even though there's a lot of stuff he doesn't really enjoy. My younger son likes all manner of very strong flavors, like kombucha, coffee, and sardines. But his diet is way less varied, because at meal time he wants only one of a few things. :shrug: as we say on the Slacks.
The call them trousers over there.
We did a course of occupational therapy around eating. Much like everything, if we had been consistent and dedicated and prioritized the eating therapy, we could likely have moved Steady into "less picky". The OT thought he wasn't a drastic case. But of course, if I could be consistent and dedicated and prioritized, I'd have a good dog and be thin and there'd be no screens.
If you're not wearing Dockers, I'll eat my shorts, sir.
We're kind of confused about the nut status at our school, because they had some extra restrictions in K and 1 when they don't trust the kids at all, and maybe those aren't school-wide? They don't ever serve peanuts, though. The occasional alternative sandwich is made with sunflower seed butter, which preschool caused my kid to actually prefer. He is picky, but with expensive tastes.
They are changing things up a lot, based on supply constraints. We used to work from a monthly menu to figure out which days we'd send in a home lunch, and the district started only creating weekly menus because planning a month ahead just wasn't possible, and we still find out about things being changed out from under the kids.
It's No Nut November. They probably have signs.
Not a coincidence that's the same month everyone grows a mustache.
30.1: Yeah, a certain amount of picky is baked into the individual kid. Newt has evolved to the point where it's hardly noticeable, and he was never difficult about it, but there were a fair number of normal things he just really, really didn't ever want to eat. Pasta. He can eat it for politeness' sake now, but he still doesn't understand why people think of it as food.
What kid won't eat macaroni and cheese? My kids, that's who. My daughter, particularly, is a super-picky eater and I feel guilty about it.
So much pasta gets eaten here. It's kind of impressive.
Pasta
Yup. Mr. Kombucha and Sardines doesn't like pasta.
The oldest kids are pretty flexible. The youngest only eats cereal, blueberries, raspberries, clementines, watermelon, apples with peanut butter, PB&J or Nutella sandwiches, challah or soft rolls, goat cheese, and macaroni & cheese (from a box not baked). Plus assorted desserts. No other pasta, no rice, no other fruits or vegetables. Most nights she eats leftover challah with goat cheese.
I do eat vegetables, but I also eat stuff like Doritos.
43: so, all of the protein comes from peanut butter and cheese?
I think so. She's vegetarian so no meat, doesn't like tofu or beans. I guess she'll sometimes eat peanuts instead of peanut butter. She used to eat yogurt tubes but not recently.
The Calabat first ate everything. Then he decided that he did not like having food touching other food, so anything with visible seasoning or texture was very sus. He's mostly grown out of it, but he's maddeningly inconsistent. This gnocchi is the best thing ever! So delicious! Next week: why are you trying to kill me with these gnocchi? Pebbles likes meat (and delights in learning that it is from ANIMALS, bloodthirsty child) and bread and cucumbers and pistachios. She has no tolerance for 'spicy' -- read as salty, acidic, or mildly peppery. (We think she's sensitive to noticing the food on her lips.) She won't eat chicken nuggets (which, fine, but what kind of 5yo are you?) They'll both eat yogurt and peanut butter toast and most fruits, so the only real problem is that I'd like to make dinner without people turning up their spoiled noses at it.
My new food thing I learned is that banana bread is so easy to make.
Hawaii and Rascal are royal PITAsses about being picky, although Hawaii is thawing ever so slightly in 7th grade. Pokey and Ace are generally easy going and are willing to try things, and like a reasonable range of foods.
Our teenager will eat so much carbs. Like half a baguette with no butter.
Or all but two slices in a loaf of banana bread.
xelA is a bit odd about spicy food. He can eat really quite spicy food but the implicit deal is we never mention it. So we just cook what we want and he eats it, but if we ever draw attention to the spicing he will complain. Last week we went for Indian food with a friend who is herself Indian. Her son has very low tolerance for spicy food. xela had the mattar paneer, which in this place, is really quite spicy. No problem, but if anyone had mentioned it, it would suddenly have been too hot.
That reminds me. I need to see if this Chicken Tikka Masala is any good.
49: Right. The difficult thing about banana bread is eating it.
OT: If anybody here is Hozier's intellectual property lawyer, some asshole is playing him in the background of a Youtube where two grown men play Minecraft. I'm not a fan of Hozier, but I kind of want the YouTube videogame people to suffer.
Elke ate school lunches exclusively for most of a wonderful, wonderful year, until she abruptly realized that she had come to hate them all and wasn't actually eating lunch and would come home ravenous. I would love to comply with the school lunch moral mandate here, but I think it would be a tough sell. Sorry we spoiled you rotten with top dollar restaurant meals once a week, kid: now you'll never survive in the wild.
Love my own banana bread-- moisture just right, cardamom, walnuts, if I want it more cakelike, chocolate chips, sometimes poppyseed instead. Completely disinterested in other people's advice/tuning ideas. I may be turning into my dad, this is also his cookery personality.
Also I love spicy food, but it makes me sweat, so I basically can only have it at home witg people I'm close to.
no form needed at all, so every kid gets free lunch
Here too. And breakfast, if they get there early and want it.
However, we still send extra food with Noah who is 6'2" and growing and does not come close to getting filled on the cafeteria portions.
We have free breakfast but I'm not actually sure what the before school program is. Pre-COVID you could drop your kid for free any time after 7:30 (school starts 8:45) which included free breakfast. They still have free food but I think you have to sign up for early drop off instead of just dumping the kids whenever you want.
Noah who is 6'2"
It's not as if I don't have my own Large Adult Son, but I remember Noah being born!
Completely disinterested in other people's advice/tuning ideas.
I feel the same way about my own banana bread (I "marinate" the mashed bananas in buttermilk, and then add just a scant teaspoon of cinnamon).
I did that baby-led weaning thing with my son. He weaned off nursing at 18 months, and for the next year or so, he was the best little eater ever, he would eat just about anything that was put in front of him. And then, at about the age of 3, he got very picky and fussy: nothing green on his plate, and no one food group touching any other food group on his plate. Didn't matter about the extended breastfeeding/baby-led weaning: my 3-year old was, well, a 3-year old.
I'm so mystified by these lunch programs. This is typical? Here, they're doing a trial run of provided lunch, one day a week, credit card payments only.
You guys have to spend all your taxes paying families of people the cops kill.
It's been a long time since four FPP have been on the same thread, hasn't it?
66- In what grade do they teach the kids how to apply for a credit card?
69: Anyone heard from Alameida in Narnia lately?
In the UK we had a weird twist a few years ago when the Lib Dems decided they wanted free school dinners as a drop-dead veto item in coalition negotiations. For a start they only discovered that a lot of schools would need kitchens after legislating, but the really weird twist was that eligiblity for free school meals is used as a standard measurement of poverty for all kinds of purposes, crucially, determining how much budget a school gets and the weighting on its exam results for league tables, so suddenly headteachers were desperately trying to get people to register for free meals, although they already got free meals without registering or indeed being eligible, in order to juice the stats in the opposite direction to the one they'd previously been trying to juice them in order not to scare the Nice Parent types.
We have the same problem. The way our district tries to keep school enrollment balanced by SES is equalizing numbers of kids in each school on free/reduced lunch. I don't know what they're doing for that data if families didn't have to apply this year. I remember that they sent out the applications and maybe people completed them before it was announced that lunch was free again for everyone.
One JUKES stats. One does not JUICE them.
One works hard to make the stats unbiased.
Juice as in dose them with some sort of drug, right?
Further to 71: also thinking about al. In terms of other disappeared commenters, if anyone is in touch with Thorne, please let her know I'm thinking of her.
78: I'm Facebook friends with her. I can confirm that she was posting neutral or happy stuff within the past week or two. I'd have to think about saying something more specific than that or reaching out to her. I'm cutting back on my use of that site.
credit card payments only
That's so obnoxious. What about the child whose parent doesn't have a credit card? or whose parent is in debt, with credit already overextended? Is that child supposed to go without lunch?!
Is that child supposed to go without lunch?!
Well, it's not really a lunch program so much as a treat for the kids who get it (once a week, opt-in). I'm just amazed at all these other schools that have free breakfast(!) and lunch, because we have nothing like that, and I didn't realize it was a thing.
I think it's a Title 1 school thing. It's definitely federally funded.
Like having lots of football scholarships.
I didn't realize it was a thing.
A very prevalent thing in certain schools. At the school my wife and I are at making it free for everyone didn't actually change the logistics much because something like 90 percent of the students already qualified for free breakfast and lunch.
Huh, I'd never heard of Title I, but it looks to include more than three-quarters of the schools in Illinois.
Back in the late 1900s, my mom was a teacher hired through Title Something. The kids she taught were a little behind grade level. I don't recall any mention of what they ate.
80: Tim's high school in Ontario had a cafeteria, but the grade school did not, so if your parent did not pack a lunch, there was nothing. Maybe it has changed since?
88: tell me you're upper middle class without telling me you're upper middle class..... Anyhow Title 1 just means that a certain percentage of kids are low income - quite common in a state/city where everyone has lots of kids young - and this year they just tossed the means testing. I'm wondering if they need that information for next year but the usual form wasn't required.
89: Naw. It's just a cultural thing. Prob more related to having lots of stay-at-home-moms back in the day. When a grocery store butcher could buy and house and have a wife who didn't work. Also kids mostly got to the local school so are close enough to walk home for lunch.
I'm actually not sure what folks do now. As far as I know my niece's school (same one I went to) still doesn't have a cafeteria. They must eat in their classrooms or the gym.
My high school did have a cafeteria of sorts. Mostly I bought chips and 30 cent cartons of milk (subsidized) but I think they had French fries etc.? We also had an in-school daycare because so many of the kids had kids. We were in a poor (not rural) district in a poor province (also subsidized by the federal gov't).
The milk money was a whole deal for us. I think it was like $0.15 for your milk at snack time. That was back when you could get a loose cigarette for a nickle.
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Elke got her first shot (Pfizer obvs)!!!!!! (They offered her a simultaneous flu shot but I declined. What is even the point of an experimental vaccine if you have to add a confounding-variable vaccine?)
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The second Pfizer shot just put my son to sleep for like half a day. The flu shot this year didn't affect any of us.
I guess he would have gotten a bigger dose, which seems right because he's basically adult sized.
Not yet boostered but got flüstered yesterday. Mildly sore arm. The urgency for the booster is not there for me, but I'll get it eventually and am following the dialog about it.
Naw. It's just a cultural thing. Prob more related to having lots of stay-at-home-moms back in the day.
Yeah, that sounds right, at least for Ontario back in the day. My elementary school did not have a cafeteria, so kids either brought a lunch or walked home for lunch every day (I walked home). It was definitely not a UMC thing.
At my son's public school in LiberalEnclave, NJ, however, bringing a lunch was something of a class marker, which did say UMC. About 20 percent of students qualified for the Title I lunch, while the other 80 percent or so were UMC. By middle school, the kids knew the difference between qualifying or not for the free lunch, and the kids who got the lunch were somewhat stigmatized (and this in LiberalEnclave, NJ).
This is one reason why I would support universal, free lunches at public schools: to remove the stigma from the provision of a midday meal for schoolchildren.
The boys can still judge each other based on shoes.
89 and 90: Peterborough, Ontario is mostly working class. Lunch breaks were long enough that kids sometimes went home for lunch.
The really low-income kids (and my MIL judged them harshly) bought junk food at the convenience store with money their parents gave them and traded with the other kids for healthy food. My MIL is the kind of person who grew up lower middle class, worked hard, went to college,and saved to make it into the solidly middle class, and votes Conservative because liberals spend too much money. Her father was from rural Alberta, and I believe he only had sn 8th grade education.
They did live in a suburb of Toronto at one point that is now upscale and mostly Chinese.
My MIL is the kind of person who grew up lower middle class, worked hard, went to college,and saved to make it into the solidly middle class, and votes Conservative because liberals spend too much money.
I know that kind of person all too well, I am sorry to say. That's basically most of my own first cousins.
100: She and my FIL both thought the Clintons were sleazy, though he could appreciate that Clinton paid down debt and did not start wars. She can't stand anyone named Trudeau but also hates the Fords. Somewhat inexplicably to me, she was very upset when Jack Layton died, but she is quite emotional and not a critical thinker. My FIL was open to new evidence.
Though come to think of it, most of my male first cousins did NOT go to college, but were mostly able to purchase houses, and all of the accoutrements of a middle-class lifestyle, on the strength of robust, union-member wages that are now a thing of the past.
I had to pardon Nixon or Pat would have mugged Betty.
102: Both university graduates, Elementary school teacher and stay-at- home mother married to middle management who was loyal to a big corporation. Father worked in a candy factory in Winnipeg.
104: I am the first university graduate in my family: huzzah!
And I totally get that politics of working-class/lower-middle-class ressentiment, which I understand even as I utterly deplore....
I mostly resent billionaires and shit.
105: I'm pretty sure they did not identify as working class. I once made a comment about how middle class people in England before the War had servants and after the war it was help, I don't think it occurred to her that when I said middle class, I meant university educated.
We never had help and only later did this strike me as odd because it took a while to realize how much money my dad was making.
111: Were you a10 year-old in 1947?
Well, probably not. But most people I have known since then with similar incomes have a cleaning service and a lawn service.
We've just decided it's OK if our house is filthy but I feel like most people I know have a house cleaner.
107: Bassooner or later, it usually is.
103: Might have sobered her up sooner.
116: Yeah, that's something I feel weird about. I would like my living space to be cleaner than it is; I don't like cleaning and don't keep up with it well; I don't actually disapprove of hiring cleaners as long as they're reasonably paid and I think of having a cleaner as a normal thing to do for someone who makes what I do; and yet I somehow haven't ever been able to make myself do it. I mean, it's silly now with the kids moved out -- with just me it's fairly easy keeping things tidy -- but why I didn't have a cleaner before I couldn't tell you.
My wealthy suburb elementary school had a cafeteria but I think only because it used to be the high school before a newer one was built. Most kids brought their own lunch but some didn't like it and would throw it out. They implemented a "sharing shelf" where you could leave a lunch you didn't want instead of trashing it, but woe to the social status of any kid who dared take anything from the sharing shelf.
We did have something like ogged's once a week lunch where parent volunteers would get McDonald's burgers on Fridays that kids could buy. But that was in addition to daily cafeteria food. I would buy that but otherwise brought lunch- I have no idea what the economic status of kids getting cafeteria food was. The part of the district served by our elementary school school did have some lower income kids in an otherwise wealthy area so maybe that's why they offered it? And it would be just like parents in that area to organize and say that their kids weren't buying that lower class crap so we need weekly burgers.
120: When I went to girls private day school, everyone had to buy the lunch plan. It was really good food - especially the salad bar.
My mother's cooking was about as good as urple's, so having tasty food that had seasoning and wasn't burnt was a godsend.
Anyway, I feel like we should take urple's word that things he made tasted just fine. The issue was safety.
123: The issue was with urple's mother's cooking more than his.
All I remember of the food from my prep school was the way that the milk AIMHMHB came in 1/3 pint bottles and was usually off in summer: so far gone sometimes that it would have separated entirely into curds and whey. We ate it or drank it, as appropriate, anyway. And this was a fairly classy fee-paying boarding school. That weird English thing where discomfort was a class marker.
That weird English thing where discomfort was a class marker.
Yeah, I think I almost sort of get that: as a child in Anglo-Canuckistan during the 1960s-70s, I of course read all of the Enid Blyton novels...
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I just discovered that "lackadaisical" does not have an s after the k. When did this happen?!
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It's just moved down further. Moving it back doesn't look bad. "Lacksadaiïcal."
I think that I remember walking home every day for lunch during elementary school. This seems so odd to me especially since the walk home involved crossing 2 big streets that had adult crossing guards to keep us safe (for those of you that know Detroit, one of the streets was Woodward Avenue).
It just doesn't seem very relacking to pronounce it without the extra s.
I could never spell "Popsicles" until one of you at the other place made a joke about pronouncing it like a Greek name
This is a not in the least humblebrag but very pleasing: had lunch yesterday with someone who had inherited a little vegetable server, a mother-of-pearl handled fork which had been used at Sunday lunches for the German-Jewish diaspora in Hollywood in the Thirties. So I have touched a fork that Brecht and Billy Wilder have also used.
I remember walking on the Acropolis and remembering that I was walking in the steps of Popsicles.
There were two sets of drips on the beach, and then one disappeared, and I asked Popsicles, "Why did you abandon me?" and he answered, "It was just a cold day."
That is very nice, NW.
I have eaten from a marble dining table that Fred Astaire and Marilyn Monroe have sat on, for similar reasons.
It seems odd that they both sat on a dining table for the same reason, unless you meant "sat at".
Without knowing anything about Fred and Marilyn, no newspaper* in London in the Eighties was complete without a story of a child conceived on the foreign night desk after everyone else had gone home
* I knew of two such stories, and two makes a trend, right?