Utter Peanut Butter Nutters

There are a million topical debates in Mummyhood that polarise parents as they rise on their high horses and soap boxes. I have a million different opinions on some if not all points of parenting difference but few that I can't for the life of me understand both sides of the argument. I anticipate, in the coming life of this blog, I will touch on one or two of them, even though I can usually be found resting my horse as I sit upon the fence. There is one matter that arose again in my life today, however, which is ping ponging about in my head as it does every time I hear the matter mentioned. It is a simple matter that raises outrage, cries victimisation and abuse in nonsensical volumes. It is one that reeks of irony. It is a matter where the people crying foul are anything but the victims they claim to be and the outrage is always so foully on the wrong side of the fence. It is none other than than the utter freaking nuttery of the peanut butter debacle. Nut allergies. Not a laughing matter.

"When he was at preschool" a mother said to me recently "of course the politically correct police wouldn't let 'em 'ave 'is peanut butter sandwiches. Which is all very well for the kid with the allergy to them but what about my boy? It's unfair, because 'e likes 'is peanut butter." It's a point of view that comes up time and time and time again. "I can't see why my kid can't have nuts in her lunch because of one kid out of thirty four." "It's so unfair because where does it stop? They should keep them at home if it's unsafe at school. It's not fair on our kids." I'm not entirely sure on the blogging rules of foul language but seriously, are you fucking kidding me?

I should make it clear. I don't have a child with allergies. She's perfect. She's amazing. She can eat anything I'd like to feed her and even if she doesn't like it, it's not going to hurt her. On the entire spectrum of food products available there is not one thing that I have come across that she is intolerant to or allergic to. Name a food group. I can feed it to her. She is like most children on the planet when it comes to food. There are things that are good for her and foods that are bad for her. But in moderation, the food world is her oyster. The simple thing this boils down to, is she can go without a peanut butter sandwich in her school lunch. Even if she wants one. It boils down to another simple thing: since when is a peanut butter sandwich worth more than a kid's right to live? Allergy kids are perfect and amazing too, it's just their world is a little more nuts!

It's a funny thing with allergies. Many of them are life threatening. Nuts in particular are a nasty thing to have in your allergy compendium. One of the things they have the potential to do, in a person allergic, is close off their airway. Anaphylactic shock isn't a joke. And it isn't a question of freedom of rights. On more than one occasion parents have marched in protest for their child's rights to a peanut butter lunch. I've seen it on the news. I stare in disbelief. Newsflash: since when do people have a right to do anything that they want? Since when does "but he likes them" become more important than "but it could kill somebody."

Your kid might like peanut butter in their sandwiches. My kid might like taking a gun to school. Uncle Ted may like masturbating in church on a Sunday and Cousin Jethro might like lighting fires in forests. Your kid might not like wearing a school uniform, using his manners or eating her vegetables. But last time I looked,  it wasn't that cool to bring up your children to be indifferent to the needs of others and it sure as heck isn't cool to encourage that indifference to a point where they may just kill their classmates and if you think I have my knickers in a twist, how about we consider the facts? Rules exist for everybody.

Allergies are real. Some allergies are lethal. We're all in the human race together, only it's not actually a race. Or a competition. Or a free for all. We live in a community. There is a saying "it takes a village to raise a child". It could be said, it takes a peanut to kill one. Collective responsibility and respect for differences are concepts we should be teaching our children. Your kid has the freedom to eat peanut butter at home. Nut free policies exist not to inconvenience you or upset you or to disindulge your child. They're simply there to save the lives of ordinary, regular, could have been yours, kids. Kids that have as much right to be at school and preschools as your kids.

Kids, particularly little kids, are messy little things. It seems they always have sticky little hands and food spilled down their fronts. They stick their sticky little hands on everything they can get those little hands on and what ever it is that has made them sticky, goes everywhere. Peanut butter hand prints can cause peanut butter anaphylaxis. It doesn't take a shared sandwich. It isn't about hurting a kid's feelings. It's about avoiding that conversation in years to come "remember when you killed little Tommy Brown?" More particularly, "remember when you killed little Tommy Brown because I believed in your right to a peanut butter sandwich, because I didn't want you to be a victim" Funny old thing, perspective, isn't it?

Allergy mums don't send their children to preschool and school to risk their lives. They send them so their children have lives, real lives, lives that they get to live just like your children and my children. Lives where they don't have to stay home, isolated and imprisoned because of a peanut butter sandwich. The efforts an ordinary parent needs to go through to give their child something OTHER than peanut butter in their lunch are NOTHING compared to what an allergy parent goes through each and every time they allow their child to put something in their mouth. Most of us have no idea what it is like for our children to go into anaphylactic shock in front of us or what it is like to scramble for that adrenaline. How much worse can it be to let them go to school where you can only hope that someone gets that Epipen on time?

I've come to the end of my ranting and raving but it had to come out. For all those who think they're hard done by and their kids are hard done by and missing out on a God given right to nuts in their lunch, I say grow up, get over yourselves and think about the messages you are giving to your children. Quite frankly, a peanut butter sandwich isn't worth it.