There is a little girl that joined my son's class (Head Start) mid-year. She has a severe peanut allergy, and a note was sent home not to allow peanut products to come into the school. Her allergy is only to ingestion, so as long as it's not edible, the school doesn't have a problem with it.
Obviously, there are no foods with peanuts or peanut oils served in class, and any parent that sends in peanut foods will have their child removed from class pending a meeting (seriously).
For comparison, my son has a severe intolerace to grape juice. It literally goes right through him, to the point where he often has to be hospitalized for dehydration if he drinks it. He has been in the hospital three times this year because the school will not stop serving grape juice and they don't supervise well enough to keep him from drinking other kids grape juice. There are no special precautions in place for his health, and his condition is as life threatening as the child with the peanut allergy.
Here's what I'm getting at. The school knows that grape juice can kill my son. The school of the child in this story knows that peanuts can kill this child. Yet, there are no special precautions in place to help my son. We simply have to trust that he will not be exposed. SO far, they have failed miserably. Yet, I make the choice to still send my son and seek medical treatment when necessary, so that he will be prepared to stay away from the product on his own when he gets older. If it were an allergy that would immediately threaten his life, such as an allergy to peanuts that required hand and mouth washing of every person around him, I would remove him from school. Because his disability is too severe for him to be safe in the school environment. And if the other little girls disability were so severe that he would have to take these precautions, I would request a transfer of classes. Because I would not allow my five year old to feel that he had killed someone over a simple mistake.
Excellent post. Obviously you are a parent who knows the pitfalls, has weighed the pros and cons, and made a conscious decision to take parental responsibility for your child. I applaud you, and know it must, at times, be very hard. I also applaud the fact that you are taking responsibility for your child and the consequences which, I do not feel, the parents in this peanuts case are doing.
I'm sorry, but the parents allowing a child with that severe an allergy to attend a regular school is dangerous to that child's health, and to the mental health of the other students at the school. Would they send a hemophiliac child to regular school, or a child that had a fatal alllergy to cleaning products? No. Because it wouldn't be possible to adequately protect that child. Special needs children often require around the clock care. The allergic child is one of those cases and it is up to her PARENTS to provide it. Not the school and a all of the other kids that attend that school. JMO.
I applaud you for taking informed responsibility for your child's health, and not insisting that everyone else do so. I'm not sure the parents in this peanut allergy scenario are doing the same thing - seems to me they expect everyone else to watch out for their child while they insist on the rights they think they have.