Tapping into Support!

I know that if you are reading this and you’re a parent of a child with food allergies and intolerances, there are times when you have felt totally isolated and living in a world were no one “gets it”!

The weight of the responsibility can weigh us down at times and it is in these dark moments, we must lift our heads and direct our eyes up! Because it is in this space that our hearts open and our minds expand and we can reach out for the support we need.

It has been said that, “in less than a generation, food allergies in children, some potentially fatal have reached epidemic levels” yet families are getting little if any support.

I find that the emotional impact of raising a child or children with allergies and food intolerances immeasurable, yet I seldom hear it being talked about. I think you will agree that we experience increased levels of stress on a consistent basis. This my friend can take its toll!

It is often only when an event happens that we find our resources drained and our patience extended beyond reason, and it is hard to contain the stress and anxiety surges up in side us.

So this blog posting is about breathing into the support we need, raising its profile and encouraging others, to express what it feels like. To encourage you to share the highs and lows and to celebrate the strength that you acquire through sharing your story with others.

I recently wrote a blog on my Curiosity Inspired Website, called, I have A Question For

You! I talk about our need to understand what we mean by support. Then checking in with others about what they mean when they appear to want support. This is a good place to start, because we talk about “support” in such broad terms.

In a parent/carer sense support, is often described as:-

·       Practical help

·       Information

·       Emotional support – a place of trust and safety

·       A sense of community

·       Ideas about different ways of coping

·       Companionship

·       Opportunities to help others

·       Feelings of being valued, accepted and understood

·       Opportunities to share experiences

·       Opportunities to enhance social networks and friendship

·       A Sense of belonging

I think that each and everyone of us can relate to many of these areas.

Are you clear about the type of support you need ? I would encourage you to take a few minutes to ask yourself, “what support would I find most valuable right now?”, just trust that the right answer will come from within.

What support would I find most valuable right now? Think about it literally, is it someone to just offload to, is it someone to cry with, is it to get physical, be as specific as you possible can.

Is this support within me? If so, what do I need to do to access it?

If not, where can I access this support

We often think that the support we need is beyond us, yet if we take the time to be still and reflect inwardly we can often locate the resources we need from within. These may look and feel like self care, love, patience, tenderness etc.

Often our natural instinct is to want to move away from the pain or anxiety we feel, yet sometimes we need to consider leaning into it and asking, “what is this challenge showing me?”, I think you will all agree there are times when you surprise yourself with the amount of resources you possess.

It is important to acknowledge these resources, because it is these resources that our children see in us, it is these resources that our children learn to model from us, from a very early age.

So I encourage you to be courageous in your attempts to look inward and question what support you can locate from within and then what resources you are require from outside.

You know the story about ensuring that you fit your lifejacket first before trying to save others, well this relates to our children and us. We need to make sure we are supported before we can affectively our loved ones.

If your still reading this, then I am guessing support to you is something you are looking for. If this is the case can I encourage you to link into our Pearshaped Allergy Living Facebook Community community Pearshaped Living, as it provides a great way of linking with other mums who are experiencing similar issues as you.

Please be courageous in sharing and exploring what you and your family are going through, because you are not alone. You never know you may not only benefit from reaching out, but you may also touch the heart of someone who is in a dark moment and throw some light on their issues!

Being Calm...........

There are times as a mother of children who have allergies, that I have to be calm and one of those is when it comes round to my child's allergy skin prick testing. My own sense of dread has increased as my children have got older and their awareness of what is going to happen and how it is going to feel has increased.

This was only made worse last year when my daughter after six years of absolutely no issues in the lead up, during or after the skin prick testing completely lost it. I ashamedly did everything in my power to try and get her to have them. I should have known better, my daughter does not do anything she does not want to do no matter how much cajoling, persuasion and or bribery!

This was not an experience that would be repeated, it was far too traumatic for all of us! I cam away feeling like the worst parent ever and I thought she would never allow a skin prick test to be done again - I was wrong, learning from what had happened again and with some new found knowledge, I am pleased to say both my children  very successfully went through the skin prick testing process with no trauma, drama or tears, in fact we even managed to share some humour around it!

Lessons learnt:-

1. Create the space and time to prepare myself for such an event. So that I am  calm and present.
2. Don't talk about it too much before the event, only talk about it if she raises the subject and then answer honestly and concisely.
3. If at all possible pick the person who does the skin prick testing (in my daughter's case she only wants a female)
4. Celebrate at the end of the appointment.

But now I would include an additional suggestion which in my opinion all mothers should be shown as well as children, because it can be applied to any situation were one is feeling nervous, anxious or just wanting to change their emotions or focus!

It is one that I learnt during my  Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) Practitioner studies, it is easy, quick and can be adapted to children of many different ages. I used it during our last skin prick tests and it worked a treat!

If you want more detailed background, I would suggest that you Google "Peripheral Vision" and I am sure you will find more information than I can provide in this blog. 

Before I plunge into the detail, I would like to encourage you as a parent to do this yourself before trying to teach it to your child. The main reason being, I would strongly suggest that it is really sensible for us to be calm and focused before we expect our children to be, because as you know they sense our emotions without us needing to say or do too much!!

Secondly it is far easier to teach others, when you have learnt a skill yourself and thirdly it is just a great technique to have up your sleeve for those moments when you feel stressed out or overwhelmed.

Explanations & Why It Works

We have two aspects of our vision – ‘focused’ vision (sometimes referred to as ‘foveal’ vision. Focussed vision is the vision we use when concentrating our gaze on a particular object. Peripheral vision is the vision that allows us to see what is happening around us and either side of the object of your focussed vision.

There are two explanations why getting into peripheral vision works.

1. Focused vision is about detail whereas peripheral vision takes in ‘the big picture’. By going into peripheral vision and staying that way for a few moments changes the meaning that we place on events. 

2. Focussed vision arouses the ‘sympathetic’ nervous system, which is the part of the nervous system that accelerates the heart rate, constricts blood vessels, and raises blood pressure (the ‘stress’ responses), whereas peripheral vision aroused the ‘parasympathetic’ nervous system. The parasympathetic nervous system is the part of the nervous system that serves to slow the heart rate, increase the intestinal and glad activity, and to relax the sphincter muscles (in other words, the ‘relaxed’ response).

The Steps To Accessing Your Peripheral Vision?

Broadly, the steps are as follows:

1. Pick a spot on a wall a little above eye level that you can focus on. 

2. As you focus on that spot, allow yourself to notice that even though you are focusing your eyes on that spot, you can allow your awareness to spread either side of that spot, so that you can see the whole of the wall ahead of us. 

3. Then allow your attention to spread along both adjacent walls at the same time, so that even though you are looking at the object you are aware of everything either side of you (180 degree’s) 

4. Once you are able to do this, you can notice how relaxed you feel. (It helps to relax the jaw muscles, possibly by opening the mouth very slightly.) 

5. Once you feel relaxed and that your mind is still, lower your eyes so that you can address the situation at hand.

A Gift You Can Give Your Child

The challenge now is to convert the steps into an easy technique for your child. Making a game out of this is one of the easiest ways and we have developed some fun ones!

Looking up and getting the kids to describe what it is they can see right above them and then slowly get them to see if they can keep their heads still whilst noticing what is around them.

It takes time and patients, but as a parent who has used this, I can tell you it is worth being persistent, making it fun and getting the kids to think that it is a game.

As they get older you can slowly introduce the steps above in a more systematic way. In the meantime though I encourage you as a parent to try it, when you are needing to create a calm state, because as you know our children tune into our every emotion, so even if they can’t do the exercise fully now they can gain some benefit from you doing it.

Also I would encourage you to talk about what your child is seeing whilst looking up, what colours they can see, whether it makes a noise or what noise can they imagine it making, what is smells or feels like. It gives them something else to focus on whilst sitting around waiting for a Skin Prick Test and then if you can try and get them to keep looking up rather than down at their arm, it will certainly support them.

I would love to hear how you get on with this. Email or FB message, if you would like more information or if you would like me to guide you through the exercise. 

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I Love Food

Source: pinterest.com via Sarah on Pinterest

I saw a beautiful picture of a heart which was made of different foods today and my instant reaction was, I don't feel much love for food these days. It got me thinking, about how my attitude to food has changed since having children who have allergies and food intolerances.

Food is such an important aspect of my life, for so many reasons. It is something we cannot live without, it is something we spend huge amounts of money on, it is something we spend lots of time thinking about and purchasing, writing lists about. So the list goes on. I thought because it is something which is so pivotal to our very existence it was worth reflecting what it means to me.

I cannot and must not judge how my daughter feels about food, because of her allergies. She knows no different, her relationship to food is very unique and separate from mine. So I thought as a way of separating my view of food from hers, I would write about what food means to me.

It is important that I consider how my positive and negative beliefs about food may impact her. When writing this list it made me realise what an amazing and complex relationship I have with it!


Food is.....

Something that can be used to nurture.

A way of supporting and showing my love to someone, my family.

Something I use to spoil myself when I am down.

A way in which I support myself.

Is beautiful and something which signifies nature and the world I live in.

A way in which I sustain and support my body.

Something which I should not abuse.

Can create imbalance in my body.

A vehicle which I can use to create energy and vitality.

Something I can overindulge in when I am emotionally out of kilter.

A important aspect of my life.

A way in which I express myself.

A wonderful way of uncovering history, other culture and family traditions.

A way in which I make good and bad choices.

Intrinsically linked to my health and wellbeing and vitality.

Something which can excite me and entice me.

Starting School Journey

My daughter is a beautiful, bright and extremely energetic little girl who in fact is just like any other six and a half year old. She loves to dance, wear pretty clothes, muck around with her friends and has a passion for drawing. The one big difference is that she cannot eat normal foods and does not cope well with being exposed to chemicals or the affection of a cat. The reason being is she has multiple food allergies, which puts her at risk of anaphylaxis, a life threatening condition. She has to have antihistamine and two Auto Injectors with her at all times. 

It is strange to think that my daughter is in her second year at Primary school and the many hours of anxiety and worry about how safe school would be for her seem to have dissipated. Don’t get me wrong I still have anxieties and worries, but not to the same extent.

Starting school for any child is a huge milestone for the child and the whole family; a lot of community anticipation surrounds the child. How many times did I hear “are you starting school this year, how exciting!” for us as parents of a child with severe food allergies it was a time which was fraught with many fears, as this major milestone meant we were having to let other people take responsibility for her in a way we had never done before.

As most parents I am very proud of my daughter, she is smart, very mature for her age and was more than ready to embrace what school life had to offer. As her mother I knew that we had to let her take this new big step in life and it was my job to ensure that all the risks associated with her participating in school life were assessed, evaluated, articulated, documented and most importantly managed. I was stepping into a new role “advocate”, which fortunately I knew much about because of my work, but it felt like a whole new ball game when I was advocating for my own child!

There is much written about food allergies and the management of students at risk of anaphylaxis and everything that it involves, but there is little written about the emotional issues involved in identifying and transitioning your child with food allergies into the school community or real practical examples. I fortunately will never need to go through this process again, although I know that my constant involvement with the school about my daughter’s safety will be on-going and that the next huge milestone in our lives will be when we need to transition her into high school. Managing kids with food allergies is becoming more common and therefore the awareness, stigma and management will become easier in time.

But for us it has been an interesting one thus far and if by writing our story we can ease the stress and anxieties I feel we will have given back some in some way some of the huge amount of good will and support we have been provided through this amazing and sometimes difficult journey. Before sharing our story, I must thank those important friends and school staff who have touched our lives in immeasurable ways, without them my daughter would not be leading a happy, safe and successful school life.

One of the many challenges for me as a parent has been in how I describe her medical condition to others. My question has always been how much do I share with others and what level of seriousness do I place on her allergies, as life threatening sounds so FULL ON. It makes people uncomfortable and each time I use those words the reality can sometimes be FULL ON to me, even though we live with it each day. This was an important issue to me when initiating conversations with school when wanting to explore what school would be appropriate for her. It was also important to me that she is seen as a ‘normal” little girl who has needs like any other but has additional needs which need to be catered for. In other words she was not defined by her allergies. This is a hard balance, especially when you want to convey the seriousness of allergies. Being mindful of our language when describing allergies and the issues surrounding them has been incredibly important to us.

I cannot tell you how many people have jumped into my conversation with a comment like, O my sister in-laws little boy has allergies he is covered with eczema or my husband has terrible hay-fever! The balance between over exaggerating the effects of food allergies, but not under playing them was a fine balance and one I played around with for sometime before I arrived at a description that was factual and probably most importantly not emotional. Peanut allergies are fairly common place in most pre-school and schools now and dependent on the State you live in, there are a number of Dept Education policies and procedures which underpin the management of students at risk of anaphylaxis.

What is less known from our experiences is the management of children with multiple allergies and in my daughter’s case all the main allergies: nuts, diary, sesame, wheat, eggs and potatoes. (on starting school she also had fish and soy) In addition to this she has asthma and is very food intolerant. All these conditions impact upon each other so her whole condition has to be managed holistically.

So when contacting schools I decided to be up front and outline her condition and test the response. It became very evident early on how open Principles were to even engaging in a discussion. I know each parent’s style of communication and priorities varies, but for us this was the approach we used and for me, it quickly enabled us to identify the schools that were not in a position to be open and engaging about my daughter and those that were happy to at least initiate a discussion. I must say that I was actively fobbed off by one of my local schools and subsequently didn’t even bother to go and visit which was a shame, as I knew they had several students who had multiple food allergies.

Another assured me my daughter would be safe, but if she did come into contact with any food the auto-injector could be used as their insurance. For me this was not what I wanted to hear and although true, I wanted assurances that the school would do everything in their power to ensure she did not come into contact with food she was allergic to.

I am sure many parents can convey similar stories, but what has been one of my driving forces, has been my “gut” instinct, what has felt right for our individual situation and us. I am very respectful that each family responds to allergies in different ways, dependent on their life experience, medical support and guidance and priorities.

For us we felt that a small school would suit her personality and health issues, we therefore engaged in discussion with a small school which we landed up enrolling her into.

I maintained an open dialogue with the Principal who I felt able to express my fears and anxieties with and believe me I had many at the start. It was important that I did not feel too neurotic and for any parent reading this who has a child with life threatening allergies, you may relate to the fact that you do feel neurotic a lot of the time! He let me talk and most importantly he allowed me to feel “heard” which was probably one of the most important factors. I had no intention of leaving my child in any school if I did not feel that they understood the potential risks they were responsible for. It was a difficult time and I self doubted myself on many occasions. One of the totally weird things about food allergies is that although it is a very serious condition it is almost completely invisible. When we are having a good run and my daughter is looking well and not having any allergy reactions, I can almost question whether it is true. We are victims of our own success; we manage her allergies so well that to the outside world she is like any other child, which is how it should be. So being extremely clear about the type of school we wanted her to attend academically and from a safety perspective was very much our starting point. Also having the opportunity to talk openly about her medical condition with the Principal were deciding factors in choosing the right school. This was our starting point and I believe that this has provided us with an important platform from which to initiate a partnership with the school at the beginning. The initial stages are a bit like courting, you need to spend time getting to know each other and building up a relationship before you can delve into the more serious nature of the relationship. Sharing detailed medical information about her medical condition, identifying the potential risk areas and jointly coming up with strategies to reduce the risk.

I have this inherent belief that people who are in the teaching profession are compassionate and caring individuals. By the very nature of who my daughter is means she gets people on her side, I know that and I know that once people know who she is they will take responsibility for ensuring her safety.

As the saying goes it takes a whole community to raise a single child. I know I cannot single handily keep her safe so I have to find people who will join us in this role. Our job has to be to support and educate those involved in her life, so they are equipped to assist in keeping her safe. This I believe is what we do with the school, we have informal and formal ways of doing this. But what is the most important aspect is building positive partnership with school personnel and having total belief that their true intention is good and even when mistakes happen and they will, there is an underlying nature of good will.

When our child started school I realized that we were entering into an entirely new community. With this comes new relationships which take time to build up, it is a like a marriage, it takes time and patience to sustain a good marriage and whilst you have your ups and downs, the mutual benefits exceed the obstacles. This helped me to be conscious about holding back a bit in my communication and requests. I needed to spend time getting to know them, but they also needed to get to know my daughter and me.

It has been important to believe that the majority of teaching personnel are caring individuals, by the very nature of the profession they are in. They have evidenced this over and over again, identifying potential risks that had not been previously identified. As each month passes their knowledge base of her individual needs expands and their buy-in to keeping her safe grows. Fortunately she has one of those personalities, which attracts people, she is full of energy for learning and is extremely engaged in the school process, with her teachers and peers, and this makes life easier!

Don’t get me wrong we have had issues to deal with each term and some of them have been fairly significant, but we have followed a formula, which we are building upon and which ensures that we have the confidence to work with the school and the ability to constantly review what strategies are in place.

I’ve listed our formula and broken it down into two key areas, firstly preparing for school and secondly maintenance.

Preparing for school

-                      Talk to someone about your concerns/fears and ensure they are based in reality, be specific. e.g. if you are concerned about your child’s safety at school, break it down what are you specifically concerned about. It helps if the person has a child with allergies in the school system

-                      Do your homework, before initiating a discussion with a Principal regarding your child and their allergies. It is always good to know what you can expect as a starting point. There is an amazing amount of resources about to broaden your thinking about risks and ensuring your child is kept safe at school as well as DEEWR resources dependent on the state you live in. Each state and territory has it’s own anaphylaxis guidelines you can access these through the anaphylaxis Australia website: www.allergyfacts.org.au

-                       Language – If you haven’t done already learn to describe your child’s medical condition in a way which sits comfortably with you and which is accurate and informing, as you can find yourself in some fairly formal meetings discussing your child’s medical condition.

-                       Allergist – Talk to your allergist about any concerns you have about your child participating in school and clarify any areas of concern e.g. allergen skin contact, for us this was a big one as my daughter has had an anaphylaxis reaction from skin contact from diary.

-                      Documentation – Have clear documentation about your child’s medical condition that builds up a picture for the school. This can be difficult and can take time, as you may need to get your paediatric allergist to outline your child’s allergies and the areas of high risk, so gather this information in advance.

-                       Education – Up the anti with educating your child, we had already done a lot of work around this, but she needed to become more aware of risks such as drinking out of bubblers, washing hands, identifying to the teacher when she felt like she was having a reaction. Explore ways in which your child can acquire the confidence that you are working with the school to ensure it is a safe place for them to go.

Maintenance

-                       Celebrate Key Milestones such as end of the first term, acknowledging the huge transition, hard work and your child incredible ability to cope with such a big change of environment and new risks associated with it.

-                      Once you have identified the suitable school as for a formal meeting to go through potential risks. This was an extremely helpful process to the school and us. A Risk Management Plan was developed by the Principal and my daughters Teacher and was discussed at our first formal meeting. This is now reviewed each year with her new teacher.

-                       Keeping records - Confirm important communication via email, as it provides a wonderful record of events as well as formalises discussions taken place.

-                     Getting Involved – Being involved in the school is a wonderful way of engaging with teachers without it being allergy driven. I try to put in what we get out, as I want to acknowledge the great work the school do around keeping kids like her safe.

We look back over the past twenty four months and feel extremely proud of my daughter and her incredible ability to cope with such a big transition. I never thought I would see a time when she would come up to me and say things like “mum, I don’t feel safe when such and such happens” or when the teacher tells me that she requested Zrytec because she was coming up with welts. One of the most important aspects for us as a family is that the school community has accepted her and she fits in like any other child, long may it continue!

Why I don’t give advice

Why I don’t give advice!  You might think as a coach that is exactly what I do, well that is SO not true..

I have learnt much along my allergy living journey but one of the most significant ones has been that each child, each family, each situation is unique and that is so true for families living with allergies.

I want to share my approach to making decisions regarding my kids and to highlight why I don’t give advice.

Recently I have been trying to resolve a concern of mine, which has been creating, some worry! I have a choice here, I can either randomly play out my worry whilst talking to friends and family to seek out solutions to this problem.

Or alternatively I can use a structured approach, which clearly enables me to articulate the problem and work my way to finding a solution that suits my children and us as a family.

Here is how I approached this issue:-

Goal (identified my specific goal)

I want both my kids to learn to swim like any other children.

Barrier to achieving the goal (articulated my concern/worry)

Both my kids seem to be out of sorts when going swimming, nothing too specific but my intuition tells me that it does not agree with them. (Chemical sensitivities) This is very specific to my children and how we as parents choose to respond.

Gather Information (identified specific information about kids)

I have observed how they react each time we go swimming and the evidence supports my intuition. This is my perception and other parents might see different evidence than me.

Research (Built up evidence to support concern and various options to overcome barriers)

This is a big one, but the best place for me to always start is with our Allergy Unit to see what could be the cause for the reaction and whether they have any suggestions.

I also got onto the Internet and sourced some information from different discussion boards I participate in.

Going along with the principle “you get what you focus on”, I will seek out information that probably supports my concerns and possible solutions. This varies again dependent on experience, beliefs and my children’s health condition/status.

Evaluate (Identified what information relevant to our situation)

Then I gathered all the information and decided on an action that suits our situation.

Review (See if the action taken has resolved concerns)

We will put some action in place to see whether it makes a difference to my children participating in swimming.

What I realized when doing this exercise was that our children really are like fine tuned instruments and there are so many variations for each child and for each parent about the choices and decisions made. Each choice and decision is based on so many different factors:-

• Values
• Beliefs
• Experiences
• Perceptions
• Children medical conditions

So as a coach my role is to ask the right questions so when a parent gets stuck with an issue and is unable to move forward I can assist them in working out their own solutions.

As a parent you do all of the above in many different ways in your life without sometimes even realizing it.

In my opinion it is important to be cautious when seeking or giving advice, use it when gathering information and researching an issue.  But always remember that you are your OWN LEADER in your child’s health and wellbeing. Any decision you make is made with the resources you have at hand at the time and the information you have in front of you!

How to survive Christmas end of term madness

It may feel as if this time of year was designed to drive you wild and particularly you mums with kids with allergies.

Like, if you don’t have enough things to worry about, you now have the additional issues of having nuts spayed across every food counter you go near, diary chocolate has a life of it’s own in all its most appealing forms of wrapping, which the kids can’t help but want to touch, pick up and most seriously eat and so on.

Food feels as if it has taken on a whole new energy of its own, everybody seems to be considering what they are going to cook, and candy canes are starting to appear in Christmas cards and you start to worry about what food is creeping into other students’ lunch boxes.

If all this is not bad enough you also have consider how you are going to attend all the additional christmas school activities, parties and family get togethers, which mostly involve food or treats of some description in different environments! Not to mention difficult dynamics, explaining why you have to take your own food or why your child can't eat certain foods. My stress levels are on the increase, just writing this!

This obviously creates loads of fun for your kids but there is of course a lot of logistical shifting and organization that goes behind all of this and of course as the primary organiser, gift purchaser, Christmas card distributor, cook, taxi driver, and children’s entertainer etc, your up for a lot of additional work.

So, here are six tips to help you get to the End of Term with some sanity and hopefully a smile on your face;

1) Breath – it seems like an easy request, but it is in fact quite difficult to do when feeling stressed and surprisingly it is difficult to feel stressed when you are breathing deeply.

2) Get Organised – Yes I know this is something you are great at, but be realistic and don’t set yourself up for total exhaustion. Write a list, write two or three what ever it takes and slowly but surely work your way through them. Make sure you write a special list of allergy friendly foods you need to purchase in for your extra baking requirements, or alternatively special bought products if permitted. You can start baking now and putting all those festive decorations on the cakes and freeze them so you have plenty at hand ready to go! Order any online special foods/treaties like candy canes, lollies, food coloring you need. Buy your special advent calendar or buy a normal one and replace all the chocolate with pre-sealed allergy friendly ones. Put in your orders for new school uniform before the end of term. Purchase teachers presents and get your child’s closest friends contact details so you can arrange play dates during the school holidays. Pay close attention to your child’s school bag, for letters as this is a time when correspondence is flying around and you need to keep up with it all! Start putting festive special tags, stickers, and serviettes in the lunch box, anything, which makes it, look more special than usual.

3) Be focused – About the experience you want your child to have in the lead up to the end of term. Make sure they know that they will get rewarded if they are given “unsafe” treats. Have a conversation with your child’s teacher if needs be about how they are going to manage treats being brought into school and work out a system that suits you both.

4) Menu Planner – If you don’t already, have a menu plan for the weeks leading up to the end of term. It not only keeps you organised during this hectic time, it enables you to balance out food types if your child is food intolerant and enables you to build in some special treats.

5) Celebrate – Make sure you mark the end of term with a celebration. Your child has reached the end of a year, celebrate their achievements and yours. Show gratitude to all those special friends, teachers, administrators who have supported you throughout the year.

6) Planning – speak to the school about the year ahead, identify what needs to be put in place, any documents which need updating, medication which may need renewing etc. Organise a meeting date and time with the appropriate personnel either prior to the end of term or just before your child starts, so that you are confident about the New Year.

Make sure you take some time out for you, before the school holiday begins. For me it is a time of reflection and gratitude. Having my children back at home for an extended time allows us to fit into our natural "safe" state and very quickly the end of term madness drifts into a far distant memory!

Taking Risks!

Hens at school and my daughter wants to be in the thick of it.

She has a BIG egg allergy, my initial reaction is, what the heck another issue to deal with.

On a bad day if she sits in a café with someone eating eggs, her eyes start itching and a rash can quickly appear………..

Then the brain goes into action mode.

I email the Anaphylaxis Association and RPA Allergy Unit to get advice on potential risks.

Obtain a Fact Sheet and specific medical advice from RPA Allergy Clinic.

All cool, I have their support on my side.

We have suggested strategies to put in place….

I don’t want to put all the responsibility on the school to manage the risks.

 

They clearly want to keep her away from the hens, fully understandable, but not OK.

So I book us on the roster to look after the hens for the weekend.

We pick up the keys and get instructions from the school.

The peer kudos Saskia has attracted for being on the roster is invaluable.

She is glowing with excitement and a sense of responsibility.

I’ve unintentionally enabled her to gain some elevation within her peer group.

In spite of her allergies, “she is the one that gets to look after the hens”, how cool is that?

We managed to get through the weekend and Saskia has an allergy reaction free experience.

She heard the instructions, she maintained involvement, she gauged her own body response and she gained so much more than just the experience.

Her sense of pride was noticeable; she took photos into show and tell on Monday morning and has not stopped talking about it.

Her self-esteem and confidence has grown just that bit more.

Were there risks associated with this activity, yes?

Would I do it again, absolutely?

It has taught me a big lesson.

She needs to be given the opportunities to gain confidence in her own abilities to manage risks.

And these opportunities need to expand as she matures.

So our/her world opens up just a little bit more.

I am so proud of her and of myself for feeling the fear of what might happen and doing it anyway!