Helping a food-allergic child understand their allergy can be difficult. There's also the fear of singling them out and over-protecting them. All three of our boys are allergic to peanuts to some degree, with Liam having the worst of all reactions - analphylactic to trace amounts. His blood pressure drops and, if we don't catch it, he goes comatose. More than enough nights have been spent waking him up evrey 15-20 minutes and waiting for his secondary reaction - projectile vomiting. When this is the option, there really is no such thing as "over protecting".
The makers of the Arthur cartoon series understand a child's need to see that they are "normal", and even included food allergies. One of the main characters - Binky, the school bully - has a peanut allergy, and the show Binky Goes Nuts deals specifically with this.
You can download a number of pdf files in the parent and teacher section of the pbskids website, located here, in their Hooray for Health series. The DVD of the episode is available at Amazon - in Canada here and the US site here. If you want to preview it, I found the episode in two parts on YouTube (I didn't put it there, so don't please yell at me for not respecting copyright):
Binky Goes Nuts, part 1 of 2
Binky Goes Nuts, part 2 of 2
I found a list of other TV characters that deal with food allergies that I posted here. Did you know there are characters in Star Trek: Enterprise and StarGate: Atlantis with food allergies?
After discovering a potentially fatal peanut allergy in our youngest son we had a hard time finding information and felt alone. As Liam continues through Primary School, we've decided to post the information we gather to help other parents of children with peanut allergies.
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