Christmas is just around the corner, and although the children live it with overwhelmed illusion, the parents of allergic food or intolerant children produce rather the opposite effect. Celebrations around food, mass gatherings, host or go as guests ... gestures that put our hearts to the test!
And it is that when there are allergies certain situations can generate stress, fear, anxiety and rejection. From my experience as the mother of an allergic child I would like to share some tips to avoid these negative feelings and try to live Christmas with the same enthusiasm and magic of our children.
If you have been invited to eat, be proactive!
If we receive the invitation to celebrate Christmas at the home of family or friends, let's think first if these people have full knowledge of our child's food allergy. Surely they know it because you have ever commented, but will know how to handle in the supermarket or in the kitchen avoiding the allergen and cross contamination?
If the answer is no, or you doubt it, my advice is to be proactive and help, supervise and get involved in the preparation of the menu:
- Offer to accompany the other person to buy. Although with the new labeling law it is now easier to identify the allergens present in food, for someone who is completely unaware of the world of food allergies when going to the grocery store to buy can be chaotic.
Another option is that you take care of buying those dishes or menu ingredients that may result more problematic or hard to find in stores that are not specialized, for example, sweets or desserts.
Offer to help the person who invites you to eat in the kitchen. In this way, in addition to monitoring that there is no risk of cross contamination (how dangerous it is for food allergy sufferers), you can take the opportunity to inform about the importance of hygiene and proper handling of products in order to avoid food contagion.
In short, be patient, inform and offer to help in everything you can. Surely the other person will thank you and you will enjoy the meal in a more relaxed way.If you are hosts, be careful at the table!
Hosting on these dates may be somewhat chaotic, especially if our house is small or we are going to invite a lot of people. Even so, For me it is the ideal option since the control over the food will be exclusively ours.
An important detail! Do not forget to ask your guests if they suffer from any food allergy or intolerance. Surely we all fall into this, as it is something we live daily, but it may also be precisely because we are focused exclusively on the allergy or allergies of our children, let us forget that perhaps one of our diners may also have the same.
Once the menu is prepared, we will make the table available; something very important also to keep in mind:
Avoid that the allergic child feels next to people who do not have full involvement or knowledge about their food allergy: Maybe family or friends we see from year to year, very old people who are unaware of the world of food allergies or young children. You, better than anyone, know your guests!
Don't lose sight of the children! If many children are going to gather at lunch, it is important not to lose sight of them. They may be relatives or friends who know your child's allergy perfectly, and it is more than likely that your child is also fully aware of her, but They are still children in a festive setting.
Laughter, carefreeness and jokes can lead them to do such everyday and childhood-like things as "play" with food, transfer food from one plate to another, cross-cutlery or glasses ... If all the kids are eating what same (which is my advice) there would be no major problem, but if this is not the case and there are allergens present in other dishes, contamination would be assured.
- Patience a lot of patience.
Crowd meetings, especially when they happen to family or friends we don't see often, can cause some stress to parents of allergic children, especially when we face certain phrases and comments in the style of:
- "How exaggerated you are"
- "In my time, children were not so soft"
- "for a little nothing will happen"
- “But how is a piece of sausage going to take milk? You are obsessing! "
- "I think you are overprotecting the child too much"
- "What this kid needs is a good piece of chocolate. You will see how that does not feel bad!" ...
Therefore, from the calm, I advise you to report on how dangerous it is what the other person has just said or done, arguing with coherence, data and good ways for our message to be heard and assimilated by the interlocutor. In the information is the key!
Always carry "the emergency tupper" in your bag
And finally, I advise you not to leave home without, what I call, the "emergency tupper". Get into this tupper candies, chocolate and Christmas sweets suitable for your allergic kids.
In this way, if you doubt, you can exchange the candies that they collect in the Kings parade for the candies that you carry in the tupper, or you can offer them a piece of chocolate or roscón de reyes suitable when others are taking the typical sweets of these parties.
From my experience, with the emergency tupper, proactivity, information and a lot of patience, Christmas with food allergies can also be wonderful.Photos iStock, Pixabay
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