What’s that smell? Episode 9

My little Piglet is growing up. Fast. We noticed the other day that a shelf he could recently only just reach up to is now head height. (Such observations are marked in time by both an affectionate comment between my wife and I but also the ceremonial ‘lifting of the valuables’ – basically finding a higher and safer place for the things Piglet really shouldn’t reach. A sort of inverse Tetris, if you will). His speech is also increasing exponentially. Words that I never realised he’d even clocked are now slipping into regular conversation. We have to be so so careful!

I might have told a little porky last week… This is episode 9 of what was meant to be an 8-post series. I’d planned it out in advance and everything! I told myself that I’d written all I needed to on our path to discovery until something new came up. However, two days after I shared the last post, Piglet uttered four words that made me realise there was still an area to cover…

We found out this week that Piglet knows the phrase “No Dairy. No Soya”. This is not something we’ve ever taught him and I don’t know yet whether this is something they’ve been working on at Nursery (they’d usually tell us if they were doing something specially for him like this so I’m guessing not). I can only assume that Piglet has witnessed mummy thinking out loud when checking the back of a packet somewhere. It’s certainly not a phrase I’ve noticed either of us saying regularly. But out of the blue on a random Thursday, while I’m at work – I get a Whatsapp video of him saying exactly that into the camera and then giggling.

Such realisations bring a bittersweet joy. It’s so amazing to see a being, that (what feels like) so recently was just a gurgling baby, have such consciousness of his own self; but it also brings into sharp focus that educating Piglet about his allergies is going to become relevant very soon. He’s still only 2.5 years old and so it’s really only nursery that feed him food that we’re not directly involved in choosing. But he is, soon, going to end up in situations where people are offering him food and he’s going to need to know how to manage that particular minefield.

There are multiple facets to teaching him how to manage it. The most urgent is probably making sure that he knows to tell people that he has allergies. So that one we seem to have a head-start on. At least if he can tell anyone that offers him food that he is allergic then the vast majority of accidents can be avoided. That said, the second thing to teach him is probably what foods to look out for. Not everyone is accountable for labelling the allergens in their kitchen nor an experienced parent of someone of allergies. At the end of the day it’s up to us (Piglet, me and his mum) to make sure that he eats safely. Despite anyone’s best intentions – we can’t really hold one of his friend’s parents accountable for not knowing that their toast has soya in it. The final part of this trilogy is educating the social nuances of trying to not let his allergies get in the way of his life. I can still remember having to ask to see the packaging of biscuits at parties, only to realise that I can’t eat anything. I don’t want the fear of getting it wrong to unnecessarily limit Piglet’s ability to eat out and to enjoy the social interactions that come with it.

We’ve started thinking about how to deal with the education of Piglet knowing what he can and can’t eat. It’s very easy to call Cashew Nut Milk just ‘milk’ and coconut oil Sheeze just ‘cheese’, that’s what they are to us in the context of our kitchen, but I don’t want Piglet to not know the difference. He already recognises that we often have Almond Milk when ordering out of the house so I guess a lot of the recognition will come from just mirroring our behaviours.

The social impacts are much harder to help with. Allergies are just a pain in the arse. There is a delicate balance to tread between being a complete pest around triple checking every ingredient that someone cooks for you and, conversely, assuming that everyone who offers to has a detailed knowledge of what you can eat. Everyone gets it wrong at times. We gave gravy to Piglet with soya in for several weeks before a family member pointed it out because they’d tried to make gravy for us and ruled it out. I’m hugely grateful that it will be easier for Piglet to eat in restaurants than it was for me as a teenager. I also hope that he will be less daunted by the ‘restaurant experience’ than I was; partly because it will be easier for us to eat out across his childhood than it was for my parents. (Plus I suspect there will be more inclination to as well, which helps!).

Perhaps what I worry about most is deciding how much to let Piglet learn by trial and error and how much to just protect him. If Piglet never has another allergic reaction in his life I’d be over the moon. But it’s not very likely. A big question will be whether Piglet understands why he shouldn’t eat these things, or just takes it as a rule as verbatim from us. Obviously I want him to understand and I do what I can to try and explain it. At some point, though, it has to be his allergy to manage. I don’t know enough to really answer this hypothetical question but I wonder what I would do if his allergy was more acute (an IgE reaction, which potentially could be life-threatening, for example). I suspect it doesn’t change anything other than just change the risks involved.

I would also want him to be sure that his allergy was something he agreed with. I remember feeling frustrated when started trying milk products as a late teenager and realised I no longer fully reacted. Wondering how long I’d been so carefully limiting my diet unnecessarily. Much of this was just frustration at allergies being a nuisance. I was also struggling with a sense of identity, having started eating meat around that time as well, but not eating milk had just become something I took for granted. I would like Piglet to feel that he understands what journey we’ve been through to keep him off the food we’ve limited him from. Perhaps, in hindsight, this blog will be useful for that. I often wonder how he will feel when he is able to comprehend that I’ve written this.

A lot of this is a little way off in terms of how we choose to manage it and what he understands and chooses to do. Who knows, by the time he does it may not be an issue any more! But for the moment I’ll settle for teaching him to say “I’m allergic” on the back of his beautifully delivered “No Dairy, no Soya!”

<-Episode 8