Nut-allergic child's mom demands oak trees be removed from schoolyard

[scotpens]

Just when you think parents can't possibly get any more paranoid and overprotective when it comes to their children:

Link

From the linked article:

Donna Giustizia told Vaughan, Ont., city council that the saplings dropping tree nuts onto school property pose a threat to young students with anaphylaxis-inducing allergies and are infringing on their right to a nut-free space.

Hell, the jokes practically write themselves.

[Gary Mitchell]

She's nuts.

[teacake]

Her kid is in the 8th grade!!

If she hasn't learned to not eat acorns by then she has more problems than allergies.

[scotpens]

What I want to know is, where does this "right to a nut-free space" come from? Is it enshrined in the Canadian Constitution?

teacake wrote:

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Her kid is in the 8th grade!!

If she hasn't learned to not eat acorns by then she has more problems than allergies.

Maybe she's delusional and thinks she's a squirrel?

[Owain Taggart]

I guess the nut doesn't fall far from the tree.

[wissaboo]

My adult son went to school with someone who was so allergic to nuts that she couldn't go to someone's house because they had a chestnut tree in the yard and she would react to it. So it is possible for someone to be sensitive enough that they couldn't be near that tree. I can't imagine how they get through the day

[teacake]

I'd be moving to the plains or the desert or something.

[Deranged Nasat]

I would guess that the most important part of learning to deal with an allergy is to take charge of what you can and can't do at the earliest possible age - by now, I imagine the child should know they can't tolerate nuts and be avoiding them anyway. Preventing the child from taking control of their own health by instead demanding that anything potentially dangerous be removed entirely from their environment seems diminishing to me, like you're robbing them of the most empowering way of dealing with their health concerns. I understand wanting to keep an environment free of things that are dangerous to a child, but if the things that are dangerous to them are common and unavoidable, I don't think you're doing the child a favour by trying to alter reality rather than helping the child adapt themselves to that reality. The child needs to be able to take charge of themselves regarding their exposure to nuts, not be taught that the only way to deal with the allergy is to shut themselves off from any situation where nuts might be present in some capacity.

[Shazam!]

Anyone who demands anything shouldn't get it on principle.

[Deckerd]

wissaboo wrote:

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My adult son went to school with someone who was so allergic to nuts that she couldn't go to someone's house because they had a chestnut tree in the yard and she would react to it. So it is possible for someone to be sensitive enough that they couldn't be near that tree. I can't imagine how they get through the day

It's perfectly acceptable to remove a tree from one's own property if a child is allergic to it. It's nonsense to remove them from public areas because a child is allergic to it.

[M'Sharak]

Deckerd wrote:

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It's perfectly acceptable to remove a tree from one's own property if a child is allergic to it. It's nonsense to remove them from public areas because a child is allergic to it.

The other thing is that—while tree nuts, peanuts, etc. do present a serious and potentially fatal risk to those who are allergic—acorns and oaks are so distantly related to nearly all other food nuts as to be a separate issue. Some people may indeed be allergic to acorns, but they're most likely a different group altogether from the people who are allergic to peanuts and other common food nuts.

[macloudt]

I came across this article a few days ago. The comments are hilarious, including several links to medical articles stating exactly what M'Sharak said.

I knew a child who takes regular medication because simply being around oak trees at certain times of the year could trigger anaphylactic shock (this was several years ago and I can't remember exactly what triggers the allergy, only that she was "allergic to oak trees"). The child's mother, a nurse, made sure the child always took her medication, always had an epi-pen on her, and sent the child on her merry way outside to play with the other children. No way in hell did she expect a single tree that wasn't on her own property to be cut down, even though in this rare case being around an oak tree really could kill her child. The child was four years old when the allergy suddenly developed, and from that age she could recognise an oak tree and knew to stay away from it.

[MacLeod]

One can certainly understand the mothers point of view of wanting to protect her child. However there is no right to a nut-free space, the counterpoint to her argument would be the right to a tree-filled space.

In a poll which do you think would win?

[kythe]

I have a 12 year old 7th grader who is already reaching the stage where she is embarrassed by things I say and do. I can only imagine the rebellious phase this 8th grader is going to go through due to having a mother who is this overprotective.

[macloudt]

In a way, I think this is the worst part of all. Imagine what their kids are going through now that their mother has been outed as, shall we say, a wee bit overprotective.