Got told yesterday my one year old is officially allergic to peanuts, anyone have any experience on this?

The Snack Safely Guide is a fabulous resource. There are a lot of popular foods that are safe for people with peanut allergies. You'll quickly memorize brand names.

Allergy Eats is a nice resource for eating out. It's based on user reviews, so take the ratings with a grain of salt. People will give a 1 star rating because the service was slow, yet that has nothing to do with the allergy issue. At any rate, it's a nice starting place.

Honestly, the food is the easy part, imo. The tough part is the people.

You'll quickly get into the swing of things. You'll learn to weigh risk factors and determine what you feel comfortable doing. You'll get used to having "stand by" foods and restaurants. You'll be a pro in no time.

But you'll have rage, and heart break, and sadness. When IHOP randomly decides to introduce a peanut butter pancake for a promotional period, you'll rage. You'll feel betrayed by your trusted standby for the last 2 years. You'll move on.

When someone decides to post that fucking ridiculous George Carlin quote that suggests children with peanut allergies deserve to die, you'll have rage. You won't find it funny that people so smugly remark that anaphylaxis is nature's way of saying your kid is worthless. At least your kid doesn't have a dbag for a parent, so be grateful.

When your kid goes trick or treating, and the first time he/she sighs, drops his/her head, and says "They don't have any good stuff", your heart will break. You'll trade Reeses for Smarties and Snickers for Tootsie Rolls. As a result, you will unintentionally become considerate of your coworkers and you'll instinctively think to bring allergy friendly foods to share.

When everyone else is eating something, and your child is staring longingly at it, you'll want to die inside. It's okay. Fight the urge to criticize others or make a big deal out of it. Be pragmatic, be honest, let your little one voice his/her sadness and validate those feelings. Discuss what can be done differently for the future to make things "fair".

The food isn't hard. It's the other stuff that's hard.

There's some incredibly promising research, by the way. DBV Technologies is in Phase 3 for a Peanut Patch. Think of a nicotine patch for cigarettes. It's similar to that. They've had some incredible success with previous studies, and have had NO serious side effects to the patch. This last phase is scheduled to be complete in 2017, with possible mainstream treatment available as early as 2018.

Good luck and best wishes.

/r/Parenting Thread