backpedalling and scornful hindsight

In Florida, a school is backpedalling. Edgewater Elementary has reconsidered the 504 plan put in place to protect a first grade child with preanut allergy. This is hailed as a triumph by the protesters, one of whom said that the school is now trying to work with us. That's what we wanted all along. Experts have pointed out that some elements of the plan are unusual (and potentially unnecessary) and Gina Clowes twittered, accurately, that Allergy Moms should never cry wolf! We need to ask for what our children need to stay safe and included and not more. (3/28)

(deep breath)

Let's start here: sanity and a functional partnership between the food allergy (FA) parents, their medical team and a school is absolutely necessary. When a parent sits down to work out a 504 plan, they are the conduit between the doctor and the school. They relay what they understand of their child's medical needs - and many are the studies that show how flawed that understanding can be.  To balance any unintentional bias or misunderstanding, the parent supplies paperwork, a food allergy action plan, contact information for the allergist. They talk about the child's history, what has happened and what it looks like. They learn a little about the school's perspective, how things work there (nurse? no nurse? where are the Epis kept? what happens in the lunch rooms? how often do you have food fights?) and tries, politely, to figure out how much the school understands about allergies. 

Don't fool yourself into thinking that this is enough. The school comes with fears of litigation, regulations galore, staff who might be anxious or resistant or just insisting on a degree of precision in their instructions. The FA  parents come with their understandings, their misunderstandings and a fearful, hopeful please, please do right by my kid! And everyone hopes that the diagnosing doctor has got it right. It's painful to read about the unevenness in the ways that allergies are diagnosed, categorized - and therefore, managed - and the education provided to patients' and their families. Best care practices? For folks who don't go to a select few clinics, best practices means whatever their allergist - or pediatrician - tells them. 

And yet, Gina is right. Don't cry wolf. As the advocate mom, you absolutely, positively must have some authority. People need a reason to believe you when you say, this is what my child needs to be safe. To coexist in a world of her peers. Because - and I did ask - the allergist isn't going to be able to show up and say that for you. (Note the waiting lists for appointments and food challenges. That's why. Our hemophilia treatments center can send a nurse practitioner *and* a social worker, but hemophilia? rare. Allergies? really, really not.) So, parents? Don't screw it up.

Hello? Have we not read the articles about false positives on the allergy tests? Did we not read about how some egg allergic kids can tolerate eggs in this format, and others can handle their allergens in that? Um. So, if the doctors aren't able to keep up - and are making mistakes - and don't get me started on patient/family education, how is the parent supposed to avoid screwing up? 

I'm going back to what I said earlier: if you weren't in the room for that 504 plan, you just don't know what happened. And, as Dr. Scott Sicherer pointed out, if you aren't the child's doctor, you just don't know what she needs. Maybe the school asked for the peanut sniffing dog, to help them make sure that they knew where those pesky peanuts were hiding. Maybe someone pointed out how oral kids are in the younger grades, and that they put things in their mouth. What if some peanut stuff got on a pencil - and the allergic kid picked it up? Fear of litigation, a desire for a margin of safety, an honest wish to do right - and yes, misinformation of the most well-meant kind - these are all reasons that a school plan might edge towards the conservative. Possibly tip over the edge, towards aggressive. Litigation is a silent demon in the room, as is the honest, compassionate worry about not doing right by a child. By one of your kids, a kid in your classroom. It's just so much easier to walk away - which is why we needed ADA and IDEA; sometimes you have to force the system to do the right thing, despite the risks. To learn how to do the right thing. Public schools have learned, but they are still - and rightfully - anxious.

I can live with the good reasons - the well meant ones. I want to wail about the lousy education that most of us get, and oh, I could tell you stories about positive allergy tests that were positive - maybe. Or positive until the kid's IgE dropped, maybe once the pollen season was over. Or positive only because we weren't yet working with the fancy shmancy allergy clinic that saved us, and the other allergy team just didn't know enough.  And I want to take out a billboard and say: that kid can't trust her classmates, because their parents are teaching how to lash out in the name of your pseudo-rights. The kid's parents can't be effective advocates, because the big experts have gone on national TV to show how wrong they are. And that school has now taught the protesting, self-centered people that oh, a plan designed to keep a child safe? Negotiable.

Safety, accurately described and understood, is not negotiable. Clearly, that accuracy is just not possible here. The experts were right to say what they did, the school was right to rework the plan. The parents were right to ask for more information - but the poison is in their picket line. In keeping the non-allergic children home from school, as a form of protest. In putting those children on the picket line. Because ultimately? it takes more than a 504 to include a special needs kid, you need to have school, family and community working together. And after these events, I cannot see how this is a school community that will show the necessary compassion, or respect this issue in the future. And I cannot see how the FA parents were anything but set up.

And I worry deeply about that child. She won't just be different in a world of her peers, and she hasn't been allowed to be merely different in a world of different needs and different children. Instead, she'll be herself, complete with her medical needs -  and those needs, or difference will be mocked, used against her - if not simply and dangerously dismissed by her classmates and their parents.

And in that, there is no safety at all.

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For more on the story, see this thoughtful bit of reporting, which talks about the medical need and missed opportunities to teach compassion. Kudos to the NBC team for a balanced report - and hat tip to the Allergy Mom Supreme, Gina Clowes, for the link. For a (self-declared, though anonymous) parent's perspective, try this.