Babysitting Food-Allergic Kids

Every month, our Davis County chapter of UFAN meets and tackles a new topic. Our March meeting’s topic was Babysitting. Leaving your food-allergic child with a babysitter is a frightening thought. Will they understand how serious it is? Will they know what to do if the child gets into something they’re allergic to? Will they sneak harmful food into the house? Will they accidentally feed the child something bad?

One option is to never leave the child in the care of a babysitter. But is that the only solution? To help us find out, I invited three guests to our meeting: the instructor of the 6-week babysitting course taught at Davis Hospital, my own babysitter of several years, and a young girl who is just beginning her babysitting career and wanted to learn more about the care of food-allergic children.

Jan Staley, the babysitting course instructor, began our discussion by going over what she covers in her classes. Her perspective on food allergies is invaluable – her own niece and nephew have severe food allergies to a dizzying array of foods, and she has watched them grow up over the last twenty some-odd years. Her memories of watching those kids get rushed to the ER when they were visiting her family are still vivid. So when she teaches the course, she talks about food allergies and how serious they are.

Jan went through her course outline with us, and we discovered not only tips she gives the babysitters, but tips we parents can use when talking to our own babysitters. The course is extensive, ranging from basic growth and development issues for children at different ages, to making a babysitting kit, dealing with problems like crying and sleep patterns, fire safety (she even has firefighters give a presentation on how to prevent fire emergencies and how to handle one if it happens), poisons and first aid, Friends and Family CPR, and tasks like diapering, bathing, managing illness, bedtimes, and meals. We all were impressed and I would STRONGLY recommend that anyone who wants to babysit should take this course! Click here for the class schedule (next course starts May 14).

Then my babysitter talked about her experiences babysitting my son and his best friend, who are both allergic. She never had to deal with a reaction, because we told her (and her sisters, who have also babysat for us many times) about the allergies, explained the EpiPen and Benadryl, and showed her exactly which safe snacks and meals she could eat and offer to the kids. She said she was determined to NEVER have to use the EpiPen, so she goes to extra lengths to ensure she doesn’t cause a problem, including washing her hands (and sometimes even changing clothes) before she arrives.

Finally, the young babysitter just starting her career asked some questions and handed out flyers with her own contact info. She has known my son for years and has even had him at a few parties at her house, which her mother prepared safe foods for, so she’s grown up aware of food allergies and how serious they are. She is also in the generation of kids who have at least one food-allergic friend in every class, so it’s a concept that is normal to them, and something she and her generation are beginning to accept as a fact of life, not an abnormality.

Some of the most important tips we parents heard in the meeting were:

• Preplan meals for both the babysitter and the children. Meals should be cold, not cooked, so that the babysitter doesn’t have to use an oven or stove.

• Show the babysitter where the safe snacks are. Better yet, put them out on the counter and state “Only these snacks!” Make it clear that the babysitter can’t eat non-safe foods either, since he/she will be touching your children and their playthings.

• Show them where the phone is. If you don’t have a land-line phone, give the babysitter a cell phone so they can call you.

• Write down your own home address. If the babysitter has to call 911 from a cell phone, caller ID won’t show where she’s calling from, and if she doesn’t know your home address, precious moments can be lost while she hunts for mail or something that shows her where she is.

• Leave them your phone number, and also the phone number of an alternate contact who you know will be home.

• Tell the babysitter where you’ll meet her and the kids if she has to evacuate for a fire or other emergency.

• Leave a working flashlight beside the emergency phone number and address, in case there’s a power outage.

• Explain when and how to administer Benadryl and EpiPens.

• Leave a detailed note of bedtime routines – time to eat, time to bathe, time to read stories, time to watch TV or movie, time for lights-out. That prevents your children from wheedling or arguing for more.

• If you want to “try out” a babysitter, invite him/her over to watch the kids while you get something done inside the house. They have to take care of everything, but you are immediately available if there’s a problem. But leave them alone! If you hover, you won’t find out how they handle everything. Use the time to get caught up on scrapbooking, paperwork, some gardening, or whatever.

It was a great discussion, and we all learned some really helpful tips for leaving our food allergic kids with babysitters. More importantly, we learned it’s possible to do it safely and without panicking if we just take a little extra time to prepare and explain.

Spawntawnumous and Proud of It!

I’m spawntawnumous!

Now, before someone runs for the antibiotics, that’s a good thing. Honest.

Friday afternoon, I was keeping Kim’s kids while she and her husband took care of some appointments. It was supposed to be just for the afternoon. One of her kids asked me if they were staying for dinner, and I told her no, her mom and dad would be back before then. I handed her some Oreos for a snack.

The appointments ran long, and Kim called and asked if I could keep them a bit longer. No problem. My son and these kids consider each other siblings. They could happily move in with each other and not blink an eye. In fact, they frequently request that.

My boy is allergic to peanuts and tree nuts, but that’s all. He lives on all the normal kid food – macaroni and cheese, fish sticks, hot dogs, pasta, cheese, pizza. You know. The stuff we don’t like to think about too much as we feed it to our kids.

His best friend, the oldest of the kids we were watching, has more food allergies – nuts, peanuts, milk, eggs, fish, fresh tomatoes, etc. So I have to pay more attention to what I can feed him and how I fix it. Usually, I know ahead of time when I’m going to have him for dinner, so I can plan to have safe food on hand. But since I hadn’t been planning on this evening (and hadn’t been to the grocery store in a while), I crossed my fingers and rummaged through the freezer.

Success! I found a bag of milk-free and egg-free chicken nuggets, with enough for four hungry creatures who’d been racing around the yard all day. I rummaged through the fridge. Aha! A bag of carrots, and a can of crescent rolls – the milk-free kind. I rummaged in the pantry. Yippee! A can of mandarin oranges! I rummaged in the freezer again. Yes! Frozen fruit popsicles! Okay, so maybe I don’t get points for health and nutrition, but at least it technically qualifies as food from all the major food groups.

I called Kim and her husband to tell them I was fixing dinner for the kids, and that they should go out to dinner and enjoy a little peace and quiet.

Then I threw the chicken and crescent rolls in the oven. The smallest child, who had asked me about dinner earlier, came inside just as I was closing the oven door. She looked up at me with hope in her five-year-old eyes. “Are we having dinner here?” she asked again.

“Yes, sweetie. You sure are.”

Delight lit up her face. Then she squealed, “You’re being spawntawnumous, aren’t you?!”

Spawntawnu-what? I thought. Spawntawn… Spawn…

Spontaneous!

Over the years, as Kim and I have found safe foods that her son can eat, I’ve slowly changed my own shopping habits. Whenever there’s a milk-free and egg-free version of a food, I now try to buy it. My family doesn’t need it to be milk- and egg-free. But since I never know when I might have these kids in my house, I’ve learned that it’s easier to have the safe foods than wish I did. (I’m a slow learner, but I eventually get it.) It also eliminates accidents and mistakes.

So now I only buy milk-free margarine. (It bakes better than the milk version, anyway.) I only buy milk- and egg-free white bread. I keep the pantry and freezer stocked with milk- and egg-free fruit snacks, popsicles, cookies, salsa, chips, tortillas, hot dogs, smoked sausages, barbeque sauce, crescent rolls, toaster pastries, and crackers.

So all that extra ingredients-label reading over the years has finally paid off. By modifying my shopping habits and stocking my kitchen with “safe” snacks and foods, I have officially become…

Spawntawnumous!

And boy, if you could have seen the look on that little princess’s face, you’d know how proud that makes me.