Care & Feeding: My Son Is Faking Allergies

[minoanmiss]

Allergies are real. I know this! I also know that after watching _Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood_, my son now responds to being offered any food he’s not excited about with a flat, “I’m allergic to [that.] It gives me itchy red bumps on my face!”

Please take my word for it: He isn’t, and it doesn’t. Do you have any idea how awkward it is in public to try to get my son to eat something and have him loudly claim that he is allergic to it and it will give him itchy red bumps? People stare at me! I get irritated notes from play-date hosts about how I should have warned them about his allergies. How should I fix this?

Well, this is indeed a new twist on “I think someone else is making up their allergies,” which is an advice columnist’s bread and butter. Thank you for that.

Let’s go after the low-hanging fruit first: When you drop him off somewhere, calmly tell the host that your kid isn’t allergic to anything (that you know of!) but is currently under the psychological control of Daniel Tiger in this respect, and that unless they see itchy red bumps appearing with their own eyes, he’s fine. It’s not their job to parent your weird kid, so prepping them to say a variant on, “It’s best to just say, ‘No, thank you’ if you don’t want to eat something, Little Billy” is honestly the most you can ask for.

On your own time, I would make sure that your kid is actually allowed to say, “No, thank you” to an individual food and have that respected. If he is, then your kid is just being silly and will eventually move on. (He’ll move on more quickly the less you react, almost universally.) If he isn’t, then he has probably found a decent workaround, and you may need to relax a bit at mealtimes.

I could absolutely take this question more seriously and have you monologue to your kid about crying wolf and how some kids really do have allergies and so on and so forth, but I am really quite confident that you will not have this same problem in two months’ time, and since you do seem more worried about social embarrassment right now, this has “Don’t get worked up about this” written all over it.

Going forward, I suggest switching out _Daniel Tiger_ for a show that will encourage him to cultivate a bit more personal culinary resilience. _Bear Grylls_, perhaps.

Comments

[sporky_rat]

It could honestly be the 'ooh attention' thing. I would agree that getting it looked at (and letting people know that as of currently he's not allergic but there will be testing done) isn't a bad idea at all.

Granted, as a Very Smol there were a couple of foods that were considered popular snacks for Smols that I just could not would not with a goat or on a boat eat, Sam-I-Am (raisins, for one. You put a bowl of raisins near me and I will be ill) and the only way I could get people to not give them to me was to say I was allergic. I'm not allergic to them, I have some sort of terrifying gross adversion to them.

Tl;dr, assure local play dates that as far as you know, not allergic to anything; schedule some testing; see if Smol just can't with some foods.

[edenfalling]

My dad is with nuts like you are with raisins -- not allergic, so far as anyone knows, but that's because he literally has a gag reflex when presented anything with nuts (and even nut meal in some cases) so he's never actually eaten enough to check for a reaction.

Our family line is generally, "He can't eat nuts," and just cut off there. Nobody is owed any more explanation than that.

[sporky_rat]

Yeah, it's a tough thing sometimes.

[conuly]

d the only way I could get people to not give them to me was to say I was allergic.

I tell people all the time - the reason people doubt other people's allergies is not because some people lie, it's because people are really weird about food, and consequently, some people have to lie to be taken seriously.