Many students with severe allergies attend schools where their allergens are allowed on campus, but they eat at allergen-free lunch tables or in separate rooms. This is a common middle ground between banning allergens (often nuts) entirely in schools where one or more students has a severe allergy and having students eat in close quarters. But singling students out can be problematic in other ways; as Heather Legg of Beyond Allergy points out, "Lunch is a very social time in school, so if a child is isolated to a peanut free table, he loses some of his privileges of social time." Some children may be anxious about the prospect about being separated from close friends, or may worry that their friends won't be willing to bring safe lunches to sit with them.
Gloria Koster's new book The Peanut-Free Café may help reassure children facing this situation. Written from the perspective of a picky child with a new friend with food allergies, it can help open up discussion about how to include other kids in creative ways as well as help kids without allergies understand that people with severe allergies can do everything they can, with the exception of eating certain foods.
