Emotional toll on children that have a food allergy

My daughter, Amanda is now 10 and has been allergic to peanuts and tree nuts since she was 23 months old.  As she got older and I told her about her peanut allergy and everything she can and can't eat, I've often wondered how this has affected her emotional state.  I think it really started bothering her in 2nd grade when there was a lot of talk about it in school and the other children were told not to get near her if they had eaten something that contained peanuts.  I remember Amanda coming home and telling me that another child was eating something that had peanut butter and touched her that would make her itch.  In 3rd grade it got worse with the "table" where kids sat that had food allergies.  She sat with 3 other boys so lunch was no fun at all in a cafeteria full of chatter and laughter.

Wow, I feel so honored!

How wonderful to wake up this morning to an email informing me that my blog on peanut allergies won an award!

Dear Carla,

Congratulations! Your blog about peanut allergies has just won
our 2010 Top Food Allergy Blogs award!

We had the opportunity to work with this sponsor, as they contacted
us, so we took advantage of it!  The other award was voting based
driven, while the winners chosen for this award were more from your reader's
numerous nominations.


Winners for your 2010 Top Food Allergy Blogs award were announced on 
June 24th,  2010.


Again, Congratulations, and I hope to see your badge soon!

Cheers,
Emma Lee

Check out this blog for a giveaway of my book.

http://enjoylifeenjoynow.com/2010/06/carla-burke-reviewgiveaway.html

I received the galley print for my next book!

This is the last step - to make sure everything is just right before going off to print.  I worked late yesterday with my wonderful illustrator/friend making changes to the front cover and back cover.  I also found several minor typos with the word tree-nuts which appears many times throughout the book.  I want to be consistent and make sure that the hyphen was between the word tree-nut.

My 10 year old daughter Amanda is severely allergic to peanuts and tree-nuts.  I wrote this based on things that we were finding out about her allergy and what she can and cannot eat.  The list is long of foods she has to avoid.

I also hope children - and parents - learn that when someone has a food allergy that it is never ok to joke with that person that something they are about to eat has peanuts in it.  Anyone who is anaphylactic to peanuts or tree-nuts has the potential to die in a short amount of time after ingesting the food that is contaminated.

So stay tuned so you can find out when my book "Peanuts" is coming out.  It's the story of a little girl named Penny who is allergic to peanuts and tree-nuts.  Her pet pony is aptly named "Peanuts" and he shares everything he knows about peanut allergies and keeping his friend safe.