Teens and Valentine's Day

FAS has upgraded our forum security. Some members may need to log in again. If you are unable to remember your login information, please email food.allergy.supt@flash.net and we will help you get back in. Thanks for your patience!

Macabre:
Valentine’s Day Provides Families with Teachable Moments About Potentially Life-Threatening Allergies

Mylan did a survey that is relevant to those with teens (and those who will have teens) with FAs.

http://epipen.mediaroom.com/index.php?s=20295&item=122378

From it:

Open and ongoing communication with children who have potentially life-threatening allergies should initiate when they are diagnosed and continue as they mature and face new challenges. The survey, which was conducted by Harris Interactive and commissioned by Mylan Specialty, revealed that teens that date were significantly more likely to have experienced anaphylaxis during Valentine’s Day than those who do not date (47% versus 13%) and:

Less than half of parents (47%) talk to their child about risks posed to children with life-threatening allergies from physical contact related to Valentine’s Day, such as being kissed by someone who has recently eaten food they may be allergic to
Only 47% of parents tell their teen that when going on dates, they should tell their date about their life-threatening food allergy
35% of parents did not indicate that they remind their teen to bring his/her epinephrine auto-injector on dates

Macabre:
DS will be in rehearsal on Valentine's Day, but this is an eye-opening reminder for every day

Kissing--really not looking forward to that. That really, really scares me--mostly because I've seen sooooo many times how unaware people are in general of the many forms peanuts take.

maeve:
Unfortunately, I had to have the talk about kissing when DD was 5 because a boy at daycare kissed another girl in her daycare class. So I've had pretty open conversations with her about that. I've also had very open conversations about drinking (including educating her on what alcoholic beverages would not be safe, how alcohol impairs judgment and how that poses a risk to her, about how alcohol can make a reaction more severe, and about how bars often have nuts around) for at least several years. I also recently mentioned the word condom when talking about the AIDS epidemic (had been reading Koch's obit at the time), and she asked what a condom was. So I explained what it was. She's in 6th grade. While some might think she's young for such discussions, there are kids not much older than her experimenting with this (there were two incidents in middle schools in our county last year involving drugs and alcohol on school grounds--that may be why kids at her school cannot carry backpacks from class to class). I remember hearing whispers in 8th grade about a classmate being pregnant. I think it's better to get ahead of the curve, give her accurate information and also very clearly inform her of our expectations and values in regards to those subjects.

CMdeux:
I think so too, Maeve.

And my DD, at just past 13, was pressured strongly for "real kissing" by a first boyfriend. Because the boyfriend WOULD NOT take no for an answer (kept angling for 'will this work?' and 'what if I didn't eat anything unsafe for a week?') she eventually took a hard look at the entire relationship and realized that she just couldn't trust his judgment well enough, and that the fact that he couldn't seem to respect "I'm not doing that" meant that he ultimately didn't respect HER, either....

which ultimately was a romance killer, I think.

It's an FA thing. Most people don't understand. The scary ones are the ones that insist that they CAN understand, and proceed to attend the University of Google for a week and then "know all about it." :misspeak:

The fact that he enlisted a considerably older friend of his to try to convince my DD that her parents had been using SCARE TACTICS on her all this time, though....

that I didn't see coming. Why yes, I felt NO compunction about 'educating' that particular junior genius in a hurry, and speed loses some finesse, to be sure... :paddle:

It was a great opportunity to discuss healthy boundaries all the way around, however-- and I took it for that glorious opportunity.

PurpleCat:
Oh yea! The ongoing kissing discussion. Still getting an eye roll on that one.....so not on her radar yet....but I keep on talking. She's still listening.

We started when she was still in elementary school. I don't think you can start this chat too early!