I will search again tomorrow on the local tv show links and see what I can find.  I know it was milk and I know it said cross contaminated but the other part is I am wondering if it was from my local board as the spokeswoman who mentioned posts there as well.  That one can take awhile to search.

The luckiest of them are the peanut allergic kids. Because people take that one seriously.

I feel that really is true.  That is Ryan's only FA at the present time, and I had to work with food services at our university's local cafeteria when he attended baseball camp two years in a row.  I spoke with the manager, discussed the procedure for him eating there (which initially scared the daylights out of me), he met with the manager on both first days and he walked Ryan through his "safe" eating choices.

I do think it's probably safest for a PA child than any other FA kid.  PA's have received so much attention, in a way I felt the school was able to cater to his needs safer than any other FA. 

That being said, I told Ryan that no place is 100% safe.  Be aware, be safe, have those epi's.  Because, after all, sometimes people think they know about food allergies but really don't.   Even though he was guided to the safest food choices, they are just that.  The safest ones, not necessarily 100% safe.  If my child were milk and egg allergic, then forget about it.  It's just all over the place.  I can't imagine.

Alcohol not having an ingredient label really irritates me as well - luckily, the few companies that I have contacted about safety have been very helpful, but this is only my experience.

Please remember to advise your students that even if a liquor or other mixer is safe, at college parties, large batches tend to be mixed in whatever vessel is available - you know, like trash can punch.  I wouldn't have a mixed drink at any party that I didn't mix myself or watch an actual bartender make - and even then, there are restrictions.

Also, things get spilled at bars/parties - If I was as allergic to apples in college as I am now, I would have been terrified at a few of the bars that we frequented that had specialty apple drinks.

Again-- exactly.

Most "beers" are probably going to be fairly safe... but liqueurs, wine, and liquor?  Mixed drinks?

Not with DD's allergens.   

I really hate that her allergy means that this is yet another thing that she'll never be able to do as spontaneously as her peers-- if only because it is yet another way in which she's been excluded socially and set apart.  Then again, it's more normative now to simply not drink at all.  That's actually the angle that we're trying to sell her on.  That being the person who DOESN'T drink means that she'll automatically not be at the mercy of others-- ever.



Sort of like a lot of cosmetics, this angle we've used...

"Why would you want to {use/do whatever it is} anyway??  Isn't that faintly-- er, or more thna faintly, come to that-- RIDICULOUS?"

Hair dye seems to be the only thing she really seems pretty convinced that she truly wants to do.

Ergo, she needs to see what goes into making that kind of judgment call.  It's a LOT of work to do the legwork and investigate product safety, and one doesn't always get much in the way of information even with all of that work.  Sometimes, it just isn't worth it to bother in the first place-- it's just easier to abstain.

   Exactly.  Our kids have to maintain a bit of a margin for error even with close friends.  The bottom line is that nobody else is going to wind up dead from a food-related mistake.  Just DD.  So no matter how much her friends love her and treasure her (and they do), it just isn't necessarily enough for her because it really isn't "real" to them.  Not really.  Therefore, we've really stressed to her that if she drinks-- even ONE drink-- she must not eat anything afterwards.  Because her judgment is impaired at that point.  Better not to drink at all, but if she does, she needs to have a complete plan for her own personal safety in place-- and then she needs to follow it to the letter.  That plan should NOT depend on other people's discretion or cooperation.  Of course, that is really just an extension of how LTFA teens already have to exist.  It's just that at the moment, she knows that she can always call us on her cell and we will come to her aid-- no questions asked.



The largest difference between "nearby" college and "far away" is that at the latter, there will be virtually NO safety net unless you have extended family or close friends who live nearby.  Someone off-campus that your child could go to in an emergency-- someone that first responders or campus officials could call locally.

Otherwise, they'll call YOU (250, 500, 1000, or even 3000 miles away) to "notify" you of problems with the law or of a hospital admission, at least one that takes place from the campus.  Probably.  The college, by the way, may not call, preferring to avoid dealing with parents at all under such circumstances.  I have personally known students who were assaulted in parking lots whose parents were not notified, as well as students who were expelled from the institution for academic (or other) reasons whose parents were clueless until it had already happened.   

Bottom line-- PARENTS calling the campus with concerns are probably (also) going to be met with stonewalling.  Polite stonewalling, no doubt; but that is what it will be.  The institution's hands are tied legally once a student is 18 years old.

... and to add to that, there is definitely peer-reviewed science that now suggests that the HIGHEST ability students may, really and truly, have the slowest executive function maturation curves.

Asynchrony, indeed.

Anyway.

I still think, though, that parents who REALLY know their own kids well are likely (with other adults who know them outside of the context of parents) the best judge of which kids are likely to succeed (like my DH) and which are likely to fail (his brother).  Some kids really do have better judgment than others at 18-22 yo, but some of them are just luckier than others, too.

It's hard, hard, HARD to ignore the pull of the Ivy league when it's your own kid.  It is.  It's hard even for parents like my DH and I, and we KNOW that most of that shimmer isn't really gold.  So what will we do when Brown, Dartmouth, Yale, and MIT come calling for DD?  I don't really know.  From three years out, I can honestly say that I think that we won't be star-struck by it.  But I don't know for sure.  I remember very well the sheer allure of thinking that little old ME was "Ivy League" material... I was dazzled.

Just thinking of the university/town where I went for undergrad . . . now, there are far more apartment buildings than dorms or greek houses.  It's amazing how many apartment buildings there are and there are more springing up.  There is a great campus bus system and it is fairly easy to ride your bike around town (even in the snow!).  It's a town that doubles its population when the students are there.  But I look at all of those apt buildings and am stunned that there are enough students to fill them.  They seem to be a very popular housing option now for students.

The largest dorm there also has remodeled and instead of dorm rooms, there are dorm suites with kitchens.  3-4 students share a suite. 

I really do understand what you're saying, there, Carefulmom. (Seriously-- I was a NMS semifinalist, so I know what you mean by "ton" of recruitment letters...  you mean literally.  Tonnage.  LOL)

Remember, we've got a kid like that, too-- only we have an extra reason to say "no way" in her chronological age.  But believe me, GT parents wonder why on EARTH we wouldn't want to ship her off to a residential program at some university for the summer already...  <shudders>  At 18, will we be ready for her to live away from home?  I think so, yes.  It will be hard, no question.  But I trust her to be able to manage her own allergies-- provided that she can do the managing HERSELF.  The fewer people involved in making safety decisions FOR her the better.  So I don't really see a communal living situation as being very feasible, no.

The thing that I guess I'd be weighing is whether or not it is possible for a child with a LTFA to have a normative and INCLUSIVE college experience at a particular campus and still be safe.

If one "must" live on campus or in a sorority house to be a PART of the campus and experience the institution the way pretty much ALL (or even most) of one's peers and alums do... then that probably isn't a campus which is a very good fit for a child with a LTFA.  A commuter campus is a better fit because the experience that a person with a LTFA can have there is-- well, not "abnormal" relative to peers.

That isn't to say that the answer is "no."  It isn't that simple, really.  It's that the answer is; "while your friends are chowing down at the sorority house on whatever the house COOK has made, you'll be making your own dinner at your apartment.  Is it still the college experience that you are imagining as part of going to 'Dream U.' or is being part of that group of sorority sisters part of the dream?" 


I can't wave a magic wand and make the LTFA go away, after all.  Would I want to??  Of course.  But that isn't going to happen.