I rarely post here, but after watching this thread for the past few days, I feel a need to share our story.
My teenage daughter has a severe allergy to peanuts. When she entered gan, I did not request that peanuts be banned from the gan. I just asked the gananot to be scrupulous about hand washing for those girls who brought peanut butter. It worked…until it didn’t. I’m not sure exactly what went wrong, but one day right after they ate, the girls were playing in the yard and the ganenet noticed that my daughter was covered with hives. That quickly progressed to facial and tongue swelling and difficulty breathing. She was given an EpiPen and after 3 days in the hospital, she was fine. She went back to gan, but the ganenet insisted on a peanut ban after that. I hated drawing attention to her allergy, but I understood that the ganenet did not want to experience that again.
Fast forward to starting kitah aleph. I specifically told the principal that I did not see a need for a peanut ban in the whole school, but I suggested that perhaps her classroom could be a peanut-free zone and that if there were girls in the class who wanted to eat peanut butter, maybe they could go eat in the parallel classroom that day. She agreed to that and we got through almost 3 years of school with no incidents. Then, toward the end of 3rd grade, my daughter walked into the bathroom where another girl was washing her hands after eating peanut butter. My daughter could smell and feel the peanut butter as soon as she entered the room, so she walked out right away, but it was too late. She felt her throat swell and could not swallow or breathe, and her EpiPen was back in her classroom. She passed out before making it back to her classroom, and by the time someone noticed her, she was in serious distress. BH her teacher was quick and she ran to her with her EpiPen and injected it on the spot and saved her life. She spent 2 weeks in the hospital recovering and this time, I was the one who requested that the school ban peanuts. The principal wholeheartedly agreed and said she had intended to do that even without me asking.
That’s our story. You decide if peanut bans are necessary.