School And Food Allergies

So many people ask me what precautions we take when sending Jay to school. The truth is that sending him anywhere is terrifying but I'm learning to relax a bit about preschool. This is what we do:

• He wears his Epibelt, which has his EpiPens and benadryl inside. We got ours here. (They also sell medical ID bracelets for kids.) 
• We pack his own snack in a lunch box and put it in the preschool's fridge. This is great because his preschool is from 11:30-2:30 and they don't feed them lunch. If he were left to what the other parents brought for snack, he'd be starving by the time he got home. I basically pack him a small lunch and I can put whatever fresh fruits or healthy stuff I want in it.
• The teachers are trained on EpiPens. I bring a trainer EpiPen and demonstrate how to use it even if they have been "trained" before.
• I make sure Jay is the most popular kid in Preschool. Every teacher knows his name and face. They also know that Jay is the kid that could die if they feed him. I like to freak them out a bit by telling them past ER stories. It helps build a healthy measure of paranoia.
• Jay brings an allergy storybook to his first show and tell. This is the one we have:
  
  It's a story about a cow with milk allergies (strange but effective.) After this day, the kids start asking all sorts of questions about what things have milk in them... glue, water, etc. It's pretty cute.
• I make posters. Here's this years version:

Those are the basics. It was really scary when I first sent Jay by himself into a classroom full of milk-consuming children. When your child has food allergies, you develop an unhealthy distrust of other people's kids. You start to view them as allergen-covered monsters with sticky hands and pockets full of anaphylaxis-inducing candy. Holidays become stressful, especially in the days following Halloween and Easter. You feel like the crazy lady when you have to read labels of art supplies and hand soap. And you learn to ask serious questions as casually as possible...
"So are you doing a counting activity with those marshmallows/M&Ms/squares of death?"

It's worth it though. For so much of Jay's life I have been his social life. I have been his teacher, his protector, his secret-keeper... his everything. Now he comes home talking about what Miss Mary-Ellen taught him, what his friend (and possible first crush), Brooklyn, told him, or what funny thing his buddy, Jake, did... It's adorable and I want to cry nearly everyday because I'm so happy. I'm happy that he's safe. I'm happy that he has friends. And I'm happy that, at least for a few hours, he's a normal 5 year-old boy.