We all spend a great deal of time stressing over children with multiple food allergies – as indeed we should – but, how often do we spare a thought for the rest of the family who, if the allergies are serious/life threatening, live just as restricted a life as their children?
I was reminded of this by a lovely post on the ‘YesNoBananas’ blog, entitled ‘A dirty weekend’ – but in this case the ‘evil’ consisted of eating all of those things (nuts, eggs, wheat, sesame, chickpeas – and bananas) that are never allowed into the house or the diet because of two-year-old Sid’s allergies!
Who wants sex if you can have a scrambled egg?……….
Reminds me of some research I read about. One of the London hospitals looked into depression in the family due to allergies of a child. Guess who was most at risk of depression? The Mum. Dad wasn’t too bothered. Mum just soaked up all the worry, made everything fine and OK and perfect and went to school when needed etc. etc. The kid with the allergy was generally not too worried and the siblings were, if anything, jealous of the special attention. Definitely spare a thought for the mothers. I’ve moved out of home now and am nearly 40 but my Mum still worries about me!
I suspect that an awful lot of mums would agree with that – while the dads would look surprised and rather hurt as it would never have occurred to them that they were not actually pulling their weight…..