I don't have kids who have food allergies, but I do have step kids, and it's a challenge just to get them to eat healthy. My husband used to feed the kids ramen all the time for dinner because he was a single Dad and he felt overwhelmed by cooking. When I came on the scene, the boys were 8 and 10, and I said this has got to stop. The boys still talk about the "good old days" when they had ramen for dinner every night, but they also get the message about eating healthy too.

As for the alcohol analogy, I had a similar experience to Al in that my parents let us sip their wine and beer growing up. I think it's an Italian thing. We do the same thing with our sons. We let them drink a little beer or wine if we are having it with dinner to model for them how to drink responsibly. Of course that didn't stop me from partying like a wild banchee in high school, but I felt more mature than the kids who showed up in college and never drank.

The gluten thing is different if it's causing them problems. We try to model eating healthy in our house, and we hope someday, the boys will cook and eat vegetables for themselves. But there are times that we have to make them eat vegetables at dinner. My mom always cooked healthy balanced meals, and we always had a salad after dinner - again, an Italian thing. So somewhere it has stuck in my mind that vegetables are good for you because of what we ate for dinner. I think as they get older, they get the message you are giving them about eating healthy. Sure there will be peer pressure, but you just hope they are making healthy choices when they aren't with you.

Claire

My 4 1/2 year old likes to follow rules, plus we've pointed out a zillion times that gluten makes her stomach hurt, so she's careful to always ask about any food offered to her, to make sure it is something she is allowed to eat. We've followed the suggestion from the Danna Korn book about kids with celiac disease, where every time she has a stomach ache we say, "Maybe you accidentally ate some gluten." Actually it mostly seems to be true -- if she has a stomach ache, it does seem to come from accidental gluten.

My 8 year old is a world-class picky eater, so he wouldn't try most foods. I'm not sure what he would do if junk food was offered, though -- he likes some types of junk food quite a lot. His behavior is affected by food, but *he* says that his behavior is the same all the time; he doesn't at all have the self-awareness yet to see that eating the wrong foods is a problem. He does get stomach aches from some foods, though, so he knows he needs to be careful of those foods. So I don't think he would eat most foods if they were offered, but I don't know for sure.

My real puzzle is my family's exchange student. The exchange student organization originally matched us with her because she has celiac disease too. She's 17, living with us for the year, attending our local high school. I'm still really looking to find my way with what support she needs. For example, I'm not sure whether to tell the swim team parents that she needs special food, and risk interfering when maybe she didn't want me to, or *not* tell the swim parents about her food needs, and risk having her go hungry at swim team events. I think this would all be easier if she'd always lived with us; part of my issue is that I'm not sure what support she's used to having from her family. She doesn't seem to mind skipping meals, and I think she'd rather not have me interfere, so lately I've been keeping quiet and letting her navigate on her own. I'm having a hard time keeping quiet when she doesn't respect her own needs enough to make sure she gets dinner, but I think it's best if I treat her as an adult and let her handle this in her own way, even though it's not the way I would have chosen to handle it.

-Valerie

Well, in THIS respect, I think it should be a broad range issue. That there are certain behaviors you expect her to follow, whether at home or away from home. Protecting her health is one of those behaviors.
However; everyone makes mistakes. It happens. And no matter what, she should be able to come to you for help, or advice, or just to unload :P You'll love her, and support her needs.

In our house, honesty is the number one rule. And we have a "If anyone ever says 'Don't tell' what's the first thing you should do as soon as you can? Tell Mommy or Daddy about it." discussion too. It applies to anything.

My dd has told me about bad choices she made, and I try to always take her seriously and nod and listen through (even when we're discussing the fact that she feels guilty for using Dale's pencil when Dale was sick, to write her name. The way she presented it I thought she'd tried to burn the school down or something.) It's the same with food. She gets sick if she eats the wrong thing...we discuss it and if she made the conscious decision to eat a blue candy due to peer pressure, she doesn't get the same sympathy she does if Grandma told her clam chowder was dairy free.

I inform the adults she will be with of her dietary restrictions, and then expect her to monitor herself. But, her sensitivities don't cause physical damage, to my knowledge. She's 8 BTW. My 4 y/o is allergic to nuts...adults get the "Nuts are potentially fatal" talk for her. I'll probably take more of a role in protecting her, because anaphylaxis scares me!

Anyways, there are choices everywhere. Some are big, some little. Some are HUGE to kids and hardly a blip on our adult radars. Food is just one of many things we will be trusting our kids to make good choices about...and its probably one of the first ways they will learn to take charge of and protect their bodies.

Colin is 9.5 now. He simply doesn't eat anything without checking with me first. If I am not there, he doesn't eat it. At a homeschool activity at a dear friend's house, she had made sure the snacks available were gluten free for him (and for her son who is GFCF), but I forgot to tell Colin. The person running the snack part told him she thought they were fine for him and my friend's son was eating, but he couldn't check with me because I was doing another part of the activity, so he chose not to eat.

I'm not sure this is the ideal solution, of course, because I can't be there for everything, but it works for now anyway! When he's older he'll have to take some responsibility for checking things on his own.

He's started reading packaging, though, and lately I've let slip in some things where the label says "processed in a facility that also processes wheat or gluten" and things like that. He gets all up in arms with me. :-) So I think he'll be ok.

I also talk to him from time to time about *why* he's on a GF diet--how gluten affects him and how it makes him feel. I emphasize that with the ataxia portion of his gluten reactions, he won't see the reaction right away so he might think it's fine to eat gluten, but it will sneak up on him and he will slowly have less and less balance.

Rachel