Our daughter will start daycare in August. Today we went there for a quick visit to talk about her very narrow diet. She has all together about twenty ingredients she can eat.
The lunch at the daycare comes from a catering company plus, snacks they make themselves. I thought I could just give them a list of the suitable foods and they would fix something for her out of those. But instead the city and the catering company demand a doctor’s certificate of the food allergies. Fair enough, we have seen a doctor regularly because of her allergies for over a year now and she can write a certificate for us.
But another problem came up. The city seems to think that if you don’t get an anaphylactic reaction of the food, it’s not an official allergy. So very bad stomach aches, diarrhoea and so on, aren’t really allergy symptoms even though our allergy doctor would say so. So basically, they don’t need to make any special food for our daughter.
After I heard that, I suggested that I would make her food myself and take it and put it into the daycare’s freezer. Then the catering company wouldn’t even need to make any special foods for her and no certificates would be needed.
But another problem came up. The city supervises that no one (no outsider) will bring any food to the daycare. They are worried about health risks, but at the same time it seems to be fine if our daughter will suffer from the food that she is “forced” to eat since they ignore her allergies.
Everything is open still. The daycare would gladly offer her only her own foods and/ or let me bring the lunch for her but they are not sure if they will be in trouble because of that. Our daughter is pretty shy in a bigger group and she has never been in a daycare before, so this new start is a bit of a stress for me even without the whole food circus.
Let’s see what will happen but for me it feels like a waste of everyone’s energy. I understand that not everyone can demand special foods for their kids, but if there is an allergy or other problem behind it, I don’t really understand why it needs to be so difficult.
Hugs, Momone