6 Tips for Getting a Handle on Your Child’s Allergies and Asthma
Key takeaways:
As a mom of kids with allergies and asthma, Mary Beth Cunningham is always learning about ways to keep her kids safe.
She teaches others how to find safe foods and to speak up for children with allergies and asthma.
She recommends that parents of school-age kids with allergies and asthma have a medical 504 plan to protect their children.
Mary Beth Cunningham doesn’t mind being bossy when it comes to managing her family’s allergies and asthma.
Her husband Brad and two of their children — 12-year-old Shane and 8-year-old Molly — all have allergies and asthma. Their middle child, Colin, doesn’t have food allergies, but he avoids the foods that the rest of the family can’t eat.
Mary Beth, a 39-year-old Central Illinois counselor, is a treasure trove of information. She knows how to manage multiple allergens at school and home, how to monitor school lunches and snacks, and how to stay on top of new products that might be unsafe for her children.
It’s taken years of education, research, and hard work. But she has accumulated many tips that may work for others. Below, she shares six of them.
1. Keep track of allergens
Mary Beth keeps track of a long list of allergens that affect her family. Her son Colin only has seasonal allergies. But her son Shane is allergic to peanuts, tree nuts, coconut, and sesame. He also is allergic to watermelon, cantaloupe, gourd fruits, ibuprofen, penicillins, and sulfa-based medications. And he gets belly aches, breathing struggles, and rashes if exposed to them.
Her daughter Molly has allergies to peanuts, tree nuts, coconut, sesame, ibuprofen, and penicillins. And she gets belly aches, breathing struggles, and congestion in response.
All of Shane and Molly’s food allergies cause anaphylaxis, a severe allergic reaction. And both kids are diagnosed with asthma.
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Shane takes a twice-daily inhaled steroid. And before sports and exercise, he takes albuterol. His asthma rarely causes problems, unless he gets a respiratory virus.
Molly’s asthma is controlled, but she does experience highs and lows. She takes albuterol at school before gym and recess. If Molly gets sick, “she falls backward a lot with her asthma,” Mary Beth says. “She does miss school for asthma.”
2. Identify trigger foods and hidden ingredients
For Mary Beth, discovering what makes her kids react to certain foods has been a long process.
Shane, who was nursed and bottle-fed as a baby, was born with breathing sensitivities and a patch of eczema on his shoulder, she says. It was there for months, and topical steroids didn’t work. But she noticed that the eczema would break out if she nursed after eating peanut butter, a food she loves. So she wondered if peanut butter was a trigger. She tried not eating peanut butter, and Shane’s eczema improved.
“With Brad’s allergic history, we tested Shane at age 3,” Mary Beth says. The results confirmed Shane was allergic to peanuts, among other things, and the whole family has been avoiding nuts ever since.
“I looked at labels and anything that said it was made in a facility that handles nuts. I would call the company to find out more,” she says. “There may have been some cross contamination happening.”
Colin and Molly were never exposed to peanut butter as babies. And Molly didn’t show allergic responses until she was a toddler.
“She always had rings under her eyes. They were puffy, and she looked tired all the time, despite being well rested,” Mary Beth says. “She always had breathing problems. But we couldn’t pinpoint what it was.”
Then, a light went off at an allergy appointment for Shane. Mary Beth was asking the doctor about granola bars, because Shane would get an itchy throat and ears and start wheezing after eating them.
“The doctor said most granola bars have sesame in them, but it isn’t labeled,” Mary Beth says. Afterward, they tested Molly, who turned out to be allergic to sesame.
“She used to eat hummus every day, along with bagels,” Mary Beth says. “As soon as we stated paying attention to sesame, my daughter’s health improved — just by eliminating one thing.”
Molly’s dark circles and puffiness went away and her breathing improved.
3. Educate yourself and others
Mary Beth saw her husband Brad have reactions twice because of his nut and shellfish allergies. “It was terrifying. So I learned what I needed,” she says. “With Shane, I started to educate myself even more.”
She joined online discussions and Facebook groups, asking “a million and one questions all the time.” And after everything she’s learned, she now recommends these resources for others looking for information about allergies and asthma:
Food Allergy Research and Education (FARE): This site provides information and resources for families living with food allergies.
Spokin: This food allergy app and lifestyle platform helps people manage food allergies and celiac symptoms. Users can input allergens, and the app will return a list of safe food brands. And the information, which includes things like what companies use sesame and sesame flour, is constantly updated.
Your pharmacist: Your pharmacist can check if sesame and other allergens are used as carriers or flavorings in any of the medications your family takes.
It’s also important to share what you know with family members outside of your household, so they can help keep your children safe, Mary Beth says.
“They might be lax. You might need to have uncomfortable conversations with them,” she says. “You need to choose between rocking the boat a little and the safety of your child under their care.”
Mary Beth also teaches her children to keep themselves safe. To protect themselves, her kids follow these rules:
I cannot share food.
I cannot swap food.
I cannot eat food or drink that’s been left behind.
If someone has peanut butter, I can’t play with them until they wash their hands.
I can’t touch a table where others have been eating until it’s washed.
“My kids know what’s OK for them to eat,” Mary Beth says. “Even if Grandma gives them something, they check it out first.”
4. Become an advocate
The Cunningham family is a contact allergy family, meaning they do not react to airborne allergens. Avoiding peanuts, tree nuts, and coconut was relatively easy to manage. But the sesame allergy changed things. When doctors told Mary Beth about all of the foods that could contain sesame, she wondered what her family would be able to eat.
“I remember a sinking feeling when I started to see where [sesame] was hidden because it didn’t need to be labeled,” Mary Beth says. “Things like jellybeans and candy corn — that’s when all of this felt heavy.”
While nuts, bananas, and avocados could be easily avoided with the help of school staff, friends, and family, sesame, which is often off-label, was much more difficult. Mary Beth started calling food makers, researching information, and educating others. She was determined to manage the allergen people “can’t avoid.” And now, she shares what she learns on school social media groups and with friends.
She also learned to advocate for additional EpiPens (epinephrine), devices that contain medication to treat anaphylaxis. She encourages parents to keep two EpiPens at their childrens’ schools and two at home.
“Because they work until they don’t,” Mary Beth says. She suggests that parents work with their childrens’ providers to push their insurance companies to pay for a second set.
5. Know it’s OK to be bossy
Mary Beth says she better managed allergens at school for Molly, simply because she knew more after helping Shane.
She asked Molly’s preschool to let her review their meal and snack menu. And she worked with the staff to make sure they would not feed Molly a new food unless it was approved first.
“I researched like it was my actual job. I knew what was for-sure safe and what wasn’t,” Mary Beth says. “You have to be bossy.”
When sesame was recently declared an official allergen, she talked with the school district’s food supplier to make sure the breads and breading they used did not contain sesame.
6. Get a medical 504 plan
When kids had to stay home from school during COVID-19, Shane and Molly were super healthy, Mary Beth says. It was an easy time for them to manage their allergies and asthma.
Now that the kids are back in school, Mary Beth leans on their medical 504 plans. People with anaphylactic food allergies are protected under section 504 of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). These protections ensure that children with anaphylactic food allergies are offered equal access to public education and all that entails.
A 504 plan for a child with food allergies can outline how a school will:
Guarantee reasonable accommodation for an allergy-free lunch
Outline a food allergy action plan for the child
Without a 504 plan, a school is not required to make accommodations, including an allergy-friendly classroom.
“Even if your child’s school is nut-free, insist on a medical 504,” Mary Beth says. “It protects your child.”
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