A new year is just around the corner. You’re busy reading labels and assessing the potential pitfalls of potlucks and cookie exchanges. You’re celebrating holidays with friends and family. You’re striving to wrap up loose ends on your goals and resolutions. When you get a moment to stop and catch your breath and focus from finishing the year strong, you may start to consider what comes next. What should you plan for or aim for in the new year?
As you begin to mull resolutions and goals, you may focus on topics that impact your career, your fitness, your organization skills, and other typical New Year resolution type projects. Sound familiar? As you begin to ruminate and plan, consider goals and resolutions relating to how you manage your or your family’s food allergy management.
Get Caught Up
This is an exciting time in the world of food allergies. There are new options for the delivery of epinephrine. There are new tools to help us manage and mitigate the risk of reactions. There are new laws on the books that impact the way the world around us helps us stay safe.
Make space to get caught up on the advancements and the current research. Take notes on what you read so you can connect with your allergist and determine whether these advances should be added to your family’s allergy management plan. Make sure, however, the spaces you’re drawing information from are reputable sources. You can find a list to get started here: Allergy Resources.
Expand Your Culinary Horizons
When your life depends on avoiding specific foods, it can be easy to fall into a routine of cycling your meals through a limited list of proven safe recipes. If your family has a long list of foods to avoid, the idea of experimenting with new dishes can feel daunting. It’s easier to stick with familiar recipes you know are safe than to venture out and experiment with new tastes and dishes. However, eating with food allergies does not need to limit your menu.
No matter what your allergy list includes, there are substitutes for the ingredients you can’t use. You may have to experiment a little to find the right swap for a particular recipe. Perhaps coconut milk works well as a dairy swap in this recipe, but it just doesn’t quite click with that one. You might not get the swap right on the first attempt, but you can have a good time experimenting along the way to find the right twist. Make a goal of trying new recipes this year. Go ahead and look through past articles here on The Allergy Ninja for some options to get started!
Educate and Empower
If you’re a parent of an allergic child, it can feel scary to release bits of control to someone else – even when that someone else is your own, growing child. And yet, your goal as an allergy parent is to raise a future adult that can handle their own allergies with confidence. That starts now.
It starts with including your child in the work of day-to-day allergy management. It starts with releasing bits of allergy care to your kid in an age-appropriate manner. It starts by building a village around you that can step in and help. The other parent you trust to leave your child with for a playdate. The school staff you know can handle the field trip. The family member that can step in and help prep allergy friendly options for a gathering.
None of this just happens. It takes intentional work at educating and mentoring. It's including your child in checking labels. Let them help you evaluate recipes and prepare meals with you. It’s sharing honestly with friends you trust and letting them see behind the façade to the reality of what it takes to keep your family safe. Make a resolution to educate and empower your child, and your village.
