Special Diets and School

I got a comment today on my Gluten-Free School Supplies post from Thomas, who writes for The Gluten-Free Casein-Free Experience. He compiled a piece with suggestions on How to Have a GFCF School Year, a 3-part series. Check it out starting here.

We have what may be some different circumstances. My son, despite diet changes, is still not a well-rounded eater. Because of that, it really helps to have him eat in a group setting and have similar items. Sometimes the school provides these, but his teachers clear most things with me first, or simply buy identical items to what I have provided in the past.

My son is still in preschool, so I am going to provide some information with preschool-age kids in mind. I think might extend well to those just starting Kindergarten and grade school as well.

I label everything. We aren’t casein free anymore, but we are egg free and we have a bunch of other allergies to contend with. One big problem is that if you take the gluten and the egg out, you often get stuck with date paste, which we can’t have either.

I bought a bunch of gluten-free, egg-free and casein-free (we did that too until Thane’s gut healed) stickers and patches at Jeeto! . . . we also had a t-shirt, but Thane outgrew it and now he won’t wear anything without Rocket from the Little Einsteins. I have labels on his lunch box, on his backpack, and I laminated little GF-EF cards and attached them with split rings to the zipper on his lunch and to the front patch on his backpack. I did the backpack part because one very nice mother of another child at my son’s first preschool put a bag of treats in my son’s bag, which meant I had to take it home and wash it! I figure it is okay to hit people over the head with the fact that he has a special diet as long as it means he stays healthy.

So there are my suggestions to add to the article linked in the first paragraph.