David's first day of preschool (and why put him in typical school at all)

There's my little boy going to his first day of school! He was very excited, if you can't tell by that smile. They aren't required to bring a backpack, and I think that he's going to get one as a present soon, so he doesn't have one right now. So, off to school he went holding his folder (the only required item) that he and Chris picked out at Staples over the weekend.

I only got this one picture. Once we got to his class there were lots of other children and I don't feel comfortable posting, or really even taking, pictures of other children who we don't know.

So, David was excited! He said hi to his teacher and then he was off, playing with plastic food with three other little boys. I told him I was leaving, he asked me if Timmy was leaving with me, I said yes, and he said bye in a distracted manner while continuing help the boy next to him put plastic cereal in a bowl.

I, on the other hand, was nervous. I probably would have been sad, maybe shed some tears, but the first thing David's teacher said to me when I introduced myself and mentioned David's allergies was "Can he have saltine crackers?" followed quickly by "How about a glass of milk?" So, after agreeing that unless they were 100% sure that David wasn't allergic to the snack of the day they would only give him water, I felt a little calmer, but there's a part of me sitting here wondering if they are going to kill my kid before I go to pick him up. But that's just something that, as the parent of a child with food allergies, I'm always going to wonder.

I know I've mentioned homeschooling once or twice on the blog. For many children with severe food allergies, it's the only truly safe option. Luckily David isn't contact anaphylatic to any of his allergens, so typical school was an option for him. Chris and I both prefer typical school over homeschooling in most situations (those situations being poor academic focus or safety of the local schools). I prefer it even more because David has food allergies.

Around the time David was a year and a half I had two different pediatric doctors have conversations with me about the importance of not "bubbling" a child with food allergies. As a parent, my first instinct is to cocoon my child, keep him safe from what would hurt him. Both those doctors said, and I've come to agree with them, my cocoon eventually would cause a true disability - not being able to function in the outside world.

Because, here are the facts. This world does not care that it could kill my son. The priority of this world isn't keeping my son safe. And that's fine with me. The last thing I want for David is for him to think that the world owes him anything or will take special care of him because he has food allergies. I want him to grow up to be self-reliant, which he'll never be if every adult he meets caters to him. I want David to learn how to take care of himself without relying on other people to make unnecessary accommodations for him. I want him to grow so accustom to the outside world that he doesn't even think about the ways he has to move in it in order to stay safe.

The other fact that both those pediatric doctors mentioned to me: if I put him in the outside world, eventually he'll have an incident where he'll use an epi-pen. Rather than being scared of it, we have learned how to prepare for it. In some ways, when I think about it in terms of preparing him for adulthood and being an anti-bubble parent, that kind of incident would actually show me that we are going in the right direction with David. Not that I want him to have a life-threatening incident, but I'd rather, on the scale of his life with food allergies, have David need to use an epi-pen to save his life than have no "life" at all (be bubbled to death).

So, off to preschool David goes. I looked into four different preschools before deciding that the closest was also the best to meet David's current needs. David has two years of preschool before he can start kindergarten, so we aren't focused on academics with him, it's all social/etiquette goals. Also, because he's got two years, I didn't really want him to go full half-days yet. The program on base is a great balance, it's two mornings a week, plus, since it's run by the government, they have regulations in place for how to deal with food allergies.

So, I'll post later about how his day went. Right now I'm going to kick back and relax in my quiet house (Timmy is taking a nap) and pray that my boy, who loves people so much, is having the time of his life.