Navigating the Grocery Store

May 14-18 is Food Allergy Awareness Week. On social media I asked my followers what they would like me to write about food allergies. In the next few weeks I will be writing several posts to answer the great questions I received. I also have two awesome guests that will be posting on food allergies as well so be sure to come on back in the coming weeks. Here is the first in the series.

One of my followers on Instagram last week what I do to help my girls when they feel sad about foods they can’t have. This post is dedicated to answer this great question. Keep in mind that this is what I have done with my girls, it may or may not work for you. I hope it is helpful since this can be a very difficult issue to deal with for sure.

1. One of the most important things we can teach our kids is that life isn’t always fair. Life just isn’t fair, no matter how much we want it to be. There will always be difficult situations to navigate in life. My husband and I have worked really hard to instill this in our girls in many different situations. We have three girls and we simply can’t make everything fair and equal all the time. That will never be reality for them once they leave our home either, so we want to prepare our girls for the realities that they will face later in life. This is no different with their food intolerances and allergies. It doesn’t seem fair that they can’t eat the same foods as other people, but it is their reality. We give them the freedom to feel sad and talk about how hard it is to have food allergies. It is important for them to be able to voice their feelings. Since life isn’t fair for anyone, in our case with food intolerances and allergies, we help them to see beyond it.

2. We teach our kids thankfulness as a response to difficult situations. Let me be clear again though that we absolutely let our kids feel sad and talk about the challenges they face having food allergies and intolerances. The fact is that we can’t change that our girls (both my husband and I as well) have food allergies and intolerances. If we can’t change that, it is up to us to determine how we let them affect our lives. We can mope around in our sadness and discouragement, or we can choose to be thankful for what we CAN eat. Yes, our list of “can’t haves” is very long, I call it a scroll. You know what though? There are SO MANY foods we CAN eat. Having food intolerances and allergies has pushed all of us to be adventurous with new foods that we might not have ever tried. Our family has become so close knit having food allergies and intolerances because we can’t eat out very much we spend almost every meal together. Most of us also have a very strong desire to be creative, so we have taken our creativity into the kitchen.

3. I am typically very determined in many areas of life. This has done our family well having food allergies and intolerances. I have been determined to not let food allergies and intolerances get the best of us or keep us from enjoying life. If I find a “normal” recipe that looks good, I am determined to figure out how to make it work for my family’s long list of can’t haves. There are very few foods that I haven’t been able to re-create to fit my family’s needs. My family has to endure eating all of my experiments until I get them right, which they are very gracious to do. This has greatly helped my girls to not feel left out. If they are going to a party or event, I always ask the parent what they will be providing for food. I make the same food that will be served at the party so my girls feel included, but with safe food for them. My freezer is full of desserts all the time so the girls have many options to choose from when they have an event to attend. This has helped them to always feel included which is one of the toughest things for kids with food allergies and intolerances to deal with.

4. When we are in a grocery store and see foods that my girls would like to eat, but can’t have we do two things. We find a similar product that is safe for them. The area that we live in has a plethora of natural food stores that have huge selections that fit our needs. If we can’t find it in our local stores, we look online where we can find almost anything we need. It doesn’t satisfy the urgent “want” while we are at the store, but it’s good for them to learn to be patient. 🙂 The other thing we do in this situation is figure out how we can make it ourselves. See #3 for this. My girls are at ages that I can reason with them about what they can and can’t have. If your kids are too young to reason with, I would suggest bringing a safe snack for them to eat while you are at the grocery store so they aren’t thinking about all the food they are passing by.

5. From the time our girls could talk we taught them about their food allergies and intolerances, their reactions, and the consequences of eating those foods would be for them. We wanted them to know clearly why they couldn’t eat certain foods. Education is so important with our kids in this area. I often use the example that we teach our kids the ABC’s from the time they are born knowing they don’t understand them at the time. We repeatedly teach the ABC’S because we know that one day they will know their ABC’s for themselves. I see it no differently with food allergies and intolerances or teaching kids not to touch a hot stove. It is our job to repeatedly teach our kids about their food allergies and intolerances until they know and understand them clearly for themselves. This year I have gone into our two older girls classrooms to talk about food allergies as well to educate their friends. The more we can educate our own kids, their friends, and our families, the easier it will be on our kids.

Please let me know if you have any other questions that I can answer. I hope this was helpful!