I confess to being a little puzzled by the sound and fury over peanut allergies and the steps some schools have taken to deal with them. I understand that schools overreact to things all the time (two words: "zero tolerance"), and that they sometimes don't listen to reason about that. I definitely sympathize with any parent of a picky eater - if peanut butter is one of the three only things in the whole world your kid will consent to eat, then being told you can't send PBJs to school any more is not going to be good news. But we are talking about a situation in which a kid may suddenly go into shock, stop breathing, and maybe die. It shouldn't be too hard to understand why the schools want to err on the side of caution.

I suppose one reason for the backlash is that it seems like the hypervigilance to peanuts has come out of nowhere. It's true that more people these days, children especially, have peanut allergies, but no one knows why the number is increasing. Maybe over time people will be more sensitive to it, as public awareness increases. Or maybe we'll get a better handle on causes and treatments and we won't need the schools to take such a hard line. Either way, I don't see this as a long-term problem.

We had our first brush with the peanut allergy thing this week as we had a parents' orientation for Audrey's new preschool class, which she'll be starting next week. They're enforcing a peanut ban at the school, but if no one reports a peanut allergy for their kid in a given class, then it can be dropped for that class. Not a big deal for us - both our girls like peanut butter, but they eat a fairly broad assortment of things, so it's not a staple of their diet - but a lot of questions were asked when the point came up.

Has this affected you or your kid in some way? Leave a comment and let me know.