“I was thinking this is a bit of an overreaction.”
If you opened the Sydney Morning Herald today, you would have seen an eight-year-old boy smiling back at you. Marcus was climbing a tree with beautiful blue water in the background. You couldn’t help but smile back at him.
Marcus passed away two years ago. His father, John Terranova, spoke of the day he was called to his son’s after-school care facility because Marcus was having an asthma attack.
“I was thinking this is a bit of an overreaction. A paramedic said: ‘We are doing the best we can for him.’ I was sitting in a kid’s chair thinking they were giving him some help and didn’t want me to get too worried about it.”
But then he saw his son being wheeled out to an ambulance: “They were giving him CPR. I remember saying, ‘Please God, spare him’. He really was an angel, that boy. I live in the hope that there is a heaven and one day I’ll get to be with him again.”
Marcus wasn’t having an asthma attack. He was having an allergic reaction. A report later suggested it was a peanut, a cashew or a kiwi fruit that has triggered anaphylaxis.
John knew that Marcus had an allergy to peanuts, but had no idea he was at risk of anaphylaxis. “He was seeing a dermatologist but the connection between his eczema, asthma and the allergy was not investigated… The focus was always on the asthma. Somewhere along the line someone should have joined the dots.”
John doesn’t blame the after-school care centre, who he says was “fantastic” (an investigation also cleared them of responsibility of Marcus’s death). The bereaved father now campaigns to have parents have their children regularly tested for allergies, so that a treatment plan can be put in place.
It’s a gut-wrenching story, especially when you remember the splashy headline that was on the cover of that same paper that carried Marcus’s face today: BIRTHDAY BAN TAKES THE CAKE.
It was a story about a child care centre in inner-Sydney that had banned birthday cakes. According to the centre, the cakes were banned because parents were worried about their children eating too much cake (which breached nutritional guidelines), and they were concerned that children with allergies felt excluded because they couldn’t eat the cake.
The response was somewhat predictable: cries of “political correctness gone mad!” “Oh-ho, here come the fun police” in the comment section of every place the story was run (including on Mamamia).
But the truth is: this cake ban has very little to do with political correctness.
It has even less to do with kids feeling sad because they can’t eat cake, or the dangers of eating too much sugar.
You just have to look at Marcus Terranova’s face to know what this is about.
Yes, it is a pain to have to police your own kid’s lunchbox when they go to school. Yes, it is embarrassing to receive a note from your child’s school to tell you that the lunch has been confiscated because it contained potential allergens. Yes, it is a bummer that they can’t eat cake at school.
But the fact is that your kid can come home and roll around in nuts. Your kid can come home and eat all the cake they want.
Your kid can come home.
Kids like Marcus don’t get to come home.
Every time it seems like too much to read the label of your muesli bars to see whether they contain nuts, remember Marcus’s face. Remember how his dad thought everyone was overreacting and sat quietly waiting for him to be treated for an asthma attack.
And remember that this doesn’t have to happen on your watch.
Top Comments
I have absolutely no problem keeping nuts out of my sons lunch at daycare, and last year for his birthday I brought two types of snacks for the kids to have on his birthday, one home made chocolate crackles and the other cupcakes so that everyone would have something nice. What really annoys me these days though is that the Daycare will go through his lunch and decide what's best for him and if they don't agree with something I've provided for him, they just won't give it to him. I always pack healthy things as there are no sweets allowed on a normal day and it's really frustrating since there are no allergies other than nuts. I bought specific muesli bars with fruit and no nuts and labelled it all over saying no nuts and they didn't give it to him. And he still eats the fruit puree pouches that young kids have and he's 3 but one of his teachers thought he shouldn't have a puree so wouldn't give it to him. I give him lunch meat, crackers and yoghurt, all kinds of fruit and any time I turn up I have to check the fridge for what they didn't want to give him. It's maddening! He's autistic so is so picky with textures and it's near impossible to find food he'll eat, yet they're happy to ignore what I bring. So annoying! If it were about allergies then Thats totally fine and I'd not ever want a child to be hurt by something I'd brought, but when it's OTT teachers thinking that he shouldn't have a banana because he'd already had an apple that morning, that upsets me a lot.
Add all of this on top of the fact that now no wrappers are allowed, it's all got to be in reusable containers and nude food or else the kids won't be given them, and I can understand why people are annoyed.
Allergies are absolutely something we have to look after and we should all so what we can to help those kids like we'd want others to help our own. The rest though is frustrating.
I am happy to support the ban on foods that may trigger an anaphylaxis event, but from what the article says, they had no prior knowledge that Marcus' reaction was as severe as that. My 4yo also has an allergy that causes eczema and other mild sypmtoms, but he reacts to common food preservatives. I am grateful his is only a mild allergy, but if i expect a school of several hundred students to avoid bringing anything containg the preservative then it would be tremendously difficult. Its in every kind of food you can imagine, many bread products, dairy products, snack foods, meats, dried fruit, yoghurt, sausages..... Its really difficult sometimes to keep it out of our diet, i have to cook most things from scratch, and check the labels on everything just in case theyve changed manufacturer or recipe. I couldn't expect a whole school to do that too, on the off chance that maybe one day my son might have an anaphylactic reaction, as terrible as that would be for us.
If it is an allergy and not an intolerance then I would suggest his own class could attempt to be aware of the food preservatives. Having witnessed my own sister (who is in her late 30's now) suffer multiple anaphylactic reactions in her life (thankgod for epi-pens) any kind of prevention is worth it.