The Exhausted Dad: When desserts attack
Allergies ruin delicious things.
I spent many of my earliest years allergic to milk products. I ate Skittles instead of chocolate bars. My parents ordered me pizza without cheese. I LOVED cereal, but at that time, it wasn’t particularly easy to find almond or oat milk.
Though I grew out of the allergy eventually, I remember being excluded from some delicious treats in my childhood. As a parent to four kids, I figured at least one or more of them would suffer from some annoying food allergy. My 11-year-old son drew the short straw in the family.
My son can’t eat peanuts. Thankfully, he isn’t as sensitive as some who have life-threatening reactions to peanuts. He gets a rash and feels unwell, but at least he can breathe.
Since he can consume other tree nuts, my son’s peanut allergy doesn’t impact his life too often. Instead, it impacts my love of peanut butter! Until he was old enough to manage his own food intake, we kept peanut butter and Reese’s and other super delicious peanuty things out of the house altogether.
Even now, when I keep the peanut butter in the house, I store it on top of the refrigerator, on the off chance that my son begins to sleepwalk/sleep-eat peanut butter.
A sleep-eat incident would be the only scenario in which my son would consume peanut butter because he is EXTREMELY cautious about all new foods in the house. I don’t blame him, as lots of random things include peanuts for some reason. Why do potato chips need peanut oil? (I actually know the answer to this — because it’s delicious — but shhhh).
He’s remarkably responsible and vigilant when he attends any event with unpackaged food. He doesn’t care about regular food with potential peanuts. He just won’t eat anything savory and shifty. But desserts … he asks about EVERY dessert.
Recently, at a neighborhood picnic, he inquired about it all.
“Those chocolate chip cookies … do they have peanuts?”
“Apple pie, huh? Did you put any peanuts in there?”
“Those chocolate brownies? Try anything funny with peanuts?”
For the most part, I get it. All those would taste better with peanut butter. OK, maybe not the apple pie. No, it’s probably delicious.
My son loves dessert so much that when he KNOWS a treat is free of all peanuts, he consumes it as fast as humanly possible. He acts as if it might be the last sugary treat on the planet and a bomb might explode if he doesn’t devour the sugar instantaneously.
Sadly, rapid sugar consumption comes at a cost. My kids all earned a free doughnut coupon for their summer reading logs, and everyone went to the shop to pick out their favorite treats.
Yes, he asked if the powdered sugar-covered doughnut with raspberry filling contained peanuts.
When we sat at the table in the shop, my son finished his giant doughnut before the rest of us could even take a third bite.
The other thing to know about my son: He’s a skinny little dude, and we often supplement his diet with extra protein (peanut butter would help!). If I don’t have the chance to stop him from slowing down when eating a giant sugary doughnut , his body reacts, well, poorly.
About 15 minutes later, my son hunched over grabbing his stomach. We needed to find a bathroom ASAP. At that point, my son was probably about 65% sugar.
Once balance is restored, you’d think he would slow down on his hunt for sugar. But no. An hour might have passed before he asked for a piece of candy.
Don’t worry. At this point he knows ALL the candy without peanuts. He can recite them better than his multiplication tables.
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Tyler Wilson is a freelance writer, full-time student, and parent to four kids, ages 7-13. He is tired. He can be reached at twilson@cdapress.com.
The Exhausted Dad
