Food Allergy & Families

Perhaps your child’s allergy is well managed, yet you still can’t relax when they eat away from home. Or, maybe you’re trying to navigate guilt about parenting a child with food allergies. Or, maybe you are trying to decide whether to commit to the OIT program and need to think it through. Whatever you’re experiencing is an understandable response to a difficult situation. Seeing a Psychologist can help you to navigate the various emotional challenges of being part of a family affected by severe food allergies. 

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Australia has one of the highest rates of childhood food allergy in the world. About one in ten babies has a food allergy confirmed by challenge, and roughly one in sixteen still has one at age ten. For many families, the diagnosis follows a frightening reaction, and family life then becomes organised around preventing another one.

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Food is one of the main ways families show care, so when the danger exists in food, it reaches well beyond mealtimes. Parents often become the household’s safety system, checking labels and preparing anyone who looks after their child. Much of this work happens behind the scenes, and it carries on in the mind long after the practical task is done.

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Many families expect to feel relief once OIT treatment works, and often they do. It’s also common for the strain of the previous years to surface at this point. While a family is coping day to day, there’s little room to process what has happened. When the daily risk lifts, parents may notice signs of trauma or exhaustion for the first time. This is a common pattern, and it’s often a good moment to seek support.

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Friends and family may say “at least it’s only food”, and appointments tend to focus on the child’s treatment. Parents can be left with a sense of loss and guilt that are hard to explain, because their child is healthy and doing well in other ways.

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Some caution is medically necessary when it comes to severe food allergies, and I don’t treat this as a symptom. My focus is on fear that goes beyond what your child’s plan requires - the kind of fear that unecessarily limits family life. 

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• Trauma after a reaction or anaphylaxis, including intrusive memories and feeling constantly on alert

• Anxiety and hypervigilance, such as checking which no longer reassures

• Grief for the family life you expected, and guilt about what might have caused the allergy

• Feeling dismissed or unheard by health professionals

• The pressures of oral immunotherapy (OIT), from deciding whether to start through to life after graduation

• Handing over care to school or extended family, and later to your teenager

• Differences between partners about risk, and an uneven share of the workload

• The impact on siblings, who may feel overlooked or worried

• Family and cultural traditions where food carries particular meaning

• Isolation, and the toll caring can take on your work and wellbeing

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Please note - I do not give medical advice. Please contact your allergy team when in doubt about a particular situation. Where it helps, I am happy to work alongside them.