Paint it teal - How a Boise mom is making Halloween fun for children with food allergies
Trick-or-treating for most kids is an exciting part of the fall season. Fueled by candy, children go door to door looking forward to the treats that will be placed in their festive buckets.
But for some kids, trick-or-treating can be a nightmare.
For 2 ½-year-old Emily McCain, trick-or-treating is neither simple nor safe. Emily is one of the nearly six million children with food allergies in the United States.
Emily has severe dairy, egg and peanut allergies. When exposed to these foods, she can have a reaction as small as itchiness to a full-blown anaphylactic reaction. Hope McCain discovered Emily’s allergies within months of her birth after a slew of frightening symptoms her daughter was having.
“There were some terrible warning signs. She had full-body eczema that was head-to-toe that would crack and bleed,” Hope said. “I would wake up in the mornings to find her in her bassinet with her sheets just soaked in blood. It turned out that she was allergic to those things and was being exposed through my breast milk.”
Beyond constantly carrying Epi-pens, Hope has to be cautious about every snack that goes into her daughter’s body or is even around her daughter, as Emily is touch reactive too. Unfortunately, that caution removes some of the spontaneity and fun out of Halloween that other children experience.
“When we go to birthday parties, there are treats she can’t have and we explain to her, ‘No, you can’t have that. I’m sorry honey. There’s eggs in it,’ and she’ll go, ‘Oh, yeah, no I can’t have eggs,” Hope said of how she educates Emily to understand her food allergies. “Come Halloween, if we were to go trick-or-treating and have to take away three quarters of her candy and tell her why, she would understand, but I don’t think it would necessarily take away the disappointment.”
A new way to trick-or-treat
Food Allergy Research Education, FARE, states that food allergy prevalence increased 50 percent from 2007 to 2011. Today, food allergies affect 1 in 13 children in the U.S.
“With one in 13 kids affected by food allergies, chances are that at least one trick-or-treater who comes to your doorstep will have a food allergy,” said Nancy Gregory, spokeswoman for FARE.
“It shouldn’t be terrifying to see your kid with this bucket of candy and be like, ‘Oh my gosh, please don’t touch that,” Hope said.
That’s where the Teal Pumpkin Project comes in.
Originally started by a mom in a community in Tennessee, the project was launched nationally by FARE in 2014 to make Halloween safe and fun for all kids.
“Becky Basalone and her sons painted the first teal pumpkin in Tennessee and spread the word in her local community. We work with food allergy support group leaders like Becky across the country, and we thought her idea was fabulous and adopted it as a national initiative to help create a happier, safer Halloween for all,” Gregory said.
Families that participate put a painted teal pumpkin or poster from FARE’s website outside of their home to indicate they have non-food treats for trick-or-treaters with food allergies or other dietary restrictions. Teal is the color of food allergy awareness and helps families recognize houses participating in handing out non-food options.
Teal Pumpkin Project participants can also go to FARE’s website and pin their house to a map to let families know where they can take their children to safely trick-or-treat.
Glow sticks, bouncy balls, stickers and spider rings are just some of the options FARE suggests for families looking for non-food treats, but candy can still be given as an option. It is recommended by FARE that if you’d like to still pass out candy, consider putting it in a separate bowl from the non-food treats.
“The whole point is to just include those children one way or the other,” Hope said. “So that means if you’re offering one bowl that has candy and another bowl that has toys trinkets for the kids that can’t have the candy, that’s amazing.”
After watching Emily struggle with exclusion from Halloween festivities, Hope decided to take action to help others with food allergies and dietary restrictions in the Treasure Valley participate in a traditional childhood activity.
How Boise can help
Last October, Hope participated in the Teal Pumpkin Project, however, when she went online to check the FARE website, there were only six houses, including their own, that were participating in the project.
“For a metropolitan area of this size, that’s such a small fraction,” she said. “I know several parents just from my interactions in Boise, Meridian and Nampa who have children with food allergies. I know that Emily isn’t the only one.”
That’s when Hope turned to Facebook. After encouragement from her husband, Hope posted to the Boise Bench Dwellers’ Facebook account to let Treasure Valley residents know that she was hosting her own Teal Pumpkin painting party.
“The Boise community is the type of community that would want to be supportive of something like this and supportive of the children that get overlooked,” Hope said.
Hope’s goal? She hopes to see at least 50 houses on FARE’s map within in the Treasure Valley.
“If we can get more houses in this community to participate than there were last year, that’s what I want at the end of the day,” said Hope.
Hope’s Teal Pumpkin painting party will be held 4-6 p.m. Oct. 13 at the Boise First Congregational United Church of Christ. As Hope is funding this event herself with the help of some donations, she’s asking attendees is to bring their own pumpkins and paint brushes, though a limited amount of paint brushes will be available on a first-come, first-serve basis.