We took a hot dog & bun for Nathan’s school open house tonight. He ate it without complaining but the tricky part was the dessert table. Of course, he snuck off and grabbed a cupcake without me seeing. He brought it back to the table, where I scooped it up (because he hadn’t finished his hot dog yet!) & hid it under the table.
Being the smart, well prepared Mommy, I had brought the last of our donut muffins (both chocolate & vanilla version) for an event just like this. I didn’t know that the dessert on offer would be a muffin (donuts, cakes, rice krispie cake etc) so this worked out perfectly. When Nathan was ready for dessert, I calmly handed him the substitute muffin. He looked at it a little suspiciously (his choice had chocolate chips in it & wasn’t half as good as the substitute – I know, I ate it) but dove into the muffin anyhow. Score one for me!
After supper, I talked to his teacher & found out that she really knows nothing about GFCF. I sent a bare-bones explanation with the “don’t feed him anything” caveat. But, she wasn’t sure about things like corn & cornstarch. So, I learned that I will be teaching the teacher this term. I have to put together a quick reference & detail sheet that she can keep. On a happy note, when I asked for a sharp knife to cut Nathan’s bun, one of the other teachers said “that touched wheat bread” before I used it. She asked immediately if he had celiac. I told her “we’re not sure yet”. It seemed like an easier answer than explaining the GF thing at the moment. So, there is some awareness in the school already. Hopefully that means they will be able to accomodate him smoothly. We also talked about alternative school supplies. I looked – they use Crayola pretty much exclusively. The playdough will need to be substituted, so I have some on order from Aroma Dough. More on that when it arrives, you can be sure I’ll be posting a review.