Flashback: How I Managed my Teenage Years with Food Allergies

Although it seems like many moons ago that I was teenager, it in fact has only been four years. Being a teenager is not only a period of significant growth and changes in your life but is also a crucial time for managing food allergies. It has been shown through various studies that teens are the age group that take the most risks when it comes to their food allergies. Therefore, developing a strong management strategy to carry throughout your teenage years is very important.

I think that the main factor that helped me manage my allergies in my teen years was the fact that I had a good foundation of management from when I was younger. I have always thought that it is crucial for parents to set a good example when a child is young and allow the child to gain independence as quickly as possible when it comes to them self-advocating about their allergies. By having a routine of always having my auto-injector on me, being able to speak to restaurant staff, and telling my friends about my allergies, the new challenges that came with being a teenager were a lot easier to handle.

I think one of the biggest changes was moving from elementary school, which is often a very controlled typically “nut-free” environment, to high school where those regulations typically are not in place. I had to be aware of my surroundings in the cafeteria and be confident enough to tell those I was eating with about my food allergies if they had a food containing an allergen of mine. This was something I found difficult at first as I did not go into high school knowing many people. However, after a while it became much easier. I also made sure that my friends knew about my allergies as well so that if they noticed someone else with my allergen they spoke up for me too.

When in our teenage years we often start to go out without parental supervision and start attending parties. Always remembering to have my auto-injector on me was really important as I didn’t have one of my parents to remind me or to bring a back-up one for me. I made sure that I had one in a purse, one in my backpack, and an extra in the house so that I was always covered and it made it harder to forget. When attending parties, I was extra careful to make sure I had one on-hand as there was often food around and people would be sharing cups or accidentally take a sip of yours. This also taught me to be very aware of my surroundings when at parties to make sure that my cup was always with me and that I avoided any food that I couldn’t eat.

Overall, my teenage years went quite smoothly socially, academically, and when managing my allergies. It is important to take good habits from childhood forward into this time and keep them in place as you enter into adulthood.

– Lindsay S.