WEEKLY GROSS-OUT: Picking on the allergic kid

Kids can find all kinds of creative reasons to harass one another. The latest? Peanut allergy. Doing something as seemingly insignificant as wearing the wrong shoes to school can get a kid subjected to hours of ridicule. According to a recent study, kids have discovered yet another issue to torment each other over: allergies. Recent research published in the Annals of Allergy, Asthma, & Immunology finds that more than a third of kids over age 5 with food allergies have been teased, taunted, or bullied. In more than half of these cases, kids were harassed or touched with the food allergen — incidents that fortunately didn’t trigger any real allergic reactions. It’s bad enough to be picked on, especially for something you can’t control like a peanut allergy, but to have a food you’re highly allergic to waved in your face or even rubbed on your skin is a terrifying way to add insult to injury. And I am aware of schools banning certain allergens just to protect one allergic kid, and this could exacerbate the bullying because the non-allergic kids will resent the policy and the kid that made it happen. I myself may have good reason to make that one student's life miserable, but I wouldn't lay a hand on them. My high school built its first wheelchair ramps in 2004 just to accommodate one disabled child, but I never thought badly of it.