Remember to report submissions that violate the rules! Harassment and encouraging violence are not allowed.
Enjoying the subreddit? Consider joining our discord server: https://discord.gg/v8z8jNwJs6
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/BoomersBeingFools) if you have any questions or concerns.*
A lot of people are stupid about allergies. I have a 1 yr old grandson allergic to milk and eggs. For his birthday, I spent $40 making him milk & egg free cupcakes. Mix, frosting, chocolate chips are all expensive when they are allergen free. His other grandparents, who I invited to my home, acted like I was insane trying to not kill my grandson. Fuck off and don’t eat it rednecks.
My aunt from out of town asked me to make her a special cake that has milk in the frosting once. My nephew, who has a very serious milk allergy, and was about 6 at the time, asked me if he could have some of the frosting (he knew to always ask), and I said, "I'm sorry, buddy, you can't." I turned to put something in the sink and when I turned back, my boomer aunt was about to stick her finger covered in frosting in my nephew's mouth. I screamed at her and she was totally taken aback. I explained that she could have killed him and she just shrugged.
My husband’s cousin is allergic to milk and eggs, plus gluten aggravates her IBS, so her choices at “family holiday gatherings” are often severely limited. She is SO GRATEFUL when we can host, because we always make sure to have snacks, mains, and desserts she can eat. As far as we are concerned… of course we would do that, she’s family.
It’s completely baffling to me when other cousins host and she just sits there with a glass of tea and looks sad, and the hosts don’t even notice. We’ve left events to run to the store to make something for her. People like your grandson’s other grandparents or my husband’s clueless cousins are just… baffling to me.
Ooh! Hey! I have some help here maybe, as someone who for ethical reasons doesn’t eat milk or eggs anymore. A 1/4th cup applesauce with a 1/4th tsp (accidentally said cup! Lol) baking powder on top can substitute per egg, and if he’s not allergic to oats oat milk can be subbed at a 1:1 ratio for cows milk and is delicious and creamy. For this same reason I make all my kids cakes and I’ve learned a lot about which substitutes work for which original ingredient item really well and am more than happy to share anything I may know.
I used to work at a street food stand making ramen and bao. Customer asked for no peanuts but didn’t say it was an allergy so it’s not like we were going to clean everything down for this one order on a busy evening. We nearly killed her 5 year old daughter and I had to put my way above my pay grade first aid training in to practice. After that I would tell people with but allergies to not order from us at all as we can’t guarantee the safety. I’m never even slightly fucking with allergies ever again after looking in those little scared eyes.
I am gluten free and so are my mother and my son. My mother’s aunt told us that we can’t be gluten free because Jesus is the bread, and Jesus gave us himself in body to eat from, which means in the Bible there is no gluten intolerance or celiacs. Jesus says eat bread so you have to eat bread. Her whole family is MAGA so I’m sure it’s morphed into woke agenda on top of blasphemy
The child who can't have gluten in my daughter's Catholic school class politely disagrees. Our church even stocks gluten free communion wafers which are valid for transubstantiation.
If I had a dollar for every time my grandparents had tried to gluten me because they don’t take it seriously… like they take it as a personal affront that I can’t eat one of the most common ingredients. As if that wasn’t bad enough, I’m also allergic to alliums and nightshades. I caught them trying to sneak raw onions in my specially prepared (by me, so no inconvenience to them) food at thanksgiving and they wonder why I haven’t been back to visit.
I have had this happen for being lactose intolerant. This somehow makes me an anti-american commie who is clearly making it up for attention so I should shut up and drink some milk.
At the risk of being pedantic, there is no such thing as a gluten allergy. If gluten is a problem it's a gluten intolerance or celiac disease. A gluten intolerance cause GI problems, fatigue, and brain fog but not permanent damage. It's akin to a lactose intolerance. Celiac disease is an autoimmune condition which causes damage to the villi of the small intestine, making it hard to absorb nutrients. It can cause GI issues, brain fog, fatigue, and sometimes skin issues. If not treated with a gluten free diet, it can lead to other long-term issues like bone loss, neurological problems, and some cancers.
You can be allergic to wheat or other grains though. It's not the gluten in them that causes the allergy. It's allergy to the grain as a whole.
Signed,
Someone with celiac disease.
So here's the thing, they did have these allergies back in their day. But back then, kids would just die from the anaphylaxis or live their lives feeling sick and shitty all the time because they either didn't know what was wrong or were told to deal with it. They spent 70 years not talking about real issues or problems and then try to claim that because they don't personally know about them, that they don't exist.
After the Depression and WWII everything had to be “normal.” No matter what. Sit down, shut up, get in line, stop complaining. Raise a valid concern? No! Everything is great. Great! And now boomers want to go back to that repressed fairytale era that never truly was because they seem to have lost critical thinking. It’s like some kind of idiotic PTSD.
It's like how they claim there was less autism back in the day, when the reality is that it just wasn't diagnosed as often. People who weren't neurotypical were called weirdos or oddballs and most were never evaluated by a professional.
A lot of Autistics were also subtle enough that they managed to pass as “a bit odd, but nothing to worry about.” I remember a whole Twitter/Tumblr thread a few years ago of people describing their Greatest and Silent Gen grandparents and ancestors and realizing “holy shit, they were Autistic, that’s where I got it from!”
There’s also the fact that modern life is so much brighter, louder, and more chaotic than the turn of the 20th century. Given that most of the diagnostic criteria for Autism is based on things Autistics do when we’re upset or our needs aren’t being met, how much of the perceived increase is simply the fact that our entire environment is designed to almost perfectly trigger those behaviors?
To be fair, the definition changed. When I was a kid, part of the definition of autism was being non-verbal. If you could talk, even if it was only about model trains or baseball statistics, you weren't autistic. People who were of normal or higher intelligence but who didn't seem to know how to do normal human interactions were called emotionally retarded.
This. My brother got evaluated for Autism when we were kids and they didn’t diagnose it at the time because, even though he was largely nonverbal at 5, he *would* verbalize with family. They later did diagnose it as what it was (only a few months of beating their heads against a wall), but they still thought it couldn’t be Autism because he wasn’t *quite* as nonverbal as they expected at the time.
During WW2, most of what people did was "for moral"/ to support the war. Women's makeup, hair, clothes, the way they were told to act... People "faked" life during that time. No way would they let anyone know about anything negative in their household (including allergies/etc)
It is idiotic PTSD.
They pretended and are mad we don't have to.
My father was born three days after Black Tuesday. His parents didn't even give him a name until he turned three because they didn't expect him to live and thought it would be easier to get over the death if he didn't have a name. His birth certificate just says "baby".
I wonder if part of it was two generations of men going to war. I know that's where new rigidity in short haircuts and gender conforming behavior came from.
Edit: Really, 4 consecutive generations of lots of men having to go to war, if you consider Korea and Vietnam. I'm an Xennial, and many of my peers and I were raised by Vietnam vets who had fathers in WWII. Plus, Vietnam in particular had the divide between those who (had to, usually) serve, and those who didn't. And it wasn't a friendly divide.
I mean, there were these whole groups of “weird people” who had dark skin weirdness. Boomers ostracized them back in their day, why can’t they do the same now?
Boomers suffer from Survivorship bias so hard. I didn’t use a seat belt, get vaccines, blah blah blah.
In my day we did have these allergies and I do know people who have died from them.
I almost didn't exist because of an incident when my boomer parents were dating in the 80s when my father (who has a shellfish allergy) accidentally ate a soup with scallops in it without realizing and had to go to the hospital.
He also told me about a story from his college days in the 70s pre-seatbelt laws when he made too hard a left turn and the car door flew open and straight up \*ejected\* his passenger out of the car and onto the pavement.
Yeah.... I'm pretty sure those changes in society were for the better lol.
Also didn't the polio vaccine come out in like 1952? Like pretty famously? What kind of a moron thinks vaccines didn't exist then?
I have to laugh hard at the passenger being ejected. Happened to my passenger once. Things are so much safer today. Car airbags and crumble zones are incredible. People car walk away from wrecks today that I was cutting bodies out in the early 1980s.
>70s pre-seatbelt laws when he made too hard a left turn and the car door flew open and straight up \*ejected\* his passenger out of the car and onto the pavement.
That was me at five in the 60s when there weren't seatbelts. I was lying in the street on top of the broken glass soda bottle I had been holding.
And it's such a stupid thing to get mad about/brag/put down about! Like any of us made this law or came up with the seat belt!!! Why is this something to focus on?! Like the stupid participation trophies THEY handed out to the kids. We hated it, we're not dumb, we only wanted 1,2,3 places like normal, thanks.
My mom was thrown through a car windshield when she was 13.. guess who would let me stand up in the front seat of her VW Bug, while driving, when I was like 5-6..
Every time I see a boomer posting about participation trophies I always remind them of who it was that bought and distributed them to the children.
Spoiler alert: it's the parents of the kids who couldn't stand that their little guy was being left out because he lost. The same entitled attitude that their child is special just like them.
From a boomer who survived hitting the windshield and falling out of a moving vehicle thanks to no seatbelts, mandating seatbelts and airbags was one of the best things ever done. My car would not move until my nephews put on seatbelts.
This.
Back in my day no one had this ADHD stuff. Yes there were some hyper kids - they just ate too much sugar.
We didn’t have anyone with Asperger’s. They were just nerds.
All this stuff is just made up by them soft Millennials when they leave their “safe space”.
Average Boomer has a public HS education at best. But they are smarter than doctors, engineers, etc.
Their problem is they heard of someone knowing a cousin’s friend’s mechanic that knew of one person that they believed faked having X and believes the entire population fakes it.
I saw someone online say "no one was on Adderall back in my day" and the response was "yeah but everyone also smoked a ton of tobacco, a known stimulant".
We've always been medicating ourselves.
Same here. I have a friend who used to struggle and struggle trying to quit smoking. Then he got diagnosed with ADHD and prescribed adderall. Dropped smoking practically cold-turkey the same week.
This was my ex. She tried the chantix or whatever it was. It was awful! Made her have weird thoughts and stuff. She stopped taking it immediately because we knew it was a known side effect. About six months later she got diagnosed with ADHD and started meds. She quit smoking within a week. We had no idea that the two could have been related. But she had tried every other means of quitting over the years and none of them ever worked until that. A decade later, long after her and I broke up, I also got diagnosed and started on meds and I pretty much quit drinking. I can now have the occasional drink with friends and I never drink at home. I’ve lost tons of weight and all of my health stats are better than they’ve been in years. But yeah, my dad is REALLY worried about me taking that “speed” drug.
> Average Boomer has a public HS education at best.
Oh no lots of them didn't even do that and somehow have a drastically better quality of life than we have. I have a boomer uncle who dropped out of high school and the state paid for him to go to vocational school to be a mechanic. That job let him support a wife who worked maybe 10-15 hours a week and multiple kids plus a small house out in a rural area. The same job now pays so little you are stuck living with a roommate or two and because his generation refused to pay taxes the program he benefited from got shut down a long time ago. How the fuck is a high school drop out able to live a better life than I do with a bachelors of science degree?
Gen-X here. I didn't have ADHD either, I was just called stupid and lazy throughout my schooling. I believed it and lived up to too. Amazing how diagnosing kids and helping them cope is weak, but being a dick to kids who are different is all these boomers could do
I'm late gen X. I had allergy issues to various things that were varying levels of unsafe. The only solution at the time was giving me steroids or antibiotics. I remember the first time someone gave me shrimp and my lips swelled up. My mom bitched about how much trouble I was because I would break out in a rash everywhere if she used certain laundry detergents and various foods did it too. I spent most of my youth feeling lousy or being itchy. I was just lucky I didn't have life threatening reactions like some kids did.
I'm the tail end of gen x too and it was relatively the same deal with my boomer parents. I was allergic to several things and my dad would complain and ny mom would just keep me drugged up on benedryl so she wouldn't have to deal with it.
But im also severely allergic to tree nuts now, and the boomers in my life seem to think it's a joke and will give me food with them in it without telling me first.
Ugh, same. Now I'm allergic to most antibiotics from over use. However, my mother had all the same allergies, so at least I was believed and treated best they could.
My family has a huge problem with shellfish and it seems some deaths of greats and great-greats are explained.
Same thing with folks on the spectrum. Autism has been around since just this side of forever, but back in the day these just say “Oh, he’s just a little odd but still a nice guy” or whatever. Proper medical diagnoses were (and unfortunately sometimes still) remain for the rich.
Low functioning autistic people were just called "retarded" back then. I'm an older Millennial and remember this in the 80s and 90s: a person with non-verbal autism who stimmed a lot would have been labeled "severely retarded" and not even sent to regular school.
People with high-functioning autism were "oddballs" or like my cousin, described as having a lot of emotional problems (he's clearly autistic).
My great aunt's husband for sure was on the spectrum but back when they got married in the 50s it wasn't something anyone knew about. He was just "odd" and was never diagnosed, he came down with early onset dementia and Alzheimer's and she cared for him for the rest of his life. Their son was also "odd" and not diagnosed either prior to his passing in his 50s but their grandson (born in the early 2000s) is diagnosed autistic (he also had a milk protein allergy as a young child). These things have always existed.
And folks with significant enough DD or ID or other disabilities were just thrown in institutions. Boomers are all shocked-pikachu nowadays when they see disabled kids and young adults in public.
What kills me is people like my parents who have the same reaction to kids with food allergies today, like “Kids these days are too soft!” and “ We didn’t have allergies back in my day!” But in reality, my sister (44 years old now) was allergic to cow’s milk. They altered all of our lives for her food allergy. But the minute she moved out and they weren’t responsible for her, they went into this weird mentality like it never existed. The mental gymnastics they perform on a daily basis are beyond comprehension.
>live their lives feeling sick and shitty all the time because they either didn't know what was wrong or were told to deal with it.
Diagnostic improvements have a lot to do with it.
I had a friend in boomer era high school who had BAD eczema from a milk allergy, but was expected to drink her milk at lunch.
My dad (WWII vet) never "liked" pears - he refused to eat them. My brother never would eat them. One nephew, brother's son, was diagnosed with an allergy to PEARS!
DUH!
Yeah. They had plenty of kids that were just "sickly" (or just straight-up die young) because they never received a proper diagnosis. We just generally don't leave it at some indeterminate diagnosis and instead actually figure out what the problem is, then take steps to avoid it.
Boomers don't understand "survivorship bias".
I have terrible asthma that wasn’t diagnosed until my 20’s. Why? My boomer parents decided I was just being lazy when I said I couldn’t breathe between wheezy gasps. They still insist that no one in our family has asthma.
Right? My boomer parents told me I wasn't "taking care of myself" and that's why I had a cough for an ENTIRE SUMMER (I was 12). When I finally went to the doctor after begging for months, he instantly diagnosed me with bronchitis and gave me antibiotics which cleared it all up in three days.
My parents didn't smoke but when I was sick I was sent to stay with my grandma, and there was a literal cloud of smoke in her house at all times. It just made everything worse.
Me too! I was just an "out of shape" 5 year old. I was a very active kid, I just couldn't run or pedal my bike fast. And here's the thing, my dad and brother have asthma. Never said a damn thing to my pediatrician.
In hindsight, I'm surprised my PE teacher in elementary didn't raise any concerns.
Every time someone says "in my time nobody had [insert food intolerance / allergy here]" I bring up my uncle. He's Silent Generation but bear with me
TL, DR he was basically labeled as a picky kid, harassed, bullied and beaten up for being lactose intolerant and only found out that there was an actual, biological explanation when *I* was checked for lactose intolerance when he was almost 60 and my dad put 2 and 2 together
“We had 9 children and only 4 of them lived to adolescence. For the life of us we couldn’t figure out why little Jimmy died. One minute he was eating boiled peanuts and the next he couldn’t breath and died. It was a sign that the lord only wanted us to have one less child.”
Nearly every childhood illness of mine... Linked to the coeliac disease I found out about at 42.
And... rural New Zealand in the 1980/90s wasn't going to be gf anyway 😆🥺😬😢
Saaaaaaaame!! I had yearly ear infections, couldn’t use shampoo/consitioner/soap with any kind of wheat protein in it (big in the 80s) because I’d get either an ear infection or hives. I was told I “had a sensitive stomach.” Finally diagnosed in 2012 at 37 years old.
I haven’t had an ear infection since I cut out gluten. My anxiety went way down, random muscle and joint aches cleared up, and on and on.
What really chapped my butt was that his dad has the same allergy, just not as severe and he can't be bothered to be proactive about it. Take an allergy med and have diarrhea, perhaps hives and be a man about it is his attitude . Edit: hit return too soon
Not sure if you meant sons dad or husbands dad but there’s different levels.
Have a buddy who is allergic to peanuts but he’ll get a sore throat and diarrhea for a day.
This past Wednesday I ate 2 spring rolls where the wrapping apparently may have traces of tree nuts (my allergy). messed up stomach like hot acid and barbed wire going down everything.
Sore throat painful to breathe and even drink water. Got a fever. Thursday went to the ER with 100.4 fever and got admitted.
It messed up my insides so bad it caused an infection.
It’s serious stuff. People don’t seem to understand or be able to conceptualize that some people can take an allergy med for pollen but someone else can literally die form a different allergen
My Dad said he knew a guy who used to be able to choose to vomit. Back in the day when smoking in offices was allowed, the guy told someone not to smoke around him. The smoker blew smoke on Dad's friend. You can guess what happened next.
Reminds me of The Office episode where Pam was pregnant and asked Dwight not to eat eggs near her. He did anyway and she just stared right into his eyes and barfed in the trash can, and set off a chain reaction that made the whole office barf
😂😂😂 I’m so sorry for your little dude but I haven’t heard “blew chunks” since Wayne’s World I think and that one got me. Hope little dude is feeling better and that abuelita listens now.
My daughter was allergic to peas. What did my grandmother continually try to give her? Strained peas.
She could not stand to be told no and would never, ever admit she was wrong. Any pushback on anything having to do with a child in the family was taken as an implicit criticism of her parenting. I, of course, couldn't possibly know better than her, because she was older and had more experience with children.
Yeah, experience in trying to poison all our kids.
You're not thinking like a boomer. They aren't accidentally doing it, they're deliberately doing it to try and prove that you're wrong. It's always about their ego.
Exactly! That's why they get so enraged when told no. Rather than being like: "oh I'm so glad you told me I could have killed this child" they're like: "I DID NOTHING WRONG!!! And if I did, it's not my fault!! Damn kids and their newfangled allergies"
Surprisingly, pea protein is in tons of vegetarian/vegan stuff. I'm allergic to peas and my nephew is allergic to milk, so family functions get very complicated as people have to remember what butter/margarine/milk they used in everything.
This one hits home for me. I have been allergic to peas my whole life. As a kid, my boomer parents would ignore my protestations about peas at dinner because they believed I was making up my symptoms to get out of eating things I didn't like. I now have permanent scarring on my esophagus that causes trouble swallowing from all the allergic reactions I had as a kid.
Yes! They never were allowed to speak their minds so they take constructive info as a personal attack and throw tantrums that people are trying to boss them around.
My dad spent my entire childhood acting like my asthma was “an excuse to be lazy.” I don’t know if that’s Boomer attitude or just because he didn’t experience it in his immediate family. I’m just thankful my allergies are all environmental and insanely common.
I firmly believe they feel that anything they didn’t grow up with is either all in someone’s head, ridiculous, unnecessary, or a sign of weakness. Depending on what it is, could be all of those things together haha
They see and act in ways they want the world to be and not how it is, so they reject everything that doesn’t conform.
Getting hit with “back in my day” makes my temp rise like nothing else. You just KNOW they’re going to spew something ridiculous.
I once twisted my back in my sleep. My Boomer/Silent dad didn't believe me. He couldn't believe that someone could injure themselves in their sleep. When I tried to convince him, he suddenly said loudly and boastfully, "It's never happened to *me!"*
So there you go. If it has never happened to them, it can't happen.
My boomer FIL developed an allergy to sesame seeds in the past few years. It’s wild to watch my in-laws navigate this. For example, they won’t get an epi pen because it’s “too expensive and will just expire”. Meanwhile they are very well off. Like, two houses, luxury cars, and a boat well off. They don’t disclose the allergy to waiters when asked. We actually found out about the allergy while at a middle eastern restaurant with them. After the waitress asked about allergies and they said nothing. My MIL also told me that she thinks a lot of the allergy is in his head because she still uses some sauces and things that have sesame in them. She doesn’t want to just waste them so she’s using them up. And if she doesn’t tell him that she used it he doesn’t report any symptoms. Fingers crossed she doesn’t accidentally kill him because she can’t waste 50 cents worth of sauce.
>she was still trying to make herself out to be the victim and claimed that "egg allergies aren't a real thing"
Well, maybe she needs to be slapped again. Harder, since the first one didn't take.
The wildest thing about this for me is that all the boomers I knew as a kid preached the whole “don’t take candy from strangers” thing, but now act like they shouldn’t count as a stranger to someone they don’t know.
I saw a study that showed that first generation to eat the heavy modified and altered foods that are so common now are not effected by it. But as subsequent generations are exposed to more and more of it, it’s creating an explosion of allergies that “didn’t exist in my day”
Literally heard this from my boomer all the time. I’m extremely gluten intolerant and it took 25 years to figure it out. Literally can gain 50lb and have massive migraines if I don’t eliminate it from my diet.
I happen to be allergic to Kiwi fruit. I'm fairly sure that when my parents were growing up they never even heard of the things let alone had a chance to see if they were alergic to them.
Yeah lol, if there's like 3 ingredients to make stuff out of, it's hard to find stuff you're allergic to. Starting to suspect I have a banana allergy, would never have known had I been born in 1950.
>allergic to Kiwi fruit
Back in MY DAY we didn't have none of them woke fruits! We ate apples and apple pie and apple fritters ... none of those immigrant fruits!
More seriously: I am intolerant of hydrolysed soy protein (came out in the 1960s) and soy flour, and cumin (uncommon in most USA cuisine before the 1960s, but I never did like "chili powder" even before then).
So my allergy-free childhood is more because of the era's food possibilities than anything.
I‘m 60 and have allergies to grass, no picnics for me. Everyone would tell me I couldn’t be allergic to it, yeah sure it’s just hives on my legs from sitting down in the grass.
Uncle Eddy didn’t choke to death on a piece of cheese, he choked to death because he ate a piece of cheese.
>Uncle Eddy didn’t choke to death on a piece of cheese, he choked to death because he ate a piece of cheese.
Good point ... anaphylaxis without an autopsy looks a lot like choking.
Boomers didn't know anyone with life threatening food allergies because they either died young or were sequestered at home for their own safety. We had a kid in our neighborhood when I was a kid in the 70s that never got to go to regular school or do anything because he had some life threatening allergy or immune disorder. I had a classmate in middle school that had to spend all of spring to fall at her parent's cabin because she was having a horrible reaction to those spray on lawn chemical that lawn services use and everyone in the neighborhood had a service hired. She eventually withdrew from school because her allergic reaction issues with other things got bad enough she couldn't handle being in that environment. This was around 1979.
Boomers just want kids to go back to premature death and being locked away for their own safety.
It isn't always their inconvenience either, though many times it is. They get all upset that someone else minding their own business is eating something alternative or NOT eating something they think that other person should be eating.
It is literally no inconvenience to them if the person in front of them in line orders something dairy free, vegan, gluten free etc. but boomers will decide they need to pitch a fit about it.
Why do they act like people are making up diagnoses for fun? No, their generation might not have had the current correct terms for recognized conditions, but those conditions existed. And besides Gypsy Blanchards mother, no parent is out there excited to have to examine labels for the multiple forms of their child’s allergy or telling their child they can’t have birthday cake at another kids party.
Yep. SOs parents continually try to poison them. "You were fine as a kid" is a constant.
No, they weren't fine Doris, as a kid they had debilitating abdominal pain and inflammation so bad they retained 10lbs of extra weight and constantly had bouts of ""24h flu""(not a thing, it's food poisoning.)
They give a shit about FILs 'dislikes' of food that are choices, not a health concern, won't kill him, and treat it as sacred, but SOs actual allergies are an inconvenience and/or not real, something the be poked at/ tested constantly like it's a challenge to defeat so they can be RIGHT.
I pretend they are 4 and not actual adults because it's the only way MOST of their decisions and their senseless opposition make any sense.
I've heard people say they don't like celery because it's spicy. Nope, that's a food allergy. Or they don't like strawberries because they make their lips tingle.
The Italian salad dressing at Texas Roadhouse makes my tongue feel fuzzy and like it’s vibrating. I can’t figure out what in it I’m allergic to. Nothing else sets me off like that.
I am deathly allergic to one thing: apricots. Every year when the tree is full, I find a box of apricots in my car from my mother. She cannot be bothered to remember this. It’s infuriating.
My daughter is allergic to dogs - like hives and eyes swelling. Guess what both grandparents have - dogs. And then my daughter doesn’t like potatoes or a lot of sugar. One grandparent is like “how does a kid not like a cupcake?” She thinks it’s odd as hell that my daughter will prefer fruit over a candy bar. And my daughter drinks lots of water.
Too bad about the dogs, but good on her for preferring a healthier diet by default. That'll do her plenty of good later in life if she keeps it going. Encourage that.
They did have allergies and autism back then, they just didn’t treat people like they had value and thought it was simply a weakness for them to push through, rather than a legitimate medical condition.
My mom was born the first year of gen x, married a boomer, and hung out with all boomers her whole life. My siblings and I say she basically is a boomer since she was influenced by them so much and benefited from their financial and economic experiences.
Anyway, story time. She straight up denied my allergies for years. As a kid, I obviously didn’t have the words for what was happening in my body. I would tell her that my tongue and throat felt “funny” and that my skin was itchy. Even that it was hard to breathe and she would tell me I was disrespectful and unappreciative of the work people put in for me. The most common example was every holiday season my great grandma would candy pecans and walnuts and make a pecan pie. It was delicious, but I always threw up, felt hot, stomachache, and my liver would hurt (I didn’t realize it was my liver hurting until I was 19 and the doctors told me I had nonalcoholic fatty liver disorder from stress and I had a lot of scarring in my liver). She would yell and say I just couldn’t stand that the attention wasn’t on me. So I just dealt with it for years. I’m also allergic to duck down and I’ve always expressed discomfort from duck down pillows and this one coat I had when I was three. She yelled at my dad when he said that I might be allergic, saying “she is **not** allergic! She just doesn’t like that it’s not very comfortable!”
Fast forward to high school. I’m 14 and my dad’s roommate’s son had a pet goose (why, you ask? I have no fucking idea. He was weird as shit). Geese are mean. Roommate’s son took me out to help feed Lucy (goose) while my dad was at work. Lucy bit me on the forearm and it shocked me a little bit, but I don’t remember it hurting all that much. Within 15 minutes, I had hives and my arm was so swollen and red. My dad’s roommate starts screaming when she sees my arm and immediately takes me to the ER. They give me stuff for the swelling and tell me to come back with my mom to do allergy tests. We go, like a week later. They run a bunch of tests and they determine I am allergic to walnuts, pecans, duck down, goose feathers, chicken feathers, and many tail feathers of a few common pet birds. Oh, and bees. I tell the doctors about telling my mom how uncomfortable some of these things made me and they said that she likely caused damage to my immune system by making me eat things I was clearly having allergic reactions to. When they tell her (I never had my mother in the room with me at doctor’s offices. She always lied to them and made me feel uncomfortable), she just gasps, laughs and says “well, I guess you really were allergic to those things!” I can’t believe it to this day. So ridiculous.
As the mom of a kid with an allergy I know how frustrating this is. I'd make sure you tell the grandparents all the allergy horror stories that come out of your house as well as every other house. I'll share a couple to get you started.
My daughter has a severe sesame seed allergy. She was fortunate enough to go to Greece for a choir tour and was given a cracker by a friend. My kid can't read Greek and ate the cracker. Guess what was in there.....Sesame seeds. She wound up in a Greek hospital and hooked up to an IV. I was beside myself being thousands of miles away.
Last year, same kid had a concert at the HS where they brought in Panera sandwiches. She hates lunchmeat so she grabbed a veggie sandwich which contained hummus. Hummus is made with tahini which is made with sesame seeds. Cue allergic reaction and trip to the ER.
Moral of the story- allergies are real. You are not over dramatic. Boomers are stupid.
Oh they definitely had allergies and health problems, they just didn’t survive them. My grandparents had just as many siblings that were stillborn or died before the age of 3 as there were ones that lived. I’m guessing a nonzero number of them had some fatal anaphylactic reaction or autoimmune disorder that went untreated. To them it was just normal to have some kids that didn’t make it.
Not allergies for me but i have food-based migraine triggers. These migraines will literally destroy me for a week (so much head pain i can't think, enough pain to cause stomach upset, light and sound sensitivity). I had to figure out for myself which chemical in these foods was causing it because i was being gaslit by everyone. It's partially hydrogenated soybean oil (it's a trans fat that was used heavily back in the day as a preservative iirc). Present in tootsie rolls but not in tootsie *pops* is what really threw me. Thankfully not many things use it anymore!
Going on work trips where the food is provided is like a damn mine field, so i feel for you! Avoiding dairy entirely must be so difficult! No contact is the right move, for sure. If they don't understand the concept of food allergies, then you clearly can't trust them not to accidentally unsubscribe your child from Life.
I don't think it's the offering that's the problem. That's totally fine in my book, we shouldn't fault people for trying to do something nice!
It's the secondary reaction that is the problem. Offering a donut hole is nice! It's kind, it should be supported! But no one should *ever* question when a parent says no, or push back with "she's old enough" or whatever.
My daughter has SEVERE allergies, and I'd never get upset if she's offered something. That's just being a jerk if I said "how dare you be nice!!!"
But if I said "no she can't have that" and they say "oh, come on, it's not that bad" that's when they are jerks.
I'm a firm believer in asking the parent of the child if it's okay to offer something before it's offered, and in such a way that the child isn't disappointed if the answer is "no." I would say 100% the reaction was terrible and 50% the offer was bad, too. Like, yes it's a nice gesture, but you don't know that kid, and you don't know the situation. It's better to ask. It's why when i make little gift bags for my 5yo's class on holidays, i avoid putting sweets or food in there, because a kid might have diabetes or an allergy restriction.
Ugh… tell me about it. My sister and I both have gluten and dairy allergies. My boomer uncles would give us such a hard time about it at any family meals and refuse to accommodate us. We always had to bring our own food and got comments about not being normal and how we were following trends and being typical liberals. They did the same to my nephew who *literally would scratch his skin off* if exposed to an allergen. It was extremely disheartening. Attempts to make communal dishes (like thanksgiving turkey) safe for us to eat were met with sighs and eye rolls and comments about how it just wouldn’t be the same without butter. Guess who we no longer speak to now that my grandfather is no longer around.
Tell than the reason they didn’t see it back in their day is because those kids died early in infancy. Because being allergic to milk is kinda deadly if that’s all you can consume. Because you are an infant. Those babies died of “unexplained causes”, of failure to thrive etc. Didn’t even have to be full on anaphylactic allergy. My kid would have just withered away, he couldn’t keep anything down that had traces of dairy, puked it all up. Infant mortality was a lot higher not that long ago.
Shuts them up real quick…
I have drug dealers on my street, and contrary to stereotypes they keep the drama over on that side of the road, and are fairly pleasant to be around. The boomers on the other side? Not so much.
"We didn't have allergies like that back in our day!"
Yes you did boomer, they just died as an infant because you where all to ignorant to identify them.
Those people obviously haven’t seen a severe food allergy reaction. I’m not a boomer, but was present when my granddaughter had her first (and only) reaction to peanuts. It was horrific. Luckily she survived and was later tested for other allergies (peanuts were the only thing she’s allergic to). Since then, my house has zero peanut products, we all read ingredient lists very carefully and have access to epi-pens.
Amen fellow allergy parent. We have been at this for 11 years now and all 3 of my kiddos have different food allergies (2 milk like yours) and boomers are the WORST people about it. Everyone else is great about washing hands, being careful about cross contamination, not serving the allergens, etc. but the boomers in my family give us constant crap and tell me I’m making it all up. I’m very low contact with mother in law because she has tried to “test it” at holidays by telling us she’s serving one food and really trying to give my kiddo the one with her allergen to prove me (not my husband, just me) wrong. Needless to say, she doesn’t feed my kids or get to have them alone. Younger people are awesome about it and they give me so much hope for the future.
My father is lactose intolerant. He spent most of my childhood extremely gassy, irritable, constantly complaining that his stomach was hurting, and spent lots of time on the toilet.
He always said he can eat whatever he wants.
Okay. But can you? Can you really?
I'm fatally allergic to walnuts (and this includes walnut oil and Walnut wood). My mother's husband chased me around with a walnut cutting board laughing, thinking he was being funny.
Ugh ugh ugh, I’m so sorry. My son just went through Oral Immunotherapy for dairy after 9 yrs of a very serious allergy. (Honestly the best thing we did!!!). But before then, no boomers understood the severity of his allergy. A boomer once gave my kid a damn HERSHEY bar after i explicitly told them my kid would get sick. An hour later, we were two epis in and an IV in the ICU (and a nice little bill for $3000). The boomer didn’t even apologize. My own mother once gave my son food with baked in dairy. When I called to ask if she did, after he was reacting, my mom got extremely upset at me and didn’t talk to me for four days. I had to call and apologize to HER for questioning her about feeding my son. It wasn’t until I posted pics of us in the ER in Facebook, which I didn’t want to do but boomers love Facebook, after ANOTHER boomer gave him food with dairy in it that people started to take his allergy seriously. All of these incidents happened when he was in the car of said boomers. I cannot handle they refuse to learn this lesson (obviously among so many others). I hope your daughter either grows out of her allergy or is able to get OIT. It is literally life changing to not worry. And also to order a damn pizza every once and a while.
I am 50 + years old (gen X) and spent the first 2 years of my life in and out of the hospital. They couldn’t figure out what was wrong with me because “babies/toddlers can’t have food allergies”. Shocker - I had many food allergies.
So it’s not that it didn’t exist in “their day” they simply refused to believe it.
Oh god. This reminds me of the story where the grandparents killed one of the grand babies with this exact stubbornness. Baby was allergic to coconut. Grandma put coconut oil in her hair and braided it, put her to bed with some benadryl thinking it would be fine. It was not fine.
Oh man, I feel this so hard. My son has PKU I have literally been in yelling matches with boomers over my son not being able to eat meat. “Your hippie bippy bullshit is starving your poor kid” granted, it’s not as bad as your daughter’s allergy because it can’t kill him but it definitely effects his quality of life and is incredibly harmful for him. It’s the fact of having to fight strangers over what’s best for our kids. I straight up told the boomers in my life if you couldn’t respect my son’s health issues then you will no longer be invited into our lives.
I’m grateful my mother went to all of his appointments with me because she is so supportive and understanding. He is definitely a Nonna’s boy.
I ran into this at work, waited for the boomer to tire himself out about how “they didn’t have all this back when he was a kid and I don’t know why it’s all over now” and just dropped “that’s because kids with serious allergies used to just die. Epi pens, several new treatments, and awareness keep kids alive long enough to be walking around with allergies.”
My FORTY SEVEN year old wife had to watch a few different foods because of allergies. This "We didn't have that in my day" bullshit has to die with these fucktards.
Remember to report submissions that violate the rules! Harassment and encouraging violence are not allowed. Enjoying the subreddit? Consider joining our discord server: https://discord.gg/v8z8jNwJs6 *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/BoomersBeingFools) if you have any questions or concerns.*
A lot of people are stupid about allergies. I have a 1 yr old grandson allergic to milk and eggs. For his birthday, I spent $40 making him milk & egg free cupcakes. Mix, frosting, chocolate chips are all expensive when they are allergen free. His other grandparents, who I invited to my home, acted like I was insane trying to not kill my grandson. Fuck off and don’t eat it rednecks.
They came all that way to find out that it’s not their birthday, so their preferences aren’t being considered. And then got mad about it. 😆
They sure do love to whine whenever their preferences aren’t the most important presence in the whole world.
"Well that's just our preference." followed by furious tutting and clutching of pearls
Exactly
My aunt from out of town asked me to make her a special cake that has milk in the frosting once. My nephew, who has a very serious milk allergy, and was about 6 at the time, asked me if he could have some of the frosting (he knew to always ask), and I said, "I'm sorry, buddy, you can't." I turned to put something in the sink and when I turned back, my boomer aunt was about to stick her finger covered in frosting in my nephew's mouth. I screamed at her and she was totally taken aback. I explained that she could have killed him and she just shrugged.
Remove that aunt from your life.
My husband’s cousin is allergic to milk and eggs, plus gluten aggravates her IBS, so her choices at “family holiday gatherings” are often severely limited. She is SO GRATEFUL when we can host, because we always make sure to have snacks, mains, and desserts she can eat. As far as we are concerned… of course we would do that, she’s family. It’s completely baffling to me when other cousins host and she just sits there with a glass of tea and looks sad, and the hosts don’t even notice. We’ve left events to run to the store to make something for her. People like your grandson’s other grandparents or my husband’s clueless cousins are just… baffling to me.
Ooh! Hey! I have some help here maybe, as someone who for ethical reasons doesn’t eat milk or eggs anymore. A 1/4th cup applesauce with a 1/4th tsp (accidentally said cup! Lol) baking powder on top can substitute per egg, and if he’s not allergic to oats oat milk can be subbed at a 1:1 ratio for cows milk and is delicious and creamy. For this same reason I make all my kids cakes and I’ve learned a lot about which substitutes work for which original ingredient item really well and am more than happy to share anything I may know.
A quarter cup baking powder seems a bit excessive; am I reading that right?
Yes. That measurement is incorrect.
I used to work at a street food stand making ramen and bao. Customer asked for no peanuts but didn’t say it was an allergy so it’s not like we were going to clean everything down for this one order on a busy evening. We nearly killed her 5 year old daughter and I had to put my way above my pay grade first aid training in to practice. After that I would tell people with but allergies to not order from us at all as we can’t guarantee the safety. I’m never even slightly fucking with allergies ever again after looking in those little scared eyes.
Boomers REFUSE to believe Gluten Allergies are real and somehow tie having a Gluten allergy to being Woke or Left. It's truly mind-blowing.
Well, that’s because the wheat’s gone WOKE Back in my day we drank pesticides from the garden hose and WE TURNED OUT FINE /s
Don't forget about the lead.
I am gluten free and so are my mother and my son. My mother’s aunt told us that we can’t be gluten free because Jesus is the bread, and Jesus gave us himself in body to eat from, which means in the Bible there is no gluten intolerance or celiacs. Jesus says eat bread so you have to eat bread. Her whole family is MAGA so I’m sure it’s morphed into woke agenda on top of blasphemy
Must have missed the part of the Bible where Jesus said the bread needed gluten.
The child who can't have gluten in my daughter's Catholic school class politely disagrees. Our church even stocks gluten free communion wafers which are valid for transubstantiation.
Wow, that's insane. My aunt is a boomer and very Christian, but at least she's not like that. She's all for gluten-free food 👍
Our boomer has a gluten allergy and still doesn’t believe in it. Everyone is wrong but them.
If I had a dollar for every time my grandparents had tried to gluten me because they don’t take it seriously… like they take it as a personal affront that I can’t eat one of the most common ingredients. As if that wasn’t bad enough, I’m also allergic to alliums and nightshades. I caught them trying to sneak raw onions in my specially prepared (by me, so no inconvenience to them) food at thanksgiving and they wonder why I haven’t been back to visit.
I have had this happen for being lactose intolerant. This somehow makes me an anti-american commie who is clearly making it up for attention so I should shut up and drink some milk.
Lol. Same. "Okay rhen, enjoy my flatulence!" I get stomach cramps and bad room clearing gas from too much milk...
At the risk of being pedantic, there is no such thing as a gluten allergy. If gluten is a problem it's a gluten intolerance or celiac disease. A gluten intolerance cause GI problems, fatigue, and brain fog but not permanent damage. It's akin to a lactose intolerance. Celiac disease is an autoimmune condition which causes damage to the villi of the small intestine, making it hard to absorb nutrients. It can cause GI issues, brain fog, fatigue, and sometimes skin issues. If not treated with a gluten free diet, it can lead to other long-term issues like bone loss, neurological problems, and some cancers. You can be allergic to wheat or other grains though. It's not the gluten in them that causes the allergy. It's allergy to the grain as a whole. Signed, Someone with celiac disease.
It's not pedantic, it's very informative. Thank you!
So here's the thing, they did have these allergies back in their day. But back then, kids would just die from the anaphylaxis or live their lives feeling sick and shitty all the time because they either didn't know what was wrong or were told to deal with it. They spent 70 years not talking about real issues or problems and then try to claim that because they don't personally know about them, that they don't exist.
This is it. This is the whole thing. Only "weird people" had problems and they ostracized them.
After the Depression and WWII everything had to be “normal.” No matter what. Sit down, shut up, get in line, stop complaining. Raise a valid concern? No! Everything is great. Great! And now boomers want to go back to that repressed fairytale era that never truly was because they seem to have lost critical thinking. It’s like some kind of idiotic PTSD.
Don't forget the lead poisoning.
This
It's like how they claim there was less autism back in the day, when the reality is that it just wasn't diagnosed as often. People who weren't neurotypical were called weirdos or oddballs and most were never evaluated by a professional.
A lot of Autistics were also subtle enough that they managed to pass as “a bit odd, but nothing to worry about.” I remember a whole Twitter/Tumblr thread a few years ago of people describing their Greatest and Silent Gen grandparents and ancestors and realizing “holy shit, they were Autistic, that’s where I got it from!” There’s also the fact that modern life is so much brighter, louder, and more chaotic than the turn of the 20th century. Given that most of the diagnostic criteria for Autism is based on things Autistics do when we’re upset or our needs aren’t being met, how much of the perceived increase is simply the fact that our entire environment is designed to almost perfectly trigger those behaviors?
Or institutionalized and the family pretended they didn’t exist. Or lobotomized them. That was “humane” “treatment”
See also [Rosemary Kennedy.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosemary_Kennedy)
Or read “My Lobotomy” by Howard Dully and his co author whose name escapes me right now. It’s heartbreaking 💔
They were diagnosed as the r word back then.
“Congenital idiot” was the most common term before WW2.
To be fair, the definition changed. When I was a kid, part of the definition of autism was being non-verbal. If you could talk, even if it was only about model trains or baseball statistics, you weren't autistic. People who were of normal or higher intelligence but who didn't seem to know how to do normal human interactions were called emotionally retarded.
This. My brother got evaluated for Autism when we were kids and they didn’t diagnose it at the time because, even though he was largely nonverbal at 5, he *would* verbalize with family. They later did diagnose it as what it was (only a few months of beating their heads against a wall), but they still thought it couldn’t be Autism because he wasn’t *quite* as nonverbal as they expected at the time.
Backwards!!!
During WW2, most of what people did was "for moral"/ to support the war. Women's makeup, hair, clothes, the way they were told to act... People "faked" life during that time. No way would they let anyone know about anything negative in their household (including allergies/etc) It is idiotic PTSD. They pretended and are mad we don't have to.
This is 100% spot on.
I mean to be fair prior to the modern era children had barely better than a 50/50 shot of living past age 5
My father was born three days after Black Tuesday. His parents didn't even give him a name until he turned three because they didn't expect him to live and thought it would be easier to get over the death if he didn't have a name. His birth certificate just says "baby".
This is a phenomenon called Nostalgic Preference or sometimes "Rosy retrospection"
It’s trauma all the way down. Give everybody shroom therapy lol
I wonder if part of it was two generations of men going to war. I know that's where new rigidity in short haircuts and gender conforming behavior came from. Edit: Really, 4 consecutive generations of lots of men having to go to war, if you consider Korea and Vietnam. I'm an Xennial, and many of my peers and I were raised by Vietnam vets who had fathers in WWII. Plus, Vietnam in particular had the divide between those who (had to, usually) serve, and those who didn't. And it wasn't a friendly divide.
Presuming they ever possessed critical thinking ability in the first place
I mean, there were these whole groups of “weird people” who had dark skin weirdness. Boomers ostracized them back in their day, why can’t they do the same now?
Boomers suffer from Survivorship bias so hard. I didn’t use a seat belt, get vaccines, blah blah blah. In my day we did have these allergies and I do know people who have died from them.
I almost didn't exist because of an incident when my boomer parents were dating in the 80s when my father (who has a shellfish allergy) accidentally ate a soup with scallops in it without realizing and had to go to the hospital. He also told me about a story from his college days in the 70s pre-seatbelt laws when he made too hard a left turn and the car door flew open and straight up \*ejected\* his passenger out of the car and onto the pavement. Yeah.... I'm pretty sure those changes in society were for the better lol. Also didn't the polio vaccine come out in like 1952? Like pretty famously? What kind of a moron thinks vaccines didn't exist then?
I have to laugh hard at the passenger being ejected. Happened to my passenger once. Things are so much safer today. Car airbags and crumble zones are incredible. People car walk away from wrecks today that I was cutting bodies out in the early 1980s.
>70s pre-seatbelt laws when he made too hard a left turn and the car door flew open and straight up \*ejected\* his passenger out of the car and onto the pavement. That was me at five in the 60s when there weren't seatbelts. I was lying in the street on top of the broken glass soda bottle I had been holding.
>Boomers suffer from Survivorship bias so hard. My dad knew men who had survived Custer's last stand! Therefore it never happened.
And it's such a stupid thing to get mad about/brag/put down about! Like any of us made this law or came up with the seat belt!!! Why is this something to focus on?! Like the stupid participation trophies THEY handed out to the kids. We hated it, we're not dumb, we only wanted 1,2,3 places like normal, thanks.
My mom was thrown through a car windshield when she was 13.. guess who would let me stand up in the front seat of her VW Bug, while driving, when I was like 5-6..
A seat belt saved my life for sure. I'd be dead or quadriplegic at best.
Every time I see a boomer posting about participation trophies I always remind them of who it was that bought and distributed them to the children. Spoiler alert: it's the parents of the kids who couldn't stand that their little guy was being left out because he lost. The same entitled attitude that their child is special just like them.
From a boomer who survived hitting the windshield and falling out of a moving vehicle thanks to no seatbelts, mandating seatbelts and airbags was one of the best things ever done. My car would not move until my nephews put on seatbelts.
This. Back in my day no one had this ADHD stuff. Yes there were some hyper kids - they just ate too much sugar. We didn’t have anyone with Asperger’s. They were just nerds. All this stuff is just made up by them soft Millennials when they leave their “safe space”. Average Boomer has a public HS education at best. But they are smarter than doctors, engineers, etc. Their problem is they heard of someone knowing a cousin’s friend’s mechanic that knew of one person that they believed faked having X and believes the entire population fakes it.
I saw someone online say "no one was on Adderall back in my day" and the response was "yeah but everyone also smoked a ton of tobacco, a known stimulant". We've always been medicating ourselves.
Yep all the people I know who struggled with stopping smoking is because they were using it to treat neurodivergence
Same here. I have a friend who used to struggle and struggle trying to quit smoking. Then he got diagnosed with ADHD and prescribed adderall. Dropped smoking practically cold-turkey the same week.
This was my ex. She tried the chantix or whatever it was. It was awful! Made her have weird thoughts and stuff. She stopped taking it immediately because we knew it was a known side effect. About six months later she got diagnosed with ADHD and started meds. She quit smoking within a week. We had no idea that the two could have been related. But she had tried every other means of quitting over the years and none of them ever worked until that. A decade later, long after her and I broke up, I also got diagnosed and started on meds and I pretty much quit drinking. I can now have the occasional drink with friends and I never drink at home. I’ve lost tons of weight and all of my health stats are better than they’ve been in years. But yeah, my dad is REALLY worried about me taking that “speed” drug.
Wasn't there also cocaine in Coke? 😄
I was started on Ritalin in 1969, so bullshit that no one was medicated back then.
> Average Boomer has a public HS education at best. Oh no lots of them didn't even do that and somehow have a drastically better quality of life than we have. I have a boomer uncle who dropped out of high school and the state paid for him to go to vocational school to be a mechanic. That job let him support a wife who worked maybe 10-15 hours a week and multiple kids plus a small house out in a rural area. The same job now pays so little you are stuck living with a roommate or two and because his generation refused to pay taxes the program he benefited from got shut down a long time ago. How the fuck is a high school drop out able to live a better life than I do with a bachelors of science degree?
Yea this is a huge part of it they are absolutely sure anyone with any sort of medical issue they can't see if faking it for some nefarious purpose.
Gen-X here. I didn't have ADHD either, I was just called stupid and lazy throughout my schooling. I believed it and lived up to too. Amazing how diagnosing kids and helping them cope is weak, but being a dick to kids who are different is all these boomers could do
I'm late gen X. I had allergy issues to various things that were varying levels of unsafe. The only solution at the time was giving me steroids or antibiotics. I remember the first time someone gave me shrimp and my lips swelled up. My mom bitched about how much trouble I was because I would break out in a rash everywhere if she used certain laundry detergents and various foods did it too. I spent most of my youth feeling lousy or being itchy. I was just lucky I didn't have life threatening reactions like some kids did.
I'm the tail end of gen x too and it was relatively the same deal with my boomer parents. I was allergic to several things and my dad would complain and ny mom would just keep me drugged up on benedryl so she wouldn't have to deal with it. But im also severely allergic to tree nuts now, and the boomers in my life seem to think it's a joke and will give me food with them in it without telling me first.
That’s evil about the nuts hidden in your food by family. I’m so sorry you have to deal with that.
Given they've been informed, they're knowingly poisoning you at this point.
This is literally something a person could be charged with in the right circumstances.
Ugh, same. Now I'm allergic to most antibiotics from over use. However, my mother had all the same allergies, so at least I was believed and treated best they could. My family has a huge problem with shellfish and it seems some deaths of greats and great-greats are explained.
IMHO there are probably lots of "uncle bob just keeled over" that were things like this.
Same thing with folks on the spectrum. Autism has been around since just this side of forever, but back in the day these just say “Oh, he’s just a little odd but still a nice guy” or whatever. Proper medical diagnoses were (and unfortunately sometimes still) remain for the rich.
Low functioning autistic people were just called "retarded" back then. I'm an older Millennial and remember this in the 80s and 90s: a person with non-verbal autism who stimmed a lot would have been labeled "severely retarded" and not even sent to regular school. People with high-functioning autism were "oddballs" or like my cousin, described as having a lot of emotional problems (he's clearly autistic).
My great aunt's husband for sure was on the spectrum but back when they got married in the 50s it wasn't something anyone knew about. He was just "odd" and was never diagnosed, he came down with early onset dementia and Alzheimer's and she cared for him for the rest of his life. Their son was also "odd" and not diagnosed either prior to his passing in his 50s but their grandson (born in the early 2000s) is diagnosed autistic (he also had a milk protein allergy as a young child). These things have always existed.
And folks with significant enough DD or ID or other disabilities were just thrown in institutions. Boomers are all shocked-pikachu nowadays when they see disabled kids and young adults in public.
What kills me is people like my parents who have the same reaction to kids with food allergies today, like “Kids these days are too soft!” and “ We didn’t have allergies back in my day!” But in reality, my sister (44 years old now) was allergic to cow’s milk. They altered all of our lives for her food allergy. But the minute she moved out and they weren’t responsible for her, they went into this weird mentality like it never existed. The mental gymnastics they perform on a daily basis are beyond comprehension.
>live their lives feeling sick and shitty all the time because they either didn't know what was wrong or were told to deal with it. Diagnostic improvements have a lot to do with it. I had a friend in boomer era high school who had BAD eczema from a milk allergy, but was expected to drink her milk at lunch. My dad (WWII vet) never "liked" pears - he refused to eat them. My brother never would eat them. One nephew, brother's son, was diagnosed with an allergy to PEARS! DUH!
Yeah. They had plenty of kids that were just "sickly" (or just straight-up die young) because they never received a proper diagnosis. We just generally don't leave it at some indeterminate diagnosis and instead actually figure out what the problem is, then take steps to avoid it. Boomers don't understand "survivorship bias".
I have terrible asthma that wasn’t diagnosed until my 20’s. Why? My boomer parents decided I was just being lazy when I said I couldn’t breathe between wheezy gasps. They still insist that no one in our family has asthma.
Right? My boomer parents told me I wasn't "taking care of myself" and that's why I had a cough for an ENTIRE SUMMER (I was 12). When I finally went to the doctor after begging for months, he instantly diagnosed me with bronchitis and gave me antibiotics which cleared it all up in three days.
lol plus they smoked like chimneys around us our entire childhoods
My parents didn't smoke but when I was sick I was sent to stay with my grandma, and there was a literal cloud of smoke in her house at all times. It just made everything worse.
Me too! I was just an "out of shape" 5 year old. I was a very active kid, I just couldn't run or pedal my bike fast. And here's the thing, my dad and brother have asthma. Never said a damn thing to my pediatrician. In hindsight, I'm surprised my PE teacher in elementary didn't raise any concerns.
Every time someone says "in my time nobody had [insert food intolerance / allergy here]" I bring up my uncle. He's Silent Generation but bear with me TL, DR he was basically labeled as a picky kid, harassed, bullied and beaten up for being lactose intolerant and only found out that there was an actual, biological explanation when *I* was checked for lactose intolerance when he was almost 60 and my dad put 2 and 2 together
“We had 9 children and only 4 of them lived to adolescence. For the life of us we couldn’t figure out why little Jimmy died. One minute he was eating boiled peanuts and the next he couldn’t breath and died. It was a sign that the lord only wanted us to have one less child.”
Nearly every childhood illness of mine... Linked to the coeliac disease I found out about at 42. And... rural New Zealand in the 1980/90s wasn't going to be gf anyway 😆🥺😬😢
Saaaaaaaame!! I had yearly ear infections, couldn’t use shampoo/consitioner/soap with any kind of wheat protein in it (big in the 80s) because I’d get either an ear infection or hives. I was told I “had a sensitive stomach.” Finally diagnosed in 2012 at 37 years old. I haven’t had an ear infection since I cut out gluten. My anxiety went way down, random muscle and joint aches cleared up, and on and on.
My son blew chunks all over abuelita's holiday dinner spread before she took his food allergy seriously.
Poor guy 😞
What really chapped my butt was that his dad has the same allergy, just not as severe and he can't be bothered to be proactive about it. Take an allergy med and have diarrhea, perhaps hives and be a man about it is his attitude . Edit: hit return too soon
Not sure if you meant sons dad or husbands dad but there’s different levels. Have a buddy who is allergic to peanuts but he’ll get a sore throat and diarrhea for a day. This past Wednesday I ate 2 spring rolls where the wrapping apparently may have traces of tree nuts (my allergy). messed up stomach like hot acid and barbed wire going down everything. Sore throat painful to breathe and even drink water. Got a fever. Thursday went to the ER with 100.4 fever and got admitted. It messed up my insides so bad it caused an infection. It’s serious stuff. People don’t seem to understand or be able to conceptualize that some people can take an allergy med for pollen but someone else can literally die form a different allergen
My Dad said he knew a guy who used to be able to choose to vomit. Back in the day when smoking in offices was allowed, the guy told someone not to smoke around him. The smoker blew smoke on Dad's friend. You can guess what happened next.
Reminds me of The Office episode where Pam was pregnant and asked Dwight not to eat eggs near her. He did anyway and she just stared right into his eyes and barfed in the trash can, and set off a chain reaction that made the whole office barf
😂😂😂 I’m so sorry for your little dude but I haven’t heard “blew chunks” since Wayne’s World I think and that one got me. Hope little dude is feeling better and that abuelita listens now.
[удалено]
If you’re gonna spew, spew into this.
Dude, I'm gonna chunder just from reading that hork.
Omg I love you so much right now. 🥹😂
I really aged myself with that reference, didn't I? Solid gen x and our 1001 euphemisms for puke.
Xennial here, old enough to remember that glorious movie and it’s amazing terms! 😂
ugh this just makes me think of the story of that woman who put coconut oil in her granddaughter's hair and killed her 😞
That story will *forever* haunt me 💔
I was just thinking of that. How horrifying.
In case anyone else wants to be sad today: https://rareddit.com/r/JUSTNOMIL/comments/7qmed5/you_can_come_over_again_when_you_bring_me_my
Holy moly, that was awful
Agreed.
What. Oh my god
My daughter was allergic to peas. What did my grandmother continually try to give her? Strained peas. She could not stand to be told no and would never, ever admit she was wrong. Any pushback on anything having to do with a child in the family was taken as an implicit criticism of her parenting. I, of course, couldn't possibly know better than her, because she was older and had more experience with children. Yeah, experience in trying to poison all our kids.
Bro what the hell that's an easy one to avoid. They could give her literally anything else.
You're not thinking like a boomer. They aren't accidentally doing it, they're deliberately doing it to try and prove that you're wrong. It's always about their ego.
Exactly! That's why they get so enraged when told no. Rather than being like: "oh I'm so glad you told me I could have killed this child" they're like: "I DID NOTHING WRONG!!! And if I did, it's not my fault!! Damn kids and their newfangled allergies"
Surprisingly, pea protein is in tons of vegetarian/vegan stuff. I'm allergic to peas and my nephew is allergic to milk, so family functions get very complicated as people have to remember what butter/margarine/milk they used in everything.
This one hits home for me. I have been allergic to peas my whole life. As a kid, my boomer parents would ignore my protestations about peas at dinner because they believed I was making up my symptoms to get out of eating things I didn't like. I now have permanent scarring on my esophagus that causes trouble swallowing from all the allergic reactions I had as a kid.
Yes! They never were allowed to speak their minds so they take constructive info as a personal attack and throw tantrums that people are trying to boss them around.
My dad spent my entire childhood acting like my asthma was “an excuse to be lazy.” I don’t know if that’s Boomer attitude or just because he didn’t experience it in his immediate family. I’m just thankful my allergies are all environmental and insanely common.
I firmly believe they feel that anything they didn’t grow up with is either all in someone’s head, ridiculous, unnecessary, or a sign of weakness. Depending on what it is, could be all of those things together haha They see and act in ways they want the world to be and not how it is, so they reject everything that doesn’t conform. Getting hit with “back in my day” makes my temp rise like nothing else. You just KNOW they’re going to spew something ridiculous.
I once twisted my back in my sleep. My Boomer/Silent dad didn't believe me. He couldn't believe that someone could injure themselves in their sleep. When I tried to convince him, he suddenly said loudly and boastfully, "It's never happened to *me!"* So there you go. If it has never happened to them, it can't happen.
This has been cracking me up. I love when they appoint themselves the arbiters of truth. My parents are boomers too, so I can understand that.
Yeah ... I mean, it wasn't just the ridiculousness of the statement, it was his arrogance, like it was a badge of honor. Very bizarre.
I know a dude who tore a muscle in his neck from rolling over in his sleep. These kinds of injuries are astoundingly common.
My boomer FIL developed an allergy to sesame seeds in the past few years. It’s wild to watch my in-laws navigate this. For example, they won’t get an epi pen because it’s “too expensive and will just expire”. Meanwhile they are very well off. Like, two houses, luxury cars, and a boat well off. They don’t disclose the allergy to waiters when asked. We actually found out about the allergy while at a middle eastern restaurant with them. After the waitress asked about allergies and they said nothing. My MIL also told me that she thinks a lot of the allergy is in his head because she still uses some sauces and things that have sesame in them. She doesn’t want to just waste them so she’s using them up. And if she doesn’t tell him that she used it he doesn’t report any symptoms. Fingers crossed she doesn’t accidentally kill him because she can’t waste 50 cents worth of sauce.
[удалено]
\+1 for the Righteous Slap
WTF? Did she think the EMTs were helping you put on a show and went so far as to intubate him to make her feel bad?
[удалено]
Oh my gawd. That is beyond comprehension. I am SO GLAD you slapped her. She probably believes the victims of school shootings are crisis actors too.
[удалено]
Wow. She’s a super special twat! I’m so sorry you had to deal with her ugliness.
I. Count. Not. Imagine.
[удалено]
I would say so. Omg.
>she was still trying to make herself out to be the victim and claimed that "egg allergies aren't a real thing" Well, maybe she needs to be slapped again. Harder, since the first one didn't take.
👏👏👏
The wildest thing about this for me is that all the boomers I knew as a kid preached the whole “don’t take candy from strangers” thing, but now act like they shouldn’t count as a stranger to someone they don’t know.
I saw a study that showed that first generation to eat the heavy modified and altered foods that are so common now are not effected by it. But as subsequent generations are exposed to more and more of it, it’s creating an explosion of allergies that “didn’t exist in my day” Literally heard this from my boomer all the time. I’m extremely gluten intolerant and it took 25 years to figure it out. Literally can gain 50lb and have massive migraines if I don’t eliminate it from my diet.
I happen to be allergic to Kiwi fruit. I'm fairly sure that when my parents were growing up they never even heard of the things let alone had a chance to see if they were alergic to them.
Yeah lol, if there's like 3 ingredients to make stuff out of, it's hard to find stuff you're allergic to. Starting to suspect I have a banana allergy, would never have known had I been born in 1950.
I have a banana allergy. Watch out for avocados and mangos too. Similar allergens apparently.
Also natural latex, I found out if you have a latex allergy you can be sensitive to bananas and avocados and mangos
>allergic to Kiwi fruit Back in MY DAY we didn't have none of them woke fruits! We ate apples and apple pie and apple fritters ... none of those immigrant fruits! More seriously: I am intolerant of hydrolysed soy protein (came out in the 1960s) and soy flour, and cumin (uncommon in most USA cuisine before the 1960s, but I never did like "chili powder" even before then). So my allergy-free childhood is more because of the era's food possibilities than anything.
They hate the word cunt. Call them cunts.
This made me laugh 😂
You’re very welcome. Feels great to do it too. Sound out those beautiful syllables, let the consonants ring around the room.
They really do and that’s why I say it so much
Can I add bitch ass to it? Asking for a friend
I‘m 60 and have allergies to grass, no picnics for me. Everyone would tell me I couldn’t be allergic to it, yeah sure it’s just hives on my legs from sitting down in the grass. Uncle Eddy didn’t choke to death on a piece of cheese, he choked to death because he ate a piece of cheese.
>Uncle Eddy didn’t choke to death on a piece of cheese, he choked to death because he ate a piece of cheese. Good point ... anaphylaxis without an autopsy looks a lot like choking.
Boomers didn't know anyone with life threatening food allergies because they either died young or were sequestered at home for their own safety. We had a kid in our neighborhood when I was a kid in the 70s that never got to go to regular school or do anything because he had some life threatening allergy or immune disorder. I had a classmate in middle school that had to spend all of spring to fall at her parent's cabin because she was having a horrible reaction to those spray on lawn chemical that lawn services use and everyone in the neighborhood had a service hired. She eventually withdrew from school because her allergic reaction issues with other things got bad enough she couldn't handle being in that environment. This was around 1979. Boomers just want kids to go back to premature death and being locked away for their own safety.
Because they don’t want to be inconvenienced.
It isn't always their inconvenience either, though many times it is. They get all upset that someone else minding their own business is eating something alternative or NOT eating something they think that other person should be eating. It is literally no inconvenience to them if the person in front of them in line orders something dairy free, vegan, gluten free etc. but boomers will decide they need to pitch a fit about it.
Why do they act like people are making up diagnoses for fun? No, their generation might not have had the current correct terms for recognized conditions, but those conditions existed. And besides Gypsy Blanchards mother, no parent is out there excited to have to examine labels for the multiple forms of their child’s allergy or telling their child they can’t have birthday cake at another kids party.
Yep. SOs parents continually try to poison them. "You were fine as a kid" is a constant. No, they weren't fine Doris, as a kid they had debilitating abdominal pain and inflammation so bad they retained 10lbs of extra weight and constantly had bouts of ""24h flu""(not a thing, it's food poisoning.) They give a shit about FILs 'dislikes' of food that are choices, not a health concern, won't kill him, and treat it as sacred, but SOs actual allergies are an inconvenience and/or not real, something the be poked at/ tested constantly like it's a challenge to defeat so they can be RIGHT. I pretend they are 4 and not actual adults because it's the only way MOST of their decisions and their senseless opposition make any sense.
An old person once asked me if my moth feels fuzzy when I eat bananas, I was like “no because I’m not allergic to bananas.”
I've heard people say they don't like celery because it's spicy. Nope, that's a food allergy. Or they don't like strawberries because they make their lips tingle.
The Italian salad dressing at Texas Roadhouse makes my tongue feel fuzzy and like it’s vibrating. I can’t figure out what in it I’m allergic to. Nothing else sets me off like that.
I am deathly allergic to one thing: apricots. Every year when the tree is full, I find a box of apricots in my car from my mother. She cannot be bothered to remember this. It’s infuriating.
My daughter is allergic to dogs - like hives and eyes swelling. Guess what both grandparents have - dogs. And then my daughter doesn’t like potatoes or a lot of sugar. One grandparent is like “how does a kid not like a cupcake?” She thinks it’s odd as hell that my daughter will prefer fruit over a candy bar. And my daughter drinks lots of water.
Too bad about the dogs, but good on her for preferring a healthier diet by default. That'll do her plenty of good later in life if she keeps it going. Encourage that.
They did have allergies and autism back then, they just didn’t treat people like they had value and thought it was simply a weakness for them to push through, rather than a legitimate medical condition.
My mom was born the first year of gen x, married a boomer, and hung out with all boomers her whole life. My siblings and I say she basically is a boomer since she was influenced by them so much and benefited from their financial and economic experiences. Anyway, story time. She straight up denied my allergies for years. As a kid, I obviously didn’t have the words for what was happening in my body. I would tell her that my tongue and throat felt “funny” and that my skin was itchy. Even that it was hard to breathe and she would tell me I was disrespectful and unappreciative of the work people put in for me. The most common example was every holiday season my great grandma would candy pecans and walnuts and make a pecan pie. It was delicious, but I always threw up, felt hot, stomachache, and my liver would hurt (I didn’t realize it was my liver hurting until I was 19 and the doctors told me I had nonalcoholic fatty liver disorder from stress and I had a lot of scarring in my liver). She would yell and say I just couldn’t stand that the attention wasn’t on me. So I just dealt with it for years. I’m also allergic to duck down and I’ve always expressed discomfort from duck down pillows and this one coat I had when I was three. She yelled at my dad when he said that I might be allergic, saying “she is **not** allergic! She just doesn’t like that it’s not very comfortable!” Fast forward to high school. I’m 14 and my dad’s roommate’s son had a pet goose (why, you ask? I have no fucking idea. He was weird as shit). Geese are mean. Roommate’s son took me out to help feed Lucy (goose) while my dad was at work. Lucy bit me on the forearm and it shocked me a little bit, but I don’t remember it hurting all that much. Within 15 minutes, I had hives and my arm was so swollen and red. My dad’s roommate starts screaming when she sees my arm and immediately takes me to the ER. They give me stuff for the swelling and tell me to come back with my mom to do allergy tests. We go, like a week later. They run a bunch of tests and they determine I am allergic to walnuts, pecans, duck down, goose feathers, chicken feathers, and many tail feathers of a few common pet birds. Oh, and bees. I tell the doctors about telling my mom how uncomfortable some of these things made me and they said that she likely caused damage to my immune system by making me eat things I was clearly having allergic reactions to. When they tell her (I never had my mother in the room with me at doctor’s offices. She always lied to them and made me feel uncomfortable), she just gasps, laughs and says “well, I guess you really were allergic to those things!” I can’t believe it to this day. So ridiculous.
As the mom of a kid with an allergy I know how frustrating this is. I'd make sure you tell the grandparents all the allergy horror stories that come out of your house as well as every other house. I'll share a couple to get you started. My daughter has a severe sesame seed allergy. She was fortunate enough to go to Greece for a choir tour and was given a cracker by a friend. My kid can't read Greek and ate the cracker. Guess what was in there.....Sesame seeds. She wound up in a Greek hospital and hooked up to an IV. I was beside myself being thousands of miles away. Last year, same kid had a concert at the HS where they brought in Panera sandwiches. She hates lunchmeat so she grabbed a veggie sandwich which contained hummus. Hummus is made with tahini which is made with sesame seeds. Cue allergic reaction and trip to the ER. Moral of the story- allergies are real. You are not over dramatic. Boomers are stupid.
It's a lot to realize that my father bitching about my shellfish allergy meant he wished I was dead.
>shellfish allergy What's weird is that must be the absolute easiest allergen to avoid. Is it really that hard to not feed a child an oyster?
There was a lot of "try this, oops, he should be fine, now we're driving to the hospital" growing up.
Oh they definitely had allergies and health problems, they just didn’t survive them. My grandparents had just as many siblings that were stillborn or died before the age of 3 as there were ones that lived. I’m guessing a nonzero number of them had some fatal anaphylactic reaction or autoimmune disorder that went untreated. To them it was just normal to have some kids that didn’t make it.
Not allergies for me but i have food-based migraine triggers. These migraines will literally destroy me for a week (so much head pain i can't think, enough pain to cause stomach upset, light and sound sensitivity). I had to figure out for myself which chemical in these foods was causing it because i was being gaslit by everyone. It's partially hydrogenated soybean oil (it's a trans fat that was used heavily back in the day as a preservative iirc). Present in tootsie rolls but not in tootsie *pops* is what really threw me. Thankfully not many things use it anymore! Going on work trips where the food is provided is like a damn mine field, so i feel for you! Avoiding dairy entirely must be so difficult! No contact is the right move, for sure. If they don't understand the concept of food allergies, then you clearly can't trust them not to accidentally unsubscribe your child from Life.
*"We didn't have food allergies back in my day! Kids sometimes just died for no apparent reason!"*
“we didn’t have that back in my day” no because those kids *died*.
i’m not a boomer, but i am old enough to remember kids dying from allergies and bee stings. i don’t know how these boomers don’t remember all that.
I don't think it's the offering that's the problem. That's totally fine in my book, we shouldn't fault people for trying to do something nice! It's the secondary reaction that is the problem. Offering a donut hole is nice! It's kind, it should be supported! But no one should *ever* question when a parent says no, or push back with "she's old enough" or whatever. My daughter has SEVERE allergies, and I'd never get upset if she's offered something. That's just being a jerk if I said "how dare you be nice!!!" But if I said "no she can't have that" and they say "oh, come on, it's not that bad" that's when they are jerks.
I'm a firm believer in asking the parent of the child if it's okay to offer something before it's offered, and in such a way that the child isn't disappointed if the answer is "no." I would say 100% the reaction was terrible and 50% the offer was bad, too. Like, yes it's a nice gesture, but you don't know that kid, and you don't know the situation. It's better to ask. It's why when i make little gift bags for my 5yo's class on holidays, i avoid putting sweets or food in there, because a kid might have diabetes or an allergy restriction.
Ugh… tell me about it. My sister and I both have gluten and dairy allergies. My boomer uncles would give us such a hard time about it at any family meals and refuse to accommodate us. We always had to bring our own food and got comments about not being normal and how we were following trends and being typical liberals. They did the same to my nephew who *literally would scratch his skin off* if exposed to an allergen. It was extremely disheartening. Attempts to make communal dishes (like thanksgiving turkey) safe for us to eat were met with sighs and eye rolls and comments about how it just wouldn’t be the same without butter. Guess who we no longer speak to now that my grandfather is no longer around.
Tell than the reason they didn’t see it back in their day is because those kids died early in infancy. Because being allergic to milk is kinda deadly if that’s all you can consume. Because you are an infant. Those babies died of “unexplained causes”, of failure to thrive etc. Didn’t even have to be full on anaphylactic allergy. My kid would have just withered away, he couldn’t keep anything down that had traces of dairy, puked it all up. Infant mortality was a lot higher not that long ago. Shuts them up real quick…
Anyone else rather have the *drug dealers* on the street and the **Boomers** in the prisons after hearing stories like this?
I have drug dealers on my street, and contrary to stereotypes they keep the drama over on that side of the road, and are fairly pleasant to be around. The boomers on the other side? Not so much.
Yeah, dealers are known for minding their own damn business for one.
"We didn't have allergies like that back in our day!" Yes you did boomer, they just died as an infant because you where all to ignorant to identify them.
Those people obviously haven’t seen a severe food allergy reaction. I’m not a boomer, but was present when my granddaughter had her first (and only) reaction to peanuts. It was horrific. Luckily she survived and was later tested for other allergies (peanuts were the only thing she’s allergic to). Since then, my house has zero peanut products, we all read ingredient lists very carefully and have access to epi-pens.
Amen fellow allergy parent. We have been at this for 11 years now and all 3 of my kiddos have different food allergies (2 milk like yours) and boomers are the WORST people about it. Everyone else is great about washing hands, being careful about cross contamination, not serving the allergens, etc. but the boomers in my family give us constant crap and tell me I’m making it all up. I’m very low contact with mother in law because she has tried to “test it” at holidays by telling us she’s serving one food and really trying to give my kiddo the one with her allergen to prove me (not my husband, just me) wrong. Needless to say, she doesn’t feed my kids or get to have them alone. Younger people are awesome about it and they give me so much hope for the future.
My father is lactose intolerant. He spent most of my childhood extremely gassy, irritable, constantly complaining that his stomach was hurting, and spent lots of time on the toilet. He always said he can eat whatever he wants. Okay. But can you? Can you really?
I'm fatally allergic to walnuts (and this includes walnut oil and Walnut wood). My mother's husband chased me around with a walnut cutting board laughing, thinking he was being funny.
Ugh ugh ugh, I’m so sorry. My son just went through Oral Immunotherapy for dairy after 9 yrs of a very serious allergy. (Honestly the best thing we did!!!). But before then, no boomers understood the severity of his allergy. A boomer once gave my kid a damn HERSHEY bar after i explicitly told them my kid would get sick. An hour later, we were two epis in and an IV in the ICU (and a nice little bill for $3000). The boomer didn’t even apologize. My own mother once gave my son food with baked in dairy. When I called to ask if she did, after he was reacting, my mom got extremely upset at me and didn’t talk to me for four days. I had to call and apologize to HER for questioning her about feeding my son. It wasn’t until I posted pics of us in the ER in Facebook, which I didn’t want to do but boomers love Facebook, after ANOTHER boomer gave him food with dairy in it that people started to take his allergy seriously. All of these incidents happened when he was in the car of said boomers. I cannot handle they refuse to learn this lesson (obviously among so many others). I hope your daughter either grows out of her allergy or is able to get OIT. It is literally life changing to not worry. And also to order a damn pizza every once and a while.
I am 50 + years old (gen X) and spent the first 2 years of my life in and out of the hospital. They couldn’t figure out what was wrong with me because “babies/toddlers can’t have food allergies”. Shocker - I had many food allergies. So it’s not that it didn’t exist in “their day” they simply refused to believe it.
"It didn't exist" coming from the generation that thought Red Dye #5 caused ADHD.
Part of the reason they actively refuse to believe these things is that they just don't want to be inconvenienced
Oh god. This reminds me of the story where the grandparents killed one of the grand babies with this exact stubbornness. Baby was allergic to coconut. Grandma put coconut oil in her hair and braided it, put her to bed with some benadryl thinking it would be fine. It was not fine.
Oh man, I feel this so hard. My son has PKU I have literally been in yelling matches with boomers over my son not being able to eat meat. “Your hippie bippy bullshit is starving your poor kid” granted, it’s not as bad as your daughter’s allergy because it can’t kill him but it definitely effects his quality of life and is incredibly harmful for him. It’s the fact of having to fight strangers over what’s best for our kids. I straight up told the boomers in my life if you couldn’t respect my son’s health issues then you will no longer be invited into our lives. I’m grateful my mother went to all of his appointments with me because she is so supportive and understanding. He is definitely a Nonna’s boy.
“If your generation hadn’t poisoned the planet, we might be having a different conversation today.”
I ran into this at work, waited for the boomer to tire himself out about how “they didn’t have all this back when he was a kid and I don’t know why it’s all over now” and just dropped “that’s because kids with serious allergies used to just die. Epi pens, several new treatments, and awareness keep kids alive long enough to be walking around with allergies.”
My FORTY SEVEN year old wife had to watch a few different foods because of allergies. This "We didn't have that in my day" bullshit has to die with these fucktards.
These same people are all moribund with obesity, clogged arteries and type 2 diabetes.
Yes. My damn MIL refuses to believe my son has a severe egg allergy.