FPIES is Making Me P.C.

Well, sort of.  

See, I’ve never been a terribly PC sort of person.  I’m too blunt, too “tell it like it is”.  It’s never my intention to hurt anyone; in fact, I view it as a sign of respect to not tip-toe around the truth with “delicate phrasing”.  I expect that the person in question is strong enough to handle the truth, regardless of how it is phrased.

To me, using PC terminology is disrespectful and insulting.  It implies that I’m too weak to handle reality.  

As a caveat, I’m not referring to blatantly discriminatory or derogatory phrases, here.  No, more like someone referring to me as “vertically challenged”.  No, people, I’m not “vertically challenged”…I’m SHORT.  It’s a perfectly fine adjective – use it!

So I tend to use the simplest, most obvious adjective when describing things, without concern for “hurting people’s feelings”, because, face it: if being called “short” really gets your undies in a bunch, you kind of have bigger problems than being “vertically challenged”, wouldn’t you say?

And now I’m Mama to two little boys with some serious food issues.  I don’t beat around the bush when I describe their sicknesses to anyone; if you ask, I’m more likely to say “well, he pooped blood again” than “he had a bad diaper”.

It’s the truth.  It’s MY truth.  Why sugar coat it?

A while back I read a very compelling post by the Allergist Mom about the terminology we use in the Food Allergy World to describe foods.

We “Pass” or we “Fail” a food, in common parlance.

She told the story of her young son going in for a food challenge for soy; when he “failed” it, well, he felt like a failure.  He called himself a loser.

He took it personally.

That story really resonated with me; I never want my kids to get the idea that anything about their food allergies is in any way a reflection on THEM.  I want them to know that their strength, courage, intelligence or spirit is in no way flawed for not being able to “pass” a food at some point.

I even changed the verbiage under the links for their diets to reflect this!  Instead of “pass” and “fail” I inserted “safe” and “unsafe”.

And just yesterday, I was reminded of the Allergist Mom and her pass/fail concept by another Mama on the FPIES boards…and realized that despite my earlier good intentions, I still USE “pass” and “fail” all the time.

Despite my compulsion to speak the truth plainly, I’m suddenly taken to task for this by my concerns for my kids.  So I wondered, is it really pussy-footing around to use different words to describe my sons reactions to a particular food?

FPIES kids, and probably Fructose Malabsorption children, often have psychological issues with food.  They can be wary of eating, scared to try new things, often will develop oral aversions, and can become terribly picky.  Can you blame them?  As long as they’ve been alive, every morsel they consume has the distinct potential to make them violently ill.  *I* would be wary and scared of food if I were in their shoes!

But you can’t avoid food.  As humans, we have to eat to survive.

So I’ve decided that it isn’t truly being PC or pussy-footing around to use different terminology for how my sons react to foods.  This isn’t a matter of hurt feelings; this is about their ability to survive.

We’re on a rocky path here with their food issues, and it would be far too easy for my boys to begin thinking they are failures for not being able to overcome their food issues.  I truly don’t want to GIVE my boys any hang-ups about foods; if they develop food issues on their own, we’ll deal with it.  But I don’t want to have been part of the cause.

From now on, I’m going to make a concerted effort to speak differently about foods.

Now, the food isn’t “poison” (again, another phrase I’ve used quite frequently).  It just “doesn’t work for you”.

You didn’t “fail” a food.  That food just “isn’t safe – yet” for your body.

You didn’t “pass” a food.  We simply “found a food that works”.

There are no more “good” and “bad” foods.  There are foods that work with your physiology and foods that just aren’t compatible – yet.

And the “yet” is really important, too.  

“Yet” implies that one day, ALL foods will be “safe” for my kiddos.

“Yet” implies “Hope”.  

And with FPIES?  Some days Hope is all you have.  

Call me a PC convert if you want, but I’m not going to let sloppy terminology take that away from me or my boys.

Because right now Zac doesn’t have any safe foods.

Yet.