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Andrew had a meltdown at storytime tonight because Tony had to take his book away from him.
The book was My Big Busy Body Activity Book. It's a great book, with photos of different body parts, and talks about your skeleton, muscles, skin, breathing, and all sorts of other body parts.
Well, when they got to the smelling page, there were 4 scratch-and-sniff envelopes, containing different scents: lemon, chocolate, spearmint, and peanut butter. Ack!So Tony took the book away, and Andrew got really upset, because he'd been enjoying the book. He's in a phase where he really wants to know more about how his body works -- we just returned another "skeleton" book to the library last week.
The scent is on a piece of paper in a wee envelope on the page, so it's going into the garbage tonight. It doesn't actually even smell like anything any more (the book is about two years old), and I wonder if it ever actually had any peanut protein on the paper at all. I've seen lots of scratch-and-sniff books, including a firefighters one which had the smell of smoke (yucky!). And Andrew has a scratch-and-sniff Memory game. But this is the first time I've ever seen a peanut scent.
So, for you other peanut allergic parents out there -- would you have let your kid sniff the peanut-scented card?
(I am tempted to keep it to show to my severely allergic friend, to see if it makes her "spidey sense" tingle. She can smell an open jar of peanuts in the house, when she comes in the front door. If she's willing to sniff it, and can't detect anything, that might mean that there's no peanut protein on the card.)
6 comments:
I'm with you, I would throw it away!
Throw it away.
I realize that you've been seconded, but... you're right. Chuck it.
The book was published in 2002. What were they thinking?There are so, so many things that are not common allergies that could go in a scratch-and-sniff. I suppose one should be grateful that it wasn't "scratch 'n' sniff the benzene."
OMG, that would have caught me off guard too! I recently checked and peanut butter jelly beans are flavored with peanut powder... so perhaps that is what they use for scratch and sniff too. That would definitely have peanut protein. I know scratch and sniff stickers are still available... yikes!
No I wouldn't haven't let my child smell it. I don't think my son reacts to the "smell" of peanuts, but I don't want to find out for sure. Yikes, who would have thought??
My son, who's allergic to peanuts, can smell if someone has been eating peanuts in the same room. It doesn't bring out any visible symptoms, but the way he'd make faces when he smells peanuts, I'd rather not take risks.
Ruth of Allergizer
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