“Too much”: on allergy, autism, and the systemic erasure of care

There is a quiet solidarity among parents whose children are considered too much for school. Some of us carry medical kits. Others carry binders of psychological assessments. But all of us carry the same invisible burden: a system that treats our children’s needs as optional—and our vigilance as overreaction. This is the story of two families—one navigating life-threatening allergies, the other navigating neurodivergence—and the cost of trying to keep our children safe in public schools that were never built with them in mind.

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The mother I related to most

When my children started kindergarten, the parent I felt closest to wasn’t from the autism community. Her children had a severe peanut allergy. We met outside the classroom on one of the first days of school. I made an offhand comment—half exasperated—about the nut ban, since peanut butter was one of the few things my kids would eat. She turned to me and said, calm but firm: My kids could die if yours bring nuts. From that moment, we understood each other.

I knew that helplessness. The calculus of risk. The quiet fury at a world that refuses to adapt.

We had both already been through hell.

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Allergies

The teachers knew how to use an EpiPen, but if a substitute stepped in because a teacher was unwell, who could say whether they had any training at all?

So she stayed. Every morning, every recess, every lunch break, she checked who was on duty. She hovered by the door. She gave up career advancement, personal time, and her own wellbeing—because if she didn’t, her child might not survive the day.

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Vigilance

That vigilance felt intimately familiar.

Our family lives under a different diagnosis—neurodivergence, not anaphylaxis. The threat may be slower, less acute, but the institutional erasure is just as real. My child had specific, predictable, documented needs. The school had a legal obligation to meet them. And still, every day, I was the one verifying basic safety. Sending reminders. Following up. Watching everything fall through the cracks.

There is no EpiPen for sensory overload. No auto-injector for social humiliation. No adrenaline shot for the moment your child shuts down or lashes out in a classroom that cannot accommodate them.

And you can’t bring a child back to life after an anaphylactic reaction if the substitute never got trained.

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The harm

My children had formal diagnoses. I had stacks of reports from paediatricians, psychologists, occupational therapists—each one a professional map of how to help. And still, school staff with no clinical training overrode the advice. They told me the supports weren’t necessary. Let’s wait and see, they said. They interpreted distress as defiance. They treated me like I was unstable for insisting my child deserved care.

Imagine applying that logic to anaphylaxis. Imagine telling a choking child to stop overreacting. To calm down and breathe. To wait and see.

It would be unthinkable.

And yet: it is still not mandatory in British Columbia for every school staff member to be trained in how to recognise and respond to anaphylaxis. Still. In 2025. The silence is staggering. The negligence, unspeakable.

No other public system permits this level of disregard. We do not withhold oxygen from infants because the nurse “tried her best.” We do not excuse an untrained surgeon for guessing where to cut. We do not ask emergency room staff to improvise protocols.

But when the disability is invisible—neurological, sensory, emotional—everyone feels entitled to an opinion. Everyone becomes an expert. Everyone thinks they know better than the professionals. Better than the child. Better than the parent.

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Policy vs reality

British Columbia’s Anaphylaxis Protection Order and the BC Anaphylactic & Child Safety Framework both require annual training for all school staff—including substitutes and back-ups—on how to identify and respond to anaphylaxis, including the use of epinephrine auto-injectors.

But the policy means nothing if districts don’t enforce it.

Anecdotal reports from parents confirm what many of us already know: untrained staff still enter classrooms. Substitutes are not always briefed. Emergency plans are often left unread. And when minutes count, a gap in training can cost a child their life.

This mirrors what Families for an End to Collective Punishment in BC Schools has witnessed in the context of neurodivergent children. The law may say one thing. But when there are no resources, no oversight, and no real accountability, the promise collapses.

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Too much

There is something chilling about how both of us—two mothers with different children, facing different diagnoses—were treated as the problem. Too anxious. Too demanding. Too specific. Too unwilling to stay quiet while our children were harmed.

Both of us were responding to real, preventable danger. Both of us were holding institutions accountable. And both of us were punished for it.

But perhaps the most devastating parallel is this: we had to forfeit our own lives to keep our children alive—not just medically, but existentially. To preserve their joy. Their curiosity. Their personhood. Their right to belong.

And still, we were treated as the problem.

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