Mom Considers Pressing Charges After A Boomer Grandpa Deliberately Fed Wheat To Her Son With Celiac Disease
stefanamer | Getty ImagesSome people still treat food restrictions like a personal challenge.
As one mom on an online forum shared, that mindset became dangerous when a Boomer grandpa allegedly fed wheat to her 9-year-old son with celiac disease on purpose. He apparently thought he was proving that the child's medical condition was not real, but instead, he made the boy violently sick and left his mom considering whether to press charges.
Mom says she may press charges after a Boomer grandpa deliberately fed wheat to her son with celiac disease
A lot of people like to say that gluten intolerance or wheat sensitivity is not real, partly because there has long been debate over how common it really is. Still, celiac disease is not up for debate. It's a real autoimmune disease triggered by gluten, which is found in wheat, barley, and rye.
But that hasn't stopped the skepticism, even toward celiac disease, a condition that has been known about long before the words "gluten-free" ever even came into the popular lexicon, and which is an autoimmune disorder that makes sufferers seriously ill.
Count the Boomer grandpa in question among those who apparently did not take it seriously and tried to 'prove' it was not real, even if that meant making a 9-year-old kid seriously sick.
Jordan Whitt / Unsplash
The Boomer grandpa switched the child's gluten-free breakfast to one with wheat to prove a point, and the boy became violently ill
Celiac disease is an autoimmune disorder, a group of diseases in which the body's immune system is triggered (in this case by gluten) to attack the body itself. For people with celiac disease, the only real way to manage the condition is to avoid gluten entirely.
As such, this little boy's mom packs specific snacks and meals for him to take when he goes to other people's houses. She did just that when he went to a recent sleepover at another kid's house.
But the sleepover host's Boomer grandfather lived with them, and as soon as he heard about her son's condition, "he starts going on about how these allergies didn't exist when he was a kid, blah blah blah," she wrote in an online forum post.
That's out of line enough; we're talking about a 9-year-old kid being criticized here. But when she picked her son up the following morning, he was "throwing up and green," and the host mom "apologetically" told her that the grandpa had "purposefully switched the breakfast to one with wheat."
The mom said she is usually pretty calm, but after finding out what happened, she yelled at the Grandpa. Given that she spent the rest of the day helping her son recover after he was made sick, it's hard to blame her for losing her cool.
After talking with the host mom, the boy's mom says they both agreed the grandpa had gone too far
"Grandpa is very lucky no one involved is a mandated reporter," one person on the forum wrote. "[He] would not be allowed within 100 feet of a child ever again." That was the general tenor of the response to this story, which left people infuriated and urging the mom to throw the book at Grandpa.
Even the host mom seemed to agree that Grandpa had crossed a serious line. According to the child's mom, the other mother agreed that pressing charges made sense and seemed just as fed up with his behavior, especially after what happened to her son.
And from the sounds of it, the mom may have reason to report what happened. While Elijah's Law has been passed or introduced in some states to strengthen food allergy safety in child care settings, celiac disease is not the same thing as a food allergy, and this incident happened at a private sleepover, not a school or daycare
The bottom line, though, is that it shouldn't have to come to that. Just because Boomers grew up in a time before things like autism or mental health disorders or food allergies were spoken about doesn't make them an authority on the matter, and it certainly doesn't give them the right to try to "prove" a 9-year-old wrong by essentially poisoning him.
By the way, for anyone still insisting that food allergies and gluten-related conditions are made up, it takes about 30 seconds to find research explaining why these conditions are more widely recognized today. You can read it here, in case you feel like actually learning something for once instead of insisting you know everything already.
John Sundholm is a news and entertainment writer who covers pop culture, social justice, and human interest topics.
