At this point, it’s become a familiar refrain, especially from baby boomers: “When I was growing up, we didn’t have all these kids with [fill in the blank with autism, anxiety, food allergies or any other of a litany of things that are none of their business].”
But as a mom on Reddit shared, one boomer’s indignation about her son’s food sensitivities went to an extent that not only has her seeing red, but also has her thinking of throwing the book at him.
The mom is considering pressing charges after an elderly boomer purposely fed her celiac son wheat.
A lot of people like to say that “gluten intolerance” or “wheat sensitivity” isn’t real because there has long been a scientific debate. At this point, the medical and scientific communities seem to have concluded, based on studies on the matter, that gluten intolerance is real but rare.
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 in question among those who don’t take it seriously — and who also take it upon themselves to try to “prove” that it isn’t real, even if it means essentially poisoning a 9-year-old kid.
The boomer switched out the child’s gluten-free breakfast to prove a point, making the kid 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 celiac patients, the only real way to manage the often violent symptoms is to avoid gluten entirely.
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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 lives 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 her Reddit 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.”
“I am normally mild-tempered, but I did yell at him, and he can’t let it go that I used an F-bomb.” Given that she spent “the rest of the day nursing my son back to health,” an f-bomb is a small price to pay.
After discussing it with the host mom, they agreed that she should press charges.
“Grandpa is very lucky no one involved is a mandated reporter,” one person on Reddit 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 agreed that Grandpa needed to be taught a lesson. “I spoke to the Mom, and she agreed I should press charges,” the Redditor wrote. “I feel she’s pretty sick of his BS, too, and this was a last straw for her as well.”
And from the sounds of it, they’d have a solid case. Federal legislation called Elijah’s Law requires schools and childcare providers to adhere to children’s food allergy needs, and lawyers say that purposefully violating those guidelines could be grounds for a personal injury or wrongful death case.
The bottom line, though, is 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 a right to try to “prove” a 9-year-old wrong by essentially poisoning him.
By the way, boomer generation, it took me all of 30 seconds to find an exhaustively researched article by a medical anthropologist about why there are so many more food allergies today than in the supposedly idyllic times you grew up in. 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.
