Practical advice for parenting the GF/ Celiac child

[LaurieG]

I'm approximately 10 days out from a diagnosis, but strongly suspect celiac.  My head is always a step ahead of the moment so I'm starting to think through the practicalities of parenting a child with CD, so I thought I'd start the thread and if it ends up not being something I need to worry about I'll still be educated on the matter and hopefully others will find it useful.  Not sure if this is the best place for this thread but I know there are lots of GF kiddos here.  Mods, feel free to move if you think allergies or health or general parenting or somewhere else is more appropriate.

So, beyond the basics of menu planning, here are things I'm starting to ponder... (Everyone else feel free to add on)

1.  What is the best way to approach it with the school?  Should I call a meeting with the nurse/ teacher/ principal/ all of the above?  Just casually talk with the teacher?  Forbid any food to be given to my child?  Give a list of approved foods?  DS2 is in kindergarten and his teacher is all about making snacks as an activity.

2.  How big of an issue is cross-contamination?  My DS has very mild day to day symptoms - his issues are primarily malabsorption - so I'm not sure I will know if he has an exposure, unless his symptoms become more obvious after eliminating gluten for a bit.  But I want to be sure we are healing him up.  So to what extent do I need to go?  Do I need new pots and pans and spoon/ spatulas/ etc?  Do I need to forbid DD (age 3) from playing with play-dough?

3.  I've got DD who is dairy and soy free and now possibly DS2 gluten and dairy free (that is generally recommended in the begining, right?)  Should I just have any food that enters the house be everyone friendly?  We haven't been doing that for DD up until now but she is little.  I imagine it will be a much harder adjustment for DS2.  Basically wondering how to approach the issue with siblings.

4.  How do people handle vacations?  I'm thinking maybe we need to just plan to have condos where we can have a kitchen and avoid restaurants, though it seems that GF is easier to deal with and better understood at restaurants than the whole dairy free/ soy free combo.  On that note and back to the cross contamination issue, I'm wondering if avoiding restaurants for the first 6 months or so might be a good idea just to be sure there's no exposures going on.

5.  For the experienced mamas, what are the things you wish someone had told you early on so you could have avoided learning it the hard way?

[askew]

I would go to celiac.com and post your questions in their forums. I think you will get a better response. I have two friends with celiac kids and my grandmother had celiac. They all approach it differently. My one celiac friend has herself and two of her three kids with it, so it is easy for them. They are all gluten free. They are vegetarian as well. I think you can get gluten free at some restaurants pretty easily. I know my CF friends like PF Changs as they have lettuce wraps or something like that. Whole Foods has an abundance of GF foods, you just pay a lot for the convenience items like crackers and bread. I got a new book for Xmas called Healthy Food in 5 minutes a day, and they have an awesome GF bread section. Good luck!