I believe nick mom™ felt the wrath of our food allergy community last week regarding a “humorous” video about bake sales. Let’s just say, that I am truly embarrassed for nick mom™ since this error was really basic. Clearly, I have a poor sense of humor, but it is a rule to never poke fun at someone’s disease. A great synopsis of this unfortunate event is best captured by FACST of Kansas City (Food Allergy: Connect, Share, Thrive) in a recent blog post, “A Hero named Josiah”.
photo courtesy of FACST of Kansas City
Two valuable lessons came out of this unfortunate event:
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- nick mom™ got their hand slapped for a grade school style mistake-hopefully, they won’t do that again and have learned something, not just about food allergies, but other serious diseases affecting children.
- After reading FACST’s posting on their website outlining the time line of how quickly it took for the food allergy community to contact nick mom and respond, I was humbled. Simply humbling. Clearly, the power of folks doing the right thing and working together makes a difference. nick mom™ responded quickly too and too down the video ASAP.
photo courtesy of Team Anaphylaxis
Bravo, food allergy mothers, fathers, FARE and Team Anaphylaxis for uniting in one loud and intelligent voice!
p.s. We did not like the channel before and now have moved them from, poor children’s television choice category to really poor children’s television.
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One of the hardest things I find about managing both life threatening food allergies and asthma is talking to others. I hate to be the one that might be perceived as demanding, pushing or for asking too much. What I now know, fourteen years later, is that honest, clear information presented with kindness works!..
I hear you! Nickelodeon lost the little bit of respect they had from me. I felt horribly for all my allergy-mom friends and family and for those I know personally with food allergies, and the ignorance that radiated from that video and such just broke my heart! The hardest thing was that they didn’t exactly apologize and they only replayed an allergy awareness video on another of their sites instead of admitting to the mistake on NickMom…it wasn’t the best thing, but it was something and at least they removed the video and other allergy bashing material, too. That just cements to me that they are NOT sorry about what they said, they REALLY didn’t find it a problem, but were sorry for the backlash. To me, this gets Nickelodeon on boycott as much as possible. Sad that people still think that food allergies are a laughing matter and that they are trumped up. I guess until you’ve seen a child not able to breathe and nearly die in front of you or worse or been there yourself by a simple “minor exposure”, you won’t get the reason we got so upset.
Julie, This makes it harder to be an nick fan. I have to question their hiring and vetting practices. Who makes these choices? Food Allergies, sensitivities or any health issue should simply be off limits.
I agree, Caroline! Health issues should not be turned into jokes, especially on a site that claims to be anti-bully. I just don’t know how they thought that would be appropriate. I mean, I can handle sarcasm and I know what they were trying to poke fun at, but they really need to do their research. If they want to mock something, health issues aren’t it! Maybe I’ve grown too sensitive, but when so many people expressed the same outrage, I can’t see that as being the case. There was so many other ways they could’ve spun the whole thing! If they’d have left the food allergies out of it, it would’ve been better recieved, for sure!
I am the queen of sarcasm and I know when to respect. You brought up a good point. Maybe this is were some bullying begins, with a silly joke that just doesn’t stop?
I think so. Ignorance is bliss, and I think that’s where these jokes stem from. There used to be a mindset that food allergies were made up or overdone – that in essence, they did not exist. I think it’s education that is needed or the jokes, the implication that food allergies are fake, will never end. People always mock what they do not understand. We tend to be tolerant of jokes that are made about religion or beliefs or weight or preferences…and people have different levels of that. It has, however, always been an unwritten rule that you do NOT mock things that are life or death or health related…and apparently there is still a chunk of this world that still find food allergies more fiction than fact. It’s just sad that after all the hard work people have done to educate, to help, to make this world safer for those with food allergies, we haven’t advanced that much as a whole, and that’s why this hurts so much. It feels like we’re going back to square one. If the grown-up community can’t acknowledge food allergies, how can we expect our kids? What comes as a simple joke from an adult turns into mocking and teasing and then bullying in kids…our kids always take it one step further. I just wish they realized that…
I will admit that I did watch it when it was shared on Allergy Mom’s page but I wanted to see what all of the “stir up” was. I could see where they were trying (and I really stress trying) to poke fun but it was just tastless, wrong and I cannot believe they thought for a moment that it was ok to put it out there. Since I am a food allergy parent, I felt as if all of the non-allergic moms, PTA and school staff who ever rolled their eyes at me for my simple demands to keep my son safe and alive were put together into one horrible skit. So not cool, especially in light of who they are- Nick, tsk, tsk tsk! I am glad they removed it promptly but the fact is that it should have never even aired at all.
I am glad people rallied together to have it removed and I am proud to say that I appreicate the fact that there were also non-allergic parents commenting as well- thank you!