Thanks for the general concern about sending our 4-year-old daughter
alone to birthday parties. Here, by the way, it is the norm to send kids
of this age and not stay with them.

Perhaps with another 4-year-old I wouldn't feel confident doing this,
but Avigayil is somewhat unusual for her age. She has no qualms
whatsoever about checking and double checking to make sure she is
understood, and won't take something if she isn't sure about it. Last
week, for example, she was visiting a family which doesn't know so much
about her allergies. She was offered a glass of apple juice and straight
away asked the mother whether the cup the apple juice was in had ever
been used for milk (she used to break out in hives if she ate from a
plastic plate which had previously been used for milk products - so
cross contamination is definately as issue for us, although now she
seems to be less sensitive about this). Only after she was assured that
it was a parev cup (ie had never been used for milk) did she start to
drink. Ditto for cutting fruit with a knife - she will always check that
the knife is parev.

Of course, this whole thing is a bit easier for us, since it happens
that we and all our friend in the neighborhood keep kosher anyway, so
being sure that milk out of the picture is perhaps less complicated.
Foods made in Israel are clearly labelled when they contain milk, or are
parev etc. (We still have to be careful when we are looking at imported
products thought.)

The way I look at it, birthday parties are not any more "risky" than
sending her to pre-school where forbidden foods abound and there are 35
kids to deal with. We do what we can to keep her safe and help her learn
as much as she can about her allergies, but she lives in the real world,
and step by step (as and when she can deal with the complexities of
being allergic) she will take on more of the tasks involved.

Just my opinion. I'd like to hear from others too.

Debbie
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(mother to Avigayil, who is unlikely to need classes in assertiveness
training!)