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When Susan's son was 7, a classmate smeared peanut butter on his arm. A harmless prank, perhaps, for many kids. But for her son it was potentially life-threatening, due to his severe peanut allergy.
"He didn't mean to really hurt him," said Susan, who asked to remain anonymous. "But it was like a loaded gun."
Fortunately, aside from a few hives, her son was unscathed. But the reaction "would have been different if my son had touched it and then his mouth, eye or nose," Susan said.
Call it allergy bullying. Whether it's an extension of garden-variety bullying or a backlash against greater restrictions on peanuts in schools, parents of children with severe allergies say their kids are increasingly facing threats of being touched or, worse, forced to eat the food they have spent their lives avoiding.
Many of those parents are closely watching a recent legal case south of the border. Earlier this month, after putting peanut-butter cookie crumbs in the lunchbox of a classmate with a severe allergy, a 13-year-old student in Kentucky was arrested on a charge of felony wanton endangerment and is headed to juvenile court - even though the victim did not eat the crumbs.
"This is a pretty groundbreaking case," said Vancouver father Jeff Smith, who runs a blog called No Peanuts Please, through which parents have been swapping bullying tales after hearing of the case. "In some ways it's harsh. But it is an issue and it's becoming more well-known."
Debra Pepler, a psychology professor and the scientific co-director of PREVNet (Promoting Relationships and Eliminating Violence), a network of Canadian researchers examining bullying, said allergy bullying does not surprise her.
"Children are remarkably creative in terms of the ways they figure out how to get power over someone," she said. "Bullying is all about power. You get power over someone by destabilizing them."
Still, she finds the Kentucky case "shocking."
"You can destabilize people in lots of different ways, but what a horrific way this is."
Laura Bantock's daughter was 13 when a fellow student taunted her with the threat of a post-lunch hug after eating a peanut-butter sandwich. The school took it seriously, and the principal spoke with the student's parents, Ms. Bantock said.
Still, she and other advocates continue to urge their school boards and education ministers to continue their work on both the allergy-safety and anti-bullying fronts - without isolating their children even more from their peers and possibly opening them up to retaliation.
Ms. Bantock, who lives in Kamloops, B.C., said that while she and other parents are careful to point out the danger of allergy bullying, they do acknowledge that the kids who bully may not be fully aware of true risks involved.
"It's about finding an Achilles heel and then using it," said the vocal advocate, who runs a support group for parents. "Kids don't realize the severity of what they're doing."
Fellow Kamloops resident Kent Simmonds' son was 7½ when a schoolmate threatened to make him eat a bag of peanuts. While Mr. Simmonds' son is actually allergic to dairy products, wheat and eggs, not peanuts, the threat was still chilling. His son spoke to a teacher and the incident has not been repeated. "Hopefully that will be the last time."
Many parents say it's not just the kids who need to be educated, but the parents of allergy-free kids.
If they disparage the vigilance of school administrators and parents of allergic kids for their advocacy, their children may adopt a nonchalant attitude toward the risk of severe reaction.
Susan's son, now 9, is at a different school. He no longer has to eat alone at a table due to his allergy. Now, kids eating peanut products and other allergens sit together at a table, which is washed daily - and her son isn't singled out.
"They isolated the food, not the child," she said.
