One Florida mom is sending an urgent warning to parents after her toddler nearly died from a seemingly harmless school craft project.
Christen Hyde told WAFB, her 7-month-old son Lofton Hyde suffers from a milk allergy since birth, but Lofton’s parents had no idea a fun day of arts and crafts for kids at his daycare would turn into the “scariest day” of their lives.
The mother said her son was painting at the Baton Rouge childcare center when she got a frightening phone call at work. The Our Lady of the Lake nurse recalled:
“I just happened to see on the caller ID, ‘Peds ER’ and I just had a sense of doom.”
Christen was told that her son had broken out into hives all over his body while playing with a “child-friendly” paint.
The little boy was rushed to the hospital after he suffered a violent reaction from allegedly having his feet dipped into yellow Cra-Z-Art paint to make footprint pictures.
Christen claims that the paint triggered an anaphylactic shock at his nursery. The 28-year-old nurse told the Mirror:
“We never thought a fun day painting at daycare would turn into the scariest day of our lives.
I never knew a lot of craft paints can contain eggs and milk, so when the paint was applied to Lofton’s feet to make footprints I think it was absorbed through his skin, causing the anaphylactic reaction.
I don’t blame the daycare – if it wasn’t for their quick reactions, our son might not be with us today.”
The nurse said it wasn’t until she started doing research that she found a connection with dairy ingredients and the finger paint. She told WAFB:
“We started googling to see if anything came up with possible milk in these products, and it did. They actually say that a lot of these finger paints contain milk, egg, wheat, oat.”
Following the severe allergic reaction, Hyde posted about Lofton’s experience on Facebook to sound the alarm about dairy ingredients and other allergens showing up in craft supplies.
Now that our baby is home and we know he is ok…I would like to share what we have learned and hopefully it will help…
Posted by Christen Lofton Hyde on Saturday, June 15, 2019
A local pediatric allergist, Dr. Sandhya Mani, warned that many of these ingredients are not listed on the labels of some craft supplies. Mani explained:
“Children with allergies to milk, wheat, oat, corn, sometimes even soy… these are in multiple arts and crafts projects, including paints, clay, chalk.”
A spokesman for Cra-Z-Art told the Mirror:
Our Washable Kids Paint in Yellow does not contain any dairy products. The facility in which this paint was produced does not use dairy products in any of their production therefore there is no chance of cross-contamination.
However, Christen claims:
“There was no other possible cause to his reaction – the doctors were confident in their diagnosis and believe the paint was the culprit.”
She bringing awareness to the issue because parents and caretakers don’t realize how common these ingredients are in child-friendly products.
Watch the video below:
This toddler almost died from a seemingly harmless school craft project. Graham Ulkins WAFB has a warning parents need to hear from his mother https://bit.ly/31Vzf4V
Posted by WAFB Channel 9 on Friday, June 28, 2019