Hellobee Boards

My daughter was checked for allergies when she was about 4.5 years old. She has a sporadic throat clearing thing going on, so allergy check was a next step thing. It was a blood test. Unfortunately or not, my husband had to take her and I wasn't there. It went as you can imagine drawing blood from a 4 yo would go. Results can back showing zero allergies. Best of luck to you.

We had my son tested for allergies when he was almost 3, though it wasn’t specifically for seasonal allergies. He was having hives and we couldn’t identify the source. We had a scratch test which was a challenge because one spot is just histamines so it’s super itchy but you can’t let them scratch it. After some initial whining though DS handled it like a champ. It turns out the hives were likely caused by a some crazy other thing and no allergy but we did spend some time on allergy meds and it didn’t seem to bother my son.

@oldschooolmama: I am years and years into dealing with allergies- food/environmental/seasonal etc. What I have learned is that ALL allergies indicate leaky gut, and that is something that you can absolutely improve with dietary changes. The younger the kid, the faster the improvement, but I was have been able to almost completely eliminate my own allergies as an adult. My DH is an MD and I know they were taught practically nothing about the subject in med school. All that to say, if you want to do something about it you may want to find a functional medicine doc. You can lookup histamine intolerance. Also, GAPS diet. (Happy to share more info. as it irks me when docs say there is nothing to do about it. )

We’ve done all the testing! Scratch testing for all. Unfortunately, crazy immune systems run in my family.

Oldest was tested around 4.5. Allergist saw her before then but recommended testing when she was old enough for shots I believe. She was truly miserable in a life changing way during the spring tree season (and still symptomatic during all allergen seasons) but the only true fix was shots and they didn’t start until they felt kids were verbal and mature enough to say something if they had an adverse reaction. At any rate, getting a 4.5 year old to do twice weekly shots (during the build-up period, then it was every 4 weeks) was a challenge but I would 100% do it again because it improved so much. Now she just takes otc allergy meds sometimes and it’s nowhere near miserable. She did 4 years of shots before we decided to stop. They use the test results to mix the shot serum to the person. I’ve done many years of shots as well. Even if you don’t do shots at 3, it may just help you know there is a season where you need to shower every night before bed, or it’s indoor allergies like dust mites which have different precautions, etc.

Middle child started having asthma flares at 1 and we had him tested then to see if there were environmental triggers we needed to know about. But he tested negative at 1 and now maybe has it mildly. (Viral illnesses are his trigger.) So, testing for a different reason.

Youngest had her tests done for food allergies that showed up around 9m when she tried eggs and cow milk. She had an epipen until we retested this summer at 3 and she grew out of severe reactions!

So honestly scratch tests are not that bad. I would usually hug them to me while they tested on the back and then distract with iPad and headphones during the waiting period so they wouldn’t scratch. My oldest got through it even though her back blew up with hives during the test. And my youngest has had blood draws done to rule out celiac at age 2 and I would recommend a phlebotomist who sees a lot of kids but it went fine.

I hope you get some good info from the testing! Even before we could do shots the allergist gave us better ideas of how to manage and had a wider range of ideas.

@JennyPenny: Thank you so much! I’m so sorry he had to deal with that, but I’m really glad that the flareups were mild enough to be taken care of by allergy meds alone! I have never heard of that syndrome but that’s really fascinating. I appreciate you sharing your experience! It’s good to know that kids can and usually do grow out of that.

Yes. 2 years ago we did scratch tests for my older son. Turns out he's allergic to most trees and grasses, mold, animals, etc. He developed a couple new food allergies too so we saw those reactions on the skin tests as well.

It is helpful to know what he is allergic to in terms of treating seasonally. For many, some seasons are worse than others, turns out my son is basically a year-round allergy sufferer, but in the spring on top of a daily claritin, we add in a nasal spray and eye drops as needed.

Perhaps in the future we may do allergy shots, but we're not considering it yet.

We found out through blood and scratch tests that DD has food allergies at 6mo. At 3.5y, she was getting random sniffles, so since we already go for annual blood draws to check for any changes in food allergies, I asked him to add environmental allergies to the list. He decided to do scratch test for the environmental stuff and then added them to the blood test. Turns out she’s allergic to dog dander.

@oldschooolmama: we already knew she had some food allergies, then she started having terrible intractable constipation all the sudden that lasted months and months, and didn’t grow much for a while. I think it was still more a rule it out type thing, wasn’t strong evidence for it, but they checked it with a few other things. Thankfully a year later the constipation is finally under control and she’s caught up on growth.