Does your child have allergies? Musician Kyle Dine does, too. He has created music that describes the experiences and every day life situations of children who have severe allergies. His music puts things into a much more positive light, and emphasizes working on being safe. Listening to it could help increase the self esteem of your allergic child.
It isn’t any fun at all to be a child who has allergies. There are foods you cannot eat, animals you cannot play with, and things you cannot touch without experiencing an allergic reaction. These are the same things that all of your classmates can enjoy with no problems at all.
It’s enough to make an allergic kid have low self-esteem. It’s difficult to be the only kid at school who has allergies, especially if those allergies are severe enough that they require other children to have to wash their hands before entering the classroom after lunchtime, or to stop bringing foods, (like peanut butter sandwiches), to school with them. There have been situations where children have been bullied or picked on specifically because of their allergies. Your severely allergic child might be feeling very alone in this world.
The music of Kyle Dine can help your child feel good about herself again. Kyle Dine has been called the world’s first dedicated “allergy musician”. He is twenty- eight years old, and he writes music for children that is about having allergies.
His songs could easily have come from his own experiences. He is allergic to peanuts, nuts, eggs, seafood, and mustard. When he was twenty-one, he ate a dessert that he believed was safe to eat, but that turned out to have nuts in it. This nearly caused his death, and made him reevaluate how he was dealing with his allergies.
As a child, he didn’t really feel comfortable talking about his allergies, (just like a lot of kids with allergies feel). Listening to his music could make your child feel like there are other people out there who have allergies too, (even if your child hasn’t actually met them).
Kyle Dine has two albums full of allergy related, fun, positive, music that your child will love. He points out the “bright side” of having allergies. One album is called “You Must Be Nuts”, and the other is called “Food Allergies Rock!”, both of which can be found through his website, iTunes, or CD Baby. My personal favorite is his song called “Epi Man”, which turns the epinephrine auto injector device into a superhero that can come to your child’s rescue.
Image by David Mayerhofer on Flickr