Readers — In the blizzard of back to school hoo-ha that comes to me daily as a “Mommy Blogger,” I just got a list of five tips for back-to-school health. They are:
Tip adnthbbkkz
One — Start the Day with a Protein Rich BreakfastTip Two — Balance Blood Sugar with Complex CarbohydratesTip Three — Shop for Health: Create a Back-to-School Grocery List that Promotes WellnessTip 4 — Offer Your Kids Food Rich in AntioxidantsTip 5 — Be Sure Your Kids Get Enough Sleep
Why would any sane person object to these? Because they sound like a list of tips for someone who is sick. Blood sugar, anti-oxidants, complex carbohydrates — this is the talk of a hospital nutritionist. How about, “Make sure they have some healthy food around”?
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More distressing is the fact that there is zero mention of PLAYING! “Get your kid out to the park!” “Give your kid some free time to goof around.” “Let your kid walk to school.” If you want a kid whose weight, diabetes, appetite and outlook all have a higher chance of being healthy — quit dithering about the exact contents of the lunchbox and make sure you give them a childhood, not just an applesauce.
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But, like I said, harumph. I am in a harumphing mood. – L.
51 Comments
Harumph! Now I’ve got to watch Blazing Saddles again. π
“I am in a harumphing mood.”
Hmm, how so? You bought the wrong beer brand? The bed isn’t comfortable enough? You guys now spent 91 minutes parking that monster? No-one found a frog aaaaaaall day? You tried everything but the font size of your post remained minuscule? The boys have eaten all the food including your secret chocolat stash and then tried to barbecue you? What? What? π
On a more serious note: to ‘Make sure they have some healthy food around’ I would add ‘in appropiate portion sizes’. But would over-eating America know what that is?
Hey, the last tip is pretty good…
My son has been hypoglycemic since birth, so I tend to be a bit obsessive with nutrition. That said, this list is just weird. Yes, my kid does need a balanced diet. Yes, my kid does have a box of fruit leathers in his teacher’s desk “just in case”. But my kid has a medical condition.
I’m also a big believer in sleep. Two kids with night terrors will do that to just about anyone.
Good breakfasts and sleep are good things. Those others? Whatever.
I cannot tell you how thrilled I was to receive this article as part of our Welcome Packet (with med. cards, contact info, etc.) from my son’s 4th grade teacher. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/katie-hurley/secrets-of-highly-happy-children_b_3722259.html
eat, sleep, play, hear them, love them and let them make choices. Her personal note home asked all parents to please let the kids deal with natural consequences of forgetting homework, lunch, projects, etc. even if they “mean well, this is not helpful to students in the long run.”
Be still my heart!!
All those antioxidants and proteins didn’t help the blogger remember to use parallel number formats through her 5 tips. maybe she needs to get out and move around!
Apparently, I’m in both a harumphing AND a persnickety mood.
Meh, this list isn’t hurting my feelings. All the things on this list are true and helpful. I’m also one of those people that likes the know the reasons behind advice, so I’m not upset by the mention of “blood sugar”. Being married to a diabetic will do that to you.
This topic makes me think of the book, “French Women Don’t Get Fat” which also reminds me of “Bringing Up Bebe.” Basically, quit worrying about calories, protein, carbs, etc. and just create some ritual around your food. Enjoy yourself, eat with others and eat great food. Kinda like being a free range kid… have fun, play with others and do cool stuff. Ah, the road to happiness is just really not that complicated. Good reminder to all of us to quit overthinking everything.
@lunzy, your post Is music to my ears. All summer I did everything I could think of to get my 5th grader to do her summer packet and as of last night she had about 60% of it still to go (they go back to school tomorrow). I keep reading the “please make sure your child…” cover sheet and thinking, hey I tried. Hello natural consequences. Nothing like them!
Those are all fine things but why does everything involving kids now require planning and details akin to the D-day invasion? It is the first day of school. Something your kid will do every fall (well early August in our case) for 13 years or more. Something families have been dealing with for many generations with maybe a thought as to whether the kids had clothes and shoes without holes. It just doesn’t require extensive strategy, worry and grief.
I see someone else is a Blazing Saddles fan! And in July, I visited the Chicago area, which is full of Blues Brothers reminders. Getting back to today’s topic, there are some people who like to plan the week’s activities like General Eisenhower’s staff preparing for D-day. If that makes you comfortable, more power to you, folks. On the other hand, some of us are more “hakuna matata” or “No worries, Mate”, and we all manage to survive.
Walking to school is such an old-fashioned thing, I’ve discovered. My kids walk and I get a lot of slack for it. We live 0.9 miles from the school. My kids are 10, 8, 6, and 5. People ask me what I’m going to do when winter hits and it’s cold. I tell them that my kids have coats, hats, gloves and scarves. They look at me like I’m a monster.
My partner asked me how do I know if our 9 yr old has mad it to school safe, he scooters or rides his bike or walks the 600 meters to school.. I said the same way our parents knew we did. I am actually more worried about the older one as she has wagged school and but the student services councillor and I sorted that out by them meeting her out the front of the school in morning and if she wasn’t on the bus they would call me, so embarrassing for a high school ( yrs 8-12 in Australia) to be babied like that so she stopped wagging school.
Protein Rich Breakfast and Complex Carbohydrates do not sound like something from doctors office to me. They are just specific information on what exactly is considered good breakfast these days.
I usually prefer specific information over general “make sure they have some healthy food around”. It can mean anything and everything. If the specific information is correct and I did not knew it before, I can learn something.
If the info is reasonable, not overly helicopter and do not assume I’m complete idiot, I’m ok with it. Maybe it is because I do not usually obsess over food and do not go out of my way to learn about it. So whatever I know about healthy eating started by random pieces of info like this.
good, no mention of telling your kids to be careful when they play, not to talk to strangers, never run, etc. etc. etc.
And a healthy diet low in processed carbohydrates and high in proteins is excellent advise, not just for children but adults as well. And such advise is sorely needed as most peoples’ diets are extremely unhealthy, high in processed carbohydrates and low in proteins, as prescribed by the “health” industry according to the “food pyramid” which is a scam out of the department of agriculture designed to increase the sales of subsidised wheat.
The problem with this kind of advice (except for #5) is that it makes parenting seem so terribly complicated and difficult, as if raising kids today requires a degree in nutrition. It’s piled on top of all the other well-meaning advice from “experts” who don’t realize that most people don’t have a clue how to “balance blood sugar with complex carbohydrates.” Life is really not that hard, especially for kids, and we don’t need to make it seem as if it is. Get enough sleep, be active, eat balanced meals. And, of course, have fun!
Let Her Eat Dirt
http://www.lethereatdirt.com
A dad’s take on raising tough, adventurous girls
Packing lunch and eating breakfast aren’t rocket science. The fact is that a parent can make a gorgeous, eat-the-rainbow, organic lunch or breakfast but you can’t control if the kid actually eats it. My daugter tell me stories about other kids at lunch who trash the sandwich and veggies, eat just the snack, and then use their lunch account to buy fruit punch and fruit roll ups.
My advise is let your child pack their own lunch. Give them lots of fresh choices of course, but kids will be less likely to waste and more likely to eat what they prepped themselves the night before. My daughter could eat PBJ, an apple, and a yogurt almost every day and usually does. The boy makes a mean turkey wrap with pickles, his favorite.
What you WANT your kid to eat and what they ACTUALLY will eat are usually not the same.
Used to be alot easier to send them with a half decent lunch. I say half decent, because it had to be a lunch that they would eat, and somewhat healthy. Since the ban on all the food allergens, it has become a little more difficult. No more peanut butter sandwiches, egg salad sandwiches, granola bars, and so on.
Then there is the call from the principal over their concern that my daughter had a cheeseburger from last nite’s dinner for lunch. How unhealthy it is. Told them to stick to teaching, and leave my kids diet to me. Then they asked me not to send it ever again, as it sets a bad example for the other kids. Told them to stick to teaching, and leave my kids diet alone. They really hated it when I dropped off a sushi lunch to her, but sucks to be them.
*dangerously close to a mommy-war rant, but also about broader trends I’ve noticed*
My Daughter’s Step-Mom was getting into the “Doorway Chat” at dropoff on Monday. And mentioned she was trying our daughter on a gleuten-free diet because she’d read that some autistic kids’ have behavior improvement when they go gleuten free..
(Or Daughter has speech delays and displays behaviors of autism–i give the diagnosis a thumb of my nose, but understand that she will need help conforming to the standards of 21st century America.)
Now, I get that most “kid foods” are rich in simple carbs and Sugars and most Glueten free breads/cereals offer more complex carbs thereby minimizing the sugar spikes and behavior issues that come with rushes and crashes of sugar spikes.
I get that a glueten free diet likely (but not assuredly) has a higher fiber content, eliminating much behavior issues that accompany an upset tummy. (in years past, i understand, people’s grandmothers swore by enemas to cure the grumpies. My mother basically used the commode as our time-out chair. the thinking that an ill-behaved child MUST be constipated hasn’t gone away and apparently has some validity.)
But I also have a friend with Celiac Disease. Actual Celiac Disease. Where the slightest microgram of wheat will have him in pain for two weeks.
For the purposes of reducing sugar spikes and increasing regularity in a rather mild-mannered, mostly well-behaved child that our daughter is, there are more conventional –and less expensive– means of enriching her diet.
Fresh fruit, anyone?
“All those antioxidants and proteins didn’t help the blogger remember to use parallel number formats through her 5 tips”
She Whose Name Shall Not Be Spoken is on a junkfood diet at the moment, and I don’t think reading about antioxidants and proteins will help π
So good luck feeding The Blogger some wine and cheese π
OMG Lenore you have to read this – http://www.newrepublic.com/article/114527/self-regulation-american-schools-are-failing-nonconformist-kids
“Did our daughter need what sounded like a paperweight for her young body in order to succeed at her job as a second-grader?”
Classic essay you absolutely need to comment on!
BTW, Julia,
“Twelve double-blind, placebo-controlled studies of sugar challenges failed to provide any evidence that sugar ingestion leads to untoward behavior in children with Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder or in normal children. Likewise, none of the studies testing candy or chocolate found any negative effect of these foods on behavior.”
http://teenskepchick.org/2011/09/12/modern-mythology-sugar-rush/
“Through various experiments over the years, scientists have discovered that no substantial evidence exists to support the claim that sugar causes hyperactivity. For example, University of Kentucky’s Dr. Hoover observed that removing and adding food additives in children’s diets provoked reported links to hyperactivity from parents although objective clinical tests proved otherwise. Dr. Wolraich from the University of Iowa gathered one group of normal preschoolers and another of those who were reportedly sensitive to sugar. He gave them sucrose, aspartame, or saccharin, the latter two of which are believed not to have any effect on behavior. After tests for hyperactivity, he was unable to find any significant differences in the children’s conduct. In a similar experiment, Dr. Shaywitz of the Yale University School of Medicine reported the same results for high doses of aspartame.”
http://www.yalescientific.org/2010/09/mythbusters-does-sugar-really-make-children-hyper/
And especially Telling:
“Given that so far it hasn’t, why would a sizable chunk of the child-rearing population continue to swear it exists? For a crucial piece of the puzzle we turn to the Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology and a 1994 study by Daniel Hoover and Richard Milich, in which they looked at 31 boys ages five to seven and their mothers, all of whom had described their offspring as being “behaviorally affected by sugar.”
The mom-son teams were split into the customary two groups: the moms in one were told their sons would be given extra-sugary Kool-Aid, while the others were told their kids were in the control group and would get a drink sweetened with aspartame. In reality, though, the same artificially sweetened stuff was administered to both sets of kids while the women got a sheaf of surveys to fill out. Mothers and children were then videotaped playing together, after which the moms were asked how they thought things went.
What did Hoover and Milich find? You guessed it: the moms who thought they were in the sugar group said their sons acted more hyper. In addition, they tended to hover over their children more during play, offer more criticism of their behavior, etc. The mother-son pairs in the other group were judged by observers to be getting along better. What’s more, those moms who, going into the experiment, most strongly believed their kids were sugar-sensitive also scored highest on a test designed to gauge cognitive rigidity.”
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2747/does-giving-sweets-to-kids-produce-a-sugar-rush
@Warren- Your cheeseburger story is insane. My son takes in leftover pizza all the time. Our school is now enforcing the “no sweets” rule for birthdays (which I don’t object to) on the premise that excess sugar is bad for kids. Same school offers fruit punch (with 52 grams of sugar!) with their *healthy* lunches. Morons.
On the sleep note, my daughter(10) had friends sleepover last night (no school today due to the Jewish holiday) and one of the girls was picked up early and not allowed to sleepover. Her parents gave me a lecture on the importance of good sleep during the school year and they didn’t want her *off* schedule even for a night, saying the 2 days of school they’ve attended had already exhausted her. I asked the girl if she was tired at the end of the night and she admitted she was exhausted- seems she watched “World War Z” late last night (she has a TV in her room) and was crying most of the night because she was afraid of zombies killing her. But don’t forget that important sleep schedule and lecturing other parents about how important it is!
Quico T – Thank you for those References. I continue to understand most kids’ developmental issues as a complex interaction between parent, child ,parental culture, and general culture.
The Free Range Movement is one of delibrately withholding what has come to be believed as something that must flow continually into a child’s life–that of parental attention.
In previous generations, parental attention wasn’t delibrately withheld so much as not expected. Now that it is expected, parents have to choose to withhold it.
The reason we expect it is because as modern conveniences and technology have made life for parents easier, there are alot less “have to”s to keep a parent busy NOT paying attention to their kid.
At some point in the past, the have-tos were overridden by the want-tos, and learning little sponges that toddlers are, if mommy and daddy begin making choices between their wants and their child’s wants, then the child will win most every time.–until the kid begins showing independance to do his/her own things, separate from mommy/daddy.
WELL PHOOEY ON THAT!! Who do these people think they are? For ALL OF MY EXISTENCE they have been my personal waitstaff and now they want me to do things ON MY OWN? like USE THE TOILET? what does a kid have to do to get attention around here? oh yeah–I’ll take a dump in my pants. That’s always worked in the past.
@lollipoplover
The dumbest move my daughters school made was demanding that all lunches and snacks must come in reusable plastic containers, removed from the original wrappers and packaging. Their reasoning……..to be more enviromentally friendly, and reducing the garbage dumped on the planet.
They did not like being exposed on this one. I explained to them that this move actually was more harmful to the enviroment. As it does not reduce the garbage, it just has the garbage being produced at home and not the school. Because I have to remove the packaging at home, and dispose of it. Amount of waste generated per lunch the same. Now add in that the plastic containers need to be washed everyday, and replaced when broken and or lost. Well then the cost to the enviroment went up.
The school pays for garbage removal. Had they told us in an effort to save funds they wanted to have us repackage the lunches, then we would have been happy to oblige. Instead about half of us just ignored the new rule, until things went back to normal.
Yes! Everyone told me my new kindergartener would be tired after school, but he is always bursting with physical energy. All he does after school is play outside and ride bikes with his friends. I really think public school could encourage more running around and playing and less sitting still and listening. At the very least, I’d like it if the school day were shorter, giving my kids more time at home to do their own thing, which is almost always some serious physical activity.
I think it’s as much about everyone being an armchair expert in everything nowadays as much as anything else. I doubt they’re really trying to say much more than “Provide your kids a nutritious lunch with food to give them energy” but everyone fancies himself a nutritionist-cum-endocrinologist nowadays so they have to throw in all the fancy language and make it sound like we ought to be giving our kids daily finger pricks and treating their lunches like a research project. Still, words matter — the more overstuffed language like that gets used in a simple article about getting your kids ready for school, the more we think that everything *is* a complicated process you have to be an expert in to get “right.”
Of course hardly any person with enough education and social awareness to get mommy-blogger e-mails actually NEEDS to be told anything on that list, but another thing to keep in mind is that some of these sites need to generate a constant amount of content and a lot of it is just filler.
When our oldest son was in high school, he and his close friends had two lifestyle similarities:
1.) They often did not get what most of us would call an adequate number of hours of sleep at night.
2.) They often skipped breakfast.
He and his friends were also at the top of their class when they graduated, all got scholarships, and got into top colleges.
So what does this tell us about the importance of sleep and breakfast?
I don’t think he and his friends were the only good students in the nation who had these habits.
This raises some questions for me. Most importantly – we evolved from apes, we evolved eating what was available, and when. Early humans who couldn’t pay attention, or who had headaches and fell asleep at 3, didn’t survive well. So what is going on that ‘balancing blood sugar’ is a concern for the average, relatively healthy person? Easiest answer – the assholes who give out this advice are also responsible for putting all the kids in the country in desks all day, for an ever-growing portion of the year. They are also responsible for discouraging all physical activity outside the (too long) school day.
The whole thing is absurdity from top to bottom. The school year has to be longer to ‘fit more in’ because of state standards. Why do my kids need to meet state standards? Just because, that’s why, shut up you plebs. It’s crucial that everyone know how to factor a polynomial, be able to explain three differences between ancient Mesopotamia and modern Uraguay, and be able to explain nitrogen fixation. In addition, all of this must be out of context, and none of their schooling may ever help them to understand why they’re being lied into war in Syria. Got it.
Then, we need to make sure that people pay more and more for food that is stripped of all nutrient content. Between that and lack of exercise, we have blood sugar issues. So then we need medical-sounding advice about how to pack a school lunch – since our schooling, of course, didn’t prepare us to think about nutrition without expert guidance.
This is how empires fall.
“The school year has to be longer to Γ’β¬Λfit more in’ because of state standards.”
Except that the school year has not become one iota longer in many decades. It was 180 days long when my parents were in school in the 50s; it was 180 days long when I was in school in the 70s; and it is 180 days long today. In fact, in many school districts throughout the country, the number actual days in school have declined as they now go to school more hours in the day but only 4 days a week.
What has changed is that there are more breaks during the school year. Many schools get a week-long fall break that didn’t exist when I was a kid. There also seems to be a shift to starting earlier in many places, but that results in more days off during the year or an earlier end time. Yes, my daughter starts school in early August now instead of the late August of my childhood (same school district), but she also gets out mid-May compared to my post-Memorial Day.
@Warren – have to ask, what did the school find wrong with sushi? The packaging? Would have thought sushi is pretty healthy – certainly is in NZ.
“Except that the school year has not become one iota longer.”
The trend since the 80’s has been more *total hours* in school each year. It depends on the district where you live, but some districts have extended the school year. Many more, however, have simply extended the school *day* and the *total number of hours* in school.
When I went to school, they lengthened the school day when I was in 9th grade. They added an extra 45 minutes to the school day and cut our 15 minute break after 3rd period so they could add an additional 55 minute (plus 5 minute class change) subject period to the high school day. They went from 6 subject per day to 7. I saw it happen. I was there.
My kids go to school in a different state than I did, which has an even longer school day. When I was in elementary school, we went 3.5 hours on Monday (early closing) and 6 hours on Tuesday-Friday. My kids go to elementary school Monday through Friday 7 hours a day, or 7.5 hours a week longer than I did.
180 is the state minimum in the majority of states. Individual districts can set longer school years, however.
It’s true that 180 is the state minimum still in most if not all states, but some places exceed the minimum. However, no school district around here does that.
As for length of day, when I went to school (class of ’83) the school day was 6 1/2 hours after subtracting lunch. Today, my kids go for 6 1/2 hours after subtracting lunch, although it’s all shifted 20 minutes later. Different district, opposite side of same state.
So increasing school time is not universally true, and may not even be generally true.
The only break we get now that is significantly longer than 30 years ago is Easter break — our district gets the entire preceding week off and the following Monday; back then it was only Thursday through Monday. But that is only my local district — none of the others around here do that. We always got a full week and usually more at Christmas when I was a kid, depending when Christmas fell, and we don’t get any other short breaks that weren’t around back then. We get MLK day now; we used to get Columbus day instead. Thanksgiving is almost an entire week (early dismissal the preceding Monday and off the Monday after, because in Pennsylvania it’s ironclad that there’s no school the first day of deer season and it’s been that way for generations) but that’s because they moved the student-teacher conference days to the beginning of Thanksgiving week instead of having them at another time.
@hineata
They didn’t like the fact that it was sushi, because it was not in the packaging from the restaurant. I bought big platter and split it with her. Then they complained about kids with seafood allergies.
The school eventually gave up, because they knew I wasn’t just going to roll over for them. That we didn’t back down. Schools eventually figure out which parents are pushovers and which ones not to fight.
I grew up with six weeks of summer vacation, a week break in the fall, two weeks at Christmas & New Year, a week in Februari or so, and one or two (alternating) weeks in the spring. Plus some additional holidays.
Primary school was and is 5.5 hours on Mo, Tu, Th and Fr, 3.5 on Wednesdays (day started at 8:45).
Secondary school depended on your schedule: out at 13:10 if you were lucky, out at 16:00 or even 16.50 if you were really unlucky, usually it was 14.00 or 15.10 (day started at 8:30, if you were lucky you had the first period off and started at 9:20. 30 minute break at 11.00, 20 min at 14.00). Of course this is only practical when kids go to school by themselves!!
@Quico: that self-regulation article is really disgusting! OMG indeed! It was very ironic, but it reminded me of how countries like North-Korea or China ‘shape’ their people, surpressing every original thought (and resistance is futile of course…).
This must be the worst possible combination of capitalism and communism ever… π
Anyway, I begin to understand why the USA scores so low in UNICEFs child well-being report. Sigh.
@warren
I’m completely stunned, was this an American school that complained about what you were sending?
If they did to me and my kid, hell would pay.
@Warren Why does it have to be in restaurant packaging? That rule makes no sense. What if you would cook the sushi by yourself? I would expect if the school does not provides lunch, it would not micromanage packing and content of that lunch.
Kids here get lunch in school, so parents do not have to send them. It is not the first class cuisine for sure, but it is warn, edible most of time and more or less healthy. Unless the kid has allergy, they do not cook special for kids with allergies.
@Warren: I’m confused. Could you please explain to me how there can be no difference in the amount of waste per lunch? What did your kids pack their lunch in then, or do you always buy them pre-packaged stuff?
And how would cleaning the plastic container cost more water, assuming you can put it in the dish washer?
(I understand that my homemade lunches of two slices of bread with peanutbutter and banana are very non-American.)
My kid goes to school 6 hours a day. She gets an entire week off at Thanksgiving, at least 2 weeks off at Christmas, a week off in March for Spring Break and numerous random holidays during the rest of the year. Our summer vacation is approximately 12 weeks long. I have no complaints about her spending an exceedingly long time in school. In fact, it appears that my child goes to school about 4-5 weeks less per year than Papillo did, albeit slightly more time each day.
I think this is really a perception issue and not a real substantial change. When I posted on Facebook that my daughter was starting school on Aug. 8, I got 5 outraged comments about how we a robbing children of their childhood with nobody bothering to check when they get out of school to see if the school year is really longer first (it isn’t; it has just shifted 2-3 weeks for some completely inexplicable reason).
@Warren – Weird. My kid’s school has the completely opposite rule – outside food cannot be in the restaurant packaging. Since I have zero intention of ever bringing my child McDs to school, this rule is meaningless to me, but I always thought it a little odd.
“I understand that my homemade lunches of two slices of bread with peanutbutter and banana are very non-American”
Pretty typical school lunch around our house minus the banana. I think my child eats a turkey or peanut butter sandwich just about every day for lunch. So yes putting it in non-disposable containers saves a large amount of waste annually.
@Donna: Just peanutbutter is so dry…! The banana solves that problem.
Well for one thing, they wanted us to remove the granola bar from it’s wrapper, and place it in a reusable container. Same with juice boxes, cheese strings, and so on. So now I generate the garbage at home, and now have to buy a container that must be washed every night. This procedure only causes more use of water, detergent and hydro.
Because of food allergies the school tried to tell me they would inspect our kids lunch bags, for allergy contraband: nuts, seafood, and eggs. I took this up with the local detatchment of the Ontario Provincial Police, and was told that teachers in Ontario did not have legal standing to search anything belonging to a student. That unless there was probable cause to suspect drugs or weapons in a kids lunch, that even the police needed a warrant to search a lunch bag. I informed the school to keep their hands to themselves, and they complied.
This is why I do not understand the sheep that just let the schools get away with crap.
And you complain about American schools, Warren?
My kid’s school has no food contraband. We’ve been asked not to bring items containing peanuts to share with the entire class, but we can put whatever we want into our own individual lunches.
@Warren: …
I’m waiting for my mind to wrap itself around this, but so far it apparently has no intention to do so…
The idea that teachers would ask to “inspect” my lunchbox to see if I’m not eating something some other kid I don’t even know is allergic to is just too weird.
So, if you tell them your kid is allergic to anything deep-fried…??
Papillo – No, the items are banned per policy every year and not in relation to any one individual. The students and their families are informed of the bans from the outset of school on, at minimum, the first day of kindergarten.
Think of it more like a dress code. My kid can’t wear a t-shirt advertising drugs to school. I know this from day one. It is not suddenly sprung on us when she wears a “legalize marijuana” t-shirt nor is it in relation to any one particular classmates problem with drugs, but rather a general feeling that these items shouldn’t be in school.
Now in the case of food, I think it is ridiculous and I can’t imagine that I would send my child to school that checked her lunch box daily for contraband items. Based on his comments here, I would bet that Warren antagonized this reaction and that it was not a general school policy to search every kid’s lunch every day.
@Donia: A T-shirt with “Legaliseer marihuana” would have been very funny! π
I’m not familiar with school dress codes either… The only rule my schools had was not to wear a hat or anything in class (with exceptions for religious items, like headscarfs, provided that they’re safe for PE and working with machines).
Bans on certain kinds of food would have been even weirder (ridiculous, indeed. I could imagine keeping kids from eating deep-fried stuff every single day, but not this), but so is the idea of parents walking into the (secondary) school to bring kids lunch. SOOO embarrassing!
Papillo – Like most things in America, you will find various levels of dress codes and food banning throughout each area, and maybe even each school district. Some is in response to actual issues (i.e school uniforms in gang-neutral colors in inner cities) and some is ridiculous.
Mostly I think the food thing is done for teacher convenience, not to control what kids eat. We have a kid in a different 2nd grade class who has a serious allergy to peanuts. It is handled with special classroom procedures, separate lunch table with classmates whose parents agree to never pack any peanuts, etc. That is more fair to everyone else but more work for teachers to make sure that everyone understands the rules and that they are followed. Easier to just ban peanuts permanently than deal with tracking issues and solutions.
A friend went to have lunch with her kindergartener (age 5) right after school started and he hid under the table, refused to come out and told her to never embarrass him like that again so it is embarrassing long before secondary school.
@Donna: I didn’t necessarily mean that it only becomes embarrassing in secondary school, it’s just that primary schools kids here usually lunch at home π
I guess that explains a lot π
…’gang-neutral colors’… Wow…
Doesn’t even sound like good nutrition/health advice more like trendy faddish advice. Just with 1 alone I can say American’s eat to much protein (damages the kidneys) and really anything one can get a kid to eat for breakfast is good. No need to stress over it.
But then this is the kind of advice akin to the helicopter parents who sign their 1 or 2 year olds up for yoga because they think it’s good for them.
I agree with getting out and playing http://bit.ly/17kbZwl