Sweet treat as a school reward?

I got a letter from a reader recently that I want to share:

Hi Denise,

I love your blog.  My only child, my son, is 5, and you certainly present an interesting take on many issues that I’ve faced as a mom.

I was wondering whether you had an opinion on the candy culture in elementary schools these days.  It seems like every other day my son is coming home with a lollipop that he got from the treat bag for being good.  Now, I’m delighted that he’s being good, but enough with the sugar already!  I certainly don’t remember being rewarded with candy by my elementary school teachers.  I just think it sends the wrong message on so many levels, when we’re trying to educate young people.

So I’m the “mean mommy” who has to ration the candy at home, and who writes to the teacher to ask whether she could please reconsider her rewards.  Is this an issue you face?

Thanks, and keep up the good writing,
Patricia

Ah, Patricia. Do I have an opinion on the candy culture in elementary schools? Yeah. Little bit of one. More on that in a moment.

First I want to address Patricia’s dismay over the treat-as-reward compulsion. I have two main problems with that. One is the very notion of connecting a tangible reward with either good behavior or good grades. Not a fan. Turns out, neither are experts you might consult on this issue. A lollipop (or a dollar bill or a collection of raffle tickets that lead to this or that prize) as a reward is a misguided means of motivation. It inevitably and dangerously ties a child’s motivation to do well with the promise of a treat. In psychological parlance, that’s external motivation: the child wants to ace the test or demonstrate good behavior not because it feels good inside, but because he wants the prize.

But the second reason is for the sheer fact that kids have access to way too many treats –in school and eslewhere. Not only is the lollipop Patricia’s son’s teacher gives him a poor way to motivate him to continue his good behavior or whatever, it’s probably just piled on to other stuff he’s handed all week long — at a Cub Scout meeting, say, or after his pee-wee soccer game.

Let me be clear that I’m not against treats, cupcakes, candy or anything like that. But without an effort at moderation, we’re all left either sliding down a slippery slope of cake icing, or banning treats outright.

Which is what our school principal tried, last year — she called down a moratorium on any food in the school outside the cafeteria or the scheduled (hopefully healthy) snacks parents packed for their kids. She seemed almost evangelistic about it, but I’m thinking she was as frustrated as I often am: why can’t we find a middle ground between the occasional, well-deserved and happily enjoyed birthday cupcake on the one hand, and total sugar-salt-and-fat-fueled gluttony on the other? Why can some class moms keep the party more focused on a holiday themed activity, with the treat as a side-show; while others can’t resist the candy aisle?

Before the ban, when my older son was in first grade, a Thanksgiving celebration involved making butter by shaking containers of cream and salt. But was that, and the corn muffins on which to spread the homemade, just-like-the-Pilgrims-did-it butter enough? Hell to the no: the class parents also provided a party spread that included — and I am not making this up — everything from cheese doodles and potato chips to Twizzlers and M&Ms. Row by row, the class lined up to fill a paper plate with their chosen goodies. Guess what?! Nearly all of them completely over-indulged in this uniquely American mixture of salty, crunchy, sweet, fatty fare. One of the class moms actually said to me, “Look at all the stuff they’re piling on their plates!”, as though it was some sort of wild surprise that when 6- and 7-year-old kids are presented with a buffet of snack and treat options, they’ll take a little too much of just about everything. Did she somehow think that they’d be discerning, or say things like, “Hmmm, Twizzlers and cheese doodles might leave my tummy a bit upset”, or “better just take one or two things; we’re headed to lunch in 10 minutes anyway!”

Of course they wouldn’t. Duh. You give kids an unlimited buffet of crap, it’s crap they’ll reach for.

But when my younger boy hit first grade, Year One (and, as it turned out, Year Only) of the ban, birthdays involved parents coming in to read — no cupcakes, no goody bags, no treats. And holidays involved a craft or other activities.

They felt the difference, and while having their parents in the room reading a book or helping with a craft was nice, they noticed the lack of celebratory goodies, and they didn’t like it.

Are you surprised to find that neither did I?

I don’t think kids should be handed donuts, cookies, candy, and chips every time they turn around, which is standard operating procedure these days. No one can go to a club meeting, a sport, or a playdate without treats. Even in our religious ed classes, catechists had to be told by the director that they should try their best to refrain from offering snacks during classes. The net effect, though, is that what I’d call legitimate treat times — birthdays, holidays — become less special. I say, get rid of the lollipops or M&Ms or Twizzlers as “prizes” for good spelling or good behavior; get rid of tables groaning with an overabundance of crap at parties; disassociate Girl Scouts and religious ed classes and soccer games from “chance to have a donut.”

Do that, and you can safely leave in place a cupcake on a birthday, or chocolates on Valentine’s Day, or freshly-buttered corn muffins on Thanksgiving.

Now that our principal has bowed to pressure and re-instated food “privileges” in classrooms, we’ll see how things go. Next up is Halloween. The school holds an adorable parade of the costumed classes, and often the teachers and class parents have parties afterward back in the classroom. Can we all reign it in? I’ll let you know in a few weeks…

And Patricia: Continue to fight the good fight!

First day of school, last year. I can't help being organized, but I fear it triggers an excess of impatience.

Well, the title says it, eh? I’m confessing: I’m horribly impatient. (Those of you who know me are, I realize, sitting there rolling your eyes, like, duh.)

I want to be started with things, and then I want things done. When I wanted to become pregnant, I wanted it to happen pronto, and quickly became frustrated and upset when it took longer than immediately (6 months, for the record). I was sure we’d never find a house we liked and could afford (it took 3 months, for the record, though the closing process dragged for another 5 months until moving day because the house we chose, or that chose us, was owned by a guy whose finances were, let’s say, questionable). My husband likes to chide me for this sort of “we’ll never….” impatience, and in general he’s a very patient man (he’d have to be, with me, right?).

But there’s one way in which he’s not so patient, and because it’s the same with me, I worry. We are both impatient with our sons. Not cruelly so, but there are times I feel like we’re both hurrying them along, prodding them, and sighing impatiently when they dawdle or disregard us or otherwise act like, you know, distracted little boys.

True, both of our children know every single button there is and seem to delight in pushing them, over and over, to the point where even the spawn of Gandhi would be stomping around in parental looniness. But I’m finding I don’t enjoy being Mama Looney, and I don’t like seeing my impatient tendencies on display in my normally calm husband’s demeanor.

True, we’re both tired often, and busy all the time. True, too, that when you strive to raise boys who are capable and responsible, you feel (as we do) that slacking off isn’t the best approach. And true, most of all, that I’m constitutionally unable to be loosey-goosey. There are things I can’t compromise on, at least not easily. I’m too organized to be lax, and sometimes that feels like a big burden to carry around.

For example, I can’t just say, “oh, whatever” on certain rules or habits that pertain to sleep and eating (mostly because good sleep and decent meals are, I’m 100% sure, keep my boys healthy and not beyond-the-bounds-of-reason nuts). If there’s a birthday party that starts at noon, I know that food won’t be served until 2pm (I’ve been to enough kid parties to have this fact firmly in mind), so I make sure they eat a little something before they go. Case in point: at a recent amusement-park party with James, he seemed to be the only one who had eaten first. Meanwhile, a friend of his fainted from heat and hunger.

For another example, I can’t just stick a cold piece of toast in my kids’ hands and drive them to school because we were so lackadaisical that we missed the bus. We never miss the bus. I don’t get missing the bus. So I prod them to get up on time, prod them to finish their breakfast (which I also can’t compromise on; there’s a girl at Daniel’s bus stop who has a cookie and a glass of milk for breakfast, which would never fly at our house), prod them to go upstairs at the precise time they need to be upstairs so they have enough minutes to get their dawdling version of tooth-brushing and dressing done), prod them to get their backpacks sorted out. I don’t enjoy the prodding — but I can no more stop it than I can switch eye colors or the genetic lottery of my mom’s bad feet and my dad’s problematic skin.

So I’m impatient. But I’m looking, I’m keenly searching, for ways and times I can be less so, times I can deliberately let the guard down so my kids can see a more carefree mother in front of them. I can’t stop being organized or thinking four steps ahead, and we still won’t miss the bus, be late for piano lessons, or not have clean underwear on hand.

But there have to be ways to let down my guard. Right? Help me out here!

Two things this week: One, I’m starting a new occasional series, this one called “The Experts Aren’t Always Right.” And two, I’m going to treat you to a guest post as Part One of the series, by my colleague and fellow blogger, Debbie Koenig, who writes the (seriously) delicious blog, Words to Eat By.

The experts are, I believe, trying to get it right, trying to give us life-saving advice. Use car seats, for example. Don’t smoke two packs a day while pregnant. But when the attitude veers from helpful to paternalistic and big-brother-ish, and when following it means erasing your own instincts, I get prickly. And so does Debbie, who has written a hilarious and spot-on piece about how she — a food expert! — has, unbeknownst to her, been bucking received wisdom the whole of her son Harry’s life by feeding him the dreaded choking hazards.

Here’s her piece. Let me know what you think:

Debbie Koenig's son, Harry, aka "Mr. Hot Dog"

Apparently, I’m trying to kill my son.

Or so it would seem, now that the American Academy of Pediatrics has issued a policy statement pointing out the choking hazards lurking in my kitchen—even going so far as to suggest that manufacturers redesign the hot dog (a notion which strikes me as being just short of insanity). When the statement appeared, it included a helpful list of the 10 biggest choking hazards for children under five. This list zoomed all over the momosphere; thanks to parenting blogs, message boards, and social media, I heard about it from at least a dozen sources. Like all my friends with preschoolers, I read the list, felt a chill run down my spine, and promptly began to beat myself up for the countless times we narrowly escaped tragedy.

Let’s see, which of the foods on that list have I given my four-year-old recently?

• Hot dogs: Frankfurters are, without a doubt, Harry’s favorite food. It’s no surprise—my husband and I are raising him to appreciate the finer points of a well-made dog. We actually take road trips just to sample renowned weenies. The AAP recommends cutting them lengthwise until age five, but we stopped doing that months ago.
• Nuts: He doesn’t eat them often, and so far it’s only been as part of a trail mix that features chocolate. (In fact, we’ll only let him have this mix if he eats the nuts—no picking out the chocolate, junior. Further proof I’m trying to kill him.)
• Seeds: That trail mix I mentioned? Sunflower seeds.
• Whole grapes: For the first two years of Harry’s grape-eating career, I meticulously cut them up. Heck, at first I skinned them entirely. But once he became a kid more than a toddler (to my mind, at least), quartered grapes seemed like overkill.
• Raw carrots: Seriously? Baby carrots are among the few vegetables Harry eats willingly. Thanks to his disdain for squishy food, I gave up steaming them when he turned three.
• Popcorn: Harry had his first taste about six months ago. To be honest, I knew this was a choking risk and was pretty terrified—but so many of my friends had been giving it to their tots, I had begun to feel like a wuss. So I sat with him on the sofa and insisted he eat one piece at a time, chewing thoroughly before swallowing. No surprise, that level of vigilance has eased. I don’t leave the room when he’s eating popcorn, but I don’t watch him like a hawk, either.
• Apples: Again, seriously? Harry must wait another year to experience the perfect pleasure of biting into an apple while we cruise the farmer’s market?
• Marshmallows: Yeah. These, we actually used as potty-training incentive. For pee, he’d get one mini-marshmallow. For poop, two. I shudder to think how I risked my son’s life, just so I could say goodbye to changing diapers.
• Hard candy: Only a single transgression here, a few months ago. There was a sucking candy in the goody bag from a schoolmate’s birthday party, and Harry got to it before I did. I blame that kid’s mom.
• Gobs of peanut butter: Harry only gets thin shmears. Phew! At least there’s one item on the list I haven’t used for attempted filicide.

You probably assume I changed my dangerous ways once I read that list. Eh, not so much. According to an analysis performed by Stats.org, a nonprofit research center that interprets statistical mumbo-jumbo, the AAP’s policy statement may be a wee bit inflammatory: “To put the risk into perspective, approximately five children died each year in the U.S. from choking on a hot dog—along with, approximately, 3.3 from candy, 3 from peanuts or other nuts, 2.7 from grapes, 2.3 from other meat, 2 from carrots, 1.7 from popcorn, 1.5 from apples…” And all of these deaths were children younger than three. As creepy as it is to discuss in such terms—and believe me, I know every single one of those children left behind a devastated family—more children Harry’s age die each year in car crashes (or by gunshot) than from choking on the top 10 hazards combined.

Which is not to say I haven’t made adjustments. Reflexively, I check that Harry’s peanuts are halved before he eats them. He’s fully potty-trained, thank heavens, so we’d already cut out the marshmallows. Popcorn remains an occasional treat. And lately we’ve been serving him what we call “dogburgers”: a hot dog cut in half lengthwise, then again across the middle, served on a hamburger bun—a practice instituted when we were out of hot dog buns, not in response to the AAP’s statement. Harry seems to prefer it that way, and if it makes me feel less like a would-be murderer, so much the better.

These aren't my meatballs (too much sauce!), but my boys sure do love it when I make them!

So the boys started their six weeks at the local YMCA camp yesterday. I love this camp. Love it. But as with any situation where kids gather, bad food options seem to be the norm. I work around it; I try not to get my hackles up when I see the Snack Shack stocked with Nerds and Sour Patch Kids and heaven knows what else. Kids like candy, right? The battle I’m having — already! on day one! — is whether I’ll give them money every single day for a trip to the Shack (or is it Shak?).

This intro is my way of saying that food — who’s in control of what’s eaten in and out of the house — is a major issue with me. I don’t care to give up that control, and I don’t think that I should. I’ve written about this before, here. But I also am not an autocrat, and I do remember my own days as a closet (literally) candy-eater. My Daniel has inherited my sweet tooth. (James seems to have inherited the other aspect of my childhood relationship with food; eating just enough to maintain his spaghetti-legs figure). So I want to walk a line between — in the case of camp — packing them healthy lunches, and letting them supplement that with sugar and corn syrup and whatever makes Sour Patch Kids sour (sour mix? Probably not. I think I’d rather not know).

And I must be doing something right, because as I wrote in a guest post on the wonderful Words to Eat By blog, some of my lovingly and freshly prepared foods occasionally rank in my boys’ top favorite foods, even edging out, from time to time, pizza and hot dogs. Which, as Daniel is relishing, are sold for lunch at the Y on Tuesdays and Thursday, respectively.

Oh, and after you read about me, my boys and my meatballs, spend some time on the Words to Eat By blog, by food writer and mom Debbie Koenig. It’s terrific; one of those food blogs you can easily lose an hour on, reading recipes and browsing through photos of the real food she really makes for her real family. Really! She’s working on a book called Parents Need to Eat, Too, by the way, so watch out for that.

And now, it’s just about four hours until I go pick them up, hopefully happy, streaked with dirt, sweat and sunscreen, and with all their socks and underwear and reusable water bottles (one never knows what will be, not not be, in the backpacks), and lips either blue or red from heaven knows what.

What food rules do you bend in the summer? And what dishes do you make that are surefire kid winners?

Vegging out.

My boys are completely normal American children, which is to say, if you sit them down in front of a bag of potato chips, they’ll plow through them. If you give them a bucket of Halloween candy, they’ll dig right in. If you make a cake and offer them mixer beaters coated with chocolate frosting, what do you think they’ll do? (To be fair, they differ; James self-limits, for whatever reason, his junk-food tooth is more easily satisfied than Daniel’s, who — like his mom — will reach the bottom of that chip bag before he hears his brain’s “stop! please for the love of God, stop!” signal.)

But you know what they do when faced with a dinner plate with chicken and broccoli? Well, in that they differ slightly from each other, too. James will start right in on the broccoli, while Daniel will make a beeline for the chicken. And neither of them get the pasta (presuming there is pasta, and both of them hope against hope every night that there will be pasta) until the protein and the veggies are gone or mostly gone. They also both know that once their cup of orange or apple juice is finished, they are free to help themselves to water. Another thing they expect: fruit after dinner. There is ALWAYS fruit, as there always was when I was growing up.

I’m actually way more easygoing on the “you must eat this” front than my parents were. I can still remember a bleak-looking little bowl of spinach (it was in a bowl to segregate its juices from my meat and potatoes; at least my parents bowed to my need to keep foodfromtouching) sitting in front of me until I finished it. And I always did, even though I didn’t like it. We didn’t have royal battles; the undercurrent of parental-control-versus-children’s-grousing was a very quiet hum. But it was there, and all parties present knew the parental-control faction would win every time. I hated it, but I ate the spinach, and I ate the liver, and I ate the beef stew (a semi-nightmare for a child who didn’t like foodthattouched.)

But you know what? Aside from the liver, which even my parents don’t eat anymore (I think my mom bought it because it was a low-cost source of protein and iron, and she’s anemic), I like all those foods. And I’m convinced (anecdotally, nonscientifically) that it was precisely in the “I’m in charge here, no backtalk” rules we had for eating that, eventually, gave me not only a taste for a wide variety of foods, but an understanding of what was good and healthy to eat, and even how to prepare foods. It’s not a mystery. My sister was less of a nightmare picky eater than I was, and my brother was possibly even worse than I was. And now, all three of us? We know how to cook, and we know how to eat.

The way in which my tactics (and my husband’s; as in most child-rearing things, we are firmly on the same page, thank heaven) differ from my parents is that I don’t make them eat what they would call really “weird” vegetables; I do bow much more to their proclivities than my mom would ever do. So, while I make them eat their veggies before the “fun” foods like pasta or french fries, I don’t make them eat stew, and I do bread their chicken and fish a lot of the time, and I do cook their veggies plain and slick them with butter, something my parents never did.

I realize I’m lucky as heck that I have good eaters who like vegetables (even if it’s a mind-numbingly boring repetition of broccoli; peas; green beans; carrots; and back again); who eat hearty lunches at school without complaint (a sandwich on whole grain bread, a yogurt, fruit, milk), and who don’t snack outside of circumscribed times and places. Daniel swears he’ll do such things as try eggplant when he’s 16 (or was it 14? I’ll have to ask him). And I swear I get his dislike of zucchini. He tries, and the texture skeeves him; I feel the same way about mushrooms, one of the few foods I avoid entirely. I won’t force that issue, but I will keep trying and hope he grows into it.

But what I won’t do is throw up my hands and stock my freezer with chicken nuggets (which, for the record, I do buy when they’re on sale; nothing like being able to pop some in the toaster oven when I don’t feel like fussing), or assume that fruit snacks, with their “100% vitamin C!” labels are a replacement for an apple or an orange.

Because as they get older, they need to have both a proper respect for food and mealtimes, and a proper respect for the fact that I know better. I’m sorry if that’s not PC anymore (we’re not supposed to direct our kids’ eating, for fear of triggering an eating disorder), but I do know better.

Food and kids is in the news, as it should be, with rates of childhood obesity rising to the point that our children’s generation is on track to have lower life expectancy than we do. That’s shameful, and horrible. But at the same time, I see and hear from a lot of parents who don’t exercise the control they could, either because it’s too hard to buck the tide, or because they’re afraid (sometimes rightly, depending on their tactics) of giving children a lasting poor relationship with their bodies. It is true that some chubby kids will grow into a healthier frame. It’s also true that some won’t. It’s true that some kids with no good example of how to eat will figure it out themselves. It’s also true that many will not, and will reach adulthood thinking a crumb cake and a Diet Pepsi is a good breakfast.

So here’s what I think. I believe that full-on nagging (or blaming or shaming)  a child who either doesn’t eat the right things, or who eats too much, or who you perceive (maybe because of  own weight or body-image issues) eats too much, does more harm than good. But I do think that pushing kids to eat better, even sometimes insisting that they do, can ultimately be a good thing, presuming you practice what you preach. My parents, as they sat by while my spinach cooled, didn’t humiliate me or shame me into eating it. It was just what was done. It never occurred to me to refuse, despite mild resistance and a lot of grumbling (and, in my brother’s case, a lot of surreptitious tossing of broccoli spears onto my plate).

I think, I hope, that staying in control works, when you combine it with teaching kids the right way to eat (just the other day, I showed Daniel, for the first time, the “serving size” on a box of Fig Newtons; now that’s his new fascination. The serving size, not the Newtons), and doing so yourself. Especially when the alternatives range from bad nutrition to obesity and diabetes.

What do you think?

[photo: everystockphoto.com]

Are your kids always fishing for food?

There’s nothing like being validated, is there? Especially, I have to say, by the New York Times.

Just yesterday, a friend of mine sent me a link to a story in the Times about — wait for it — how kids today snack too much.

Yeah, been there, said that.

The writer, Jennifer Steinhauer, herself a parent, laments how kids can never go anywhere or do anything without snacks being involved. And it’s not just the pretzels, Goldfish and juice boxes moms stash in our bags (just in case of low blood sugar and/or a meltdown) while we’re out and about with kids. It’s also the amount of times we’re asked, as moms, to provide snack for this or that activity or event or meeting.

I fully understand the point of some snacks, as I wrote months ago, when this blog was still new. I get that toddler tummies are tiny, and it’s hard for little ones to manage the long stretch between breakfast and lunch, or lunch and dinner, without a tiding-over. I get that snacks can strategically fill in nutritional gaps (didn’t finish his breakfast milk? A 10 a.m. cheese stick or yogurt is a good calcium-and-vitamin-D boost).

What I don’t get, and never will, is the idea that kids of all ages need food to accompany just about anything they do. Let’s stop calling snacks anything virtuous (the tummy-tider-over; the nutritional gap-filler), and be honest: we use snacks as an event in themselves; a boredom-buster; a tantrum-avoider (hence, as my friend Gretchen told me, the growing number of parents who bring snacks church–as though you can’t ask a 5-year-old to go foodless for an hour. In church).

Snacks are a crutch.

You can’t go a soccer game without a snack. Sure, they play hard, so the orange slices and water bottles at half-time are good. But the Munchkins after? Apparently, my friend Susan told me, you can’t go to a Brownie or Girl Scout meeting without a little somethin’-somethin’ either (I have boys; hence, no Brownies, and I haven’t broached the world of Cub scouting yet). Says Susan, a 7:30 pm Brownie meeting for a bunch of first-graders must be aided and abetted by donuts and cookies. Really? Didn’t they just have dinner? Don’t they have to go to bed, like, soon? You can’t go to a Mommy & Me class without food. My younger son James was in a gymnastics class a couple of years ago, and he was the only one who left after the hour of tumbling and balancing; everyone else had signed up for a second hour of crafts. And … a snack.

I am quick to add here, my kids do get snacks. Of course they get them at school because frankly I think I’d be hauled up in front of a very disapproving PTA if I didn’t send in my second-grader and kindergartner with their daily snacks (along with lunch). I agree with that, and I’m a big fan of our principal, who frowns on junky snacks, and both my sons’ teachers this year, who have stressed that the kids should bring in water, not juice, for snack (probably more to avoid sticky spills on desks than for health, but I’ll take it!).  I have bought vending-machine fare for the boys as a treat (though I steer them to pretzels and popcorn, and away from candy bars and Pop-Tarts, and I often require them to hang on to the goodies until after dinner. They comply).

How do you feel about the ubiquitous culture of snacks? Not about the necessary, between-meals, nutritious snacks, but the “here, kid, have a dollar for the vending machine because I can’t bear to hear you whining any more” snacks? Can your kids get together with an organized group without sniffing around for juice and cookies?

When did kids start drinking out of bags?

Years and years ago, well before I had kids, I was hanging around in my sister’s newly refinished basement, playing some board games with two of her kids and my dad. My niece and nephew, Tara and Nick, were drinking juice out of those foil pouches, like Capri Sun (which now, by the way, are being recycled into adorable purses and tote bags by an enterprising company called Terracycle). Anyway, both those kids, being kids, had a hard time sitting still. They were scooting around the table where we were playing, hanging upside down from the couch — all while sipping from their pouches.

Suddenly something occurred to me: There were no juice boxes or pouches, much less sippy cups, when my siblings and I were their age. So I turned to my dad, and asked, “When we were kids, how did we drink juice?”

“Out of a cup. At the table. Like a human,” he answered.

Hmmm…

A number of years later, at my baby shower, I received a basket full of childproofing gadgets — outlet covers, cabinet locks, a contraption whose sole purpose seemed to be to render your toilet virtually unusable without an advanced engineering degree. We didn’t end up using any of them. First, we lived in such an old (read: unrenovated) apartment that we only had three or four outlets in the whole place, so all of them were already quite full, thanks very much. Second, the cabinet locks didn’t work with the type of (cheap, builder-grade) cabinets in our kitchen. Third, I was not about to lock up my toilet. Please, we only had one!

By the time Daniel was mobile enough to get into things he possibly shouldn’t, he just kind of…didn’t. We had two bookcases in the living room, and we’d already cleared out the bottom shelves to stow baskets with his toys, which he happily accessed himself. Not only did he not strew our CDs over the floor, neither did he ever stick a frozen waffle into the VCR.  Do kids actually do that? You hear about it, kids jamming foodstuffs into VCRs, but I always wondered if it was an urban legend, or if the fact that Daniel didn’t do it made him weird.

Then again, he may not have tried to feed the electronic equipment because he never consumed waffles, or anything else, while wandering about in reach of the VCR.

He ate in his high chair. Pulled up to the table. Like a human.

I’m not anti-childproofing, but there’s a tipping point at which well-meaning parents slide from commonsense moves (like relocating dangerous substances out of reach, or buckling a baby into a carseat, neither of which, incidentally, my parents did for me) into a sort of childproofing mania. You can actually hire a professional childproofing consultant who’ll come to your house and assess what needs to be done. I hear they crawl around at kid-level, looking for death lurking in every corner (and charging you appropriately for fixing what’s patently wrong with your home). I imagine them going around with their clipboard and a serious expression, handing you the estimate, then going out to their car and laughing all the way to the bank.

Any of you get the One Step Ahead catalog? I do. They have some good stuff in there, from top-quality carseats to breastpumps. But their real stock in trade is the childproofing paraphernalia that you just have to have. And if you have to have it but don’t have it, that means your house is obviously impossibly dangerous. Good God, how can you raise your child in that death trap? (See Death Trap Protector, on page 14.)

We used two things to childproof, apart from the outlet covers, which we did employ when we moved into a bigger home with more outlets; the boys pulled them out and used them as toys; and apart from a gate that roped off my husband’s home office, which was doorless and full of very enticing officey objects. Those two things:

1. Physical intervention. If the boy started crawling toward something he shouldn’t, we’d intercept him. Try this if you have a newly crawling baby — it’s hilarious. Just pick him up, mid-crawl, turn him around, and set him back down. He keeps going in the new direction, like a windup toy. Who says babies are no fun?!.
2. A sharp”No!”, which tended to make the baby plop onto his butt and look up at us, like, “what? I wasn’t going for the bleach! Jeez, Mom!” But he stopped.

But we didn’t lock toilets or cover tub faucets or buy those weird gates that turn your living room into a toddler-safe OK Corral. And no way, ever, never would I spend a dime on this:

Fun with fruit!

This being a mesh bag with a handle. It’s called the Baby Safe Feeder Starter Kit (good heavens, there’s more to it?) You pop in a piece of fruit or whatever, and your child can gum and mash and suck out the food through the mesh. You know, so he doesn’t choke.

Naturally I don’t want my child to choke on his food. Or fall down the stairs, or burn himself on the stove, or play chemistry set with the cleaning supplies. But I do believe that things like this mesh bag lull parents into thinking they can eliminate risk with one giant order from the childproofing porn magazine, I mean, the One Step Ahead catalog.

Because, you know–with that mesh bag? Um, whatever happened to cutting up your kid’s fruit? And serving it to him, under your watchful eye?

At the table? Like a human.

The bag with (at least) nine lives.

“Mom, what should I do with my applesauce cup?”

I sigh. I’ve explained this before–the applesauce and yogurt cups are recyclable, so bring them home. The plastic utensils? They’re dishwasher safe, my son, so tote ‘em on home. What I say is, “You know what, Daniel? Just put everything in your lunchbox and bring it home — we’ll sort it out later.”

Annoyingly, though the schools talk a good game about saving the earth (or, as James says cutely, “we have to save the Earf”), they don’t have recycling bins in the cafeteria. So in the giant garbage bucket go the water bottles, the juice boxes, and the yogurt and applesauce cups, along with the sandwich baggies, straws, napkins, and mountains of uneaten food (though, I have to say, not from my son’s lunch!).

I’m hardly perfect when it comes to environmentally-ideal lunch packing, otherwise I’d use cloth napkins and make my own granola bars. But at the very least, I pack re-usable drink containers (juice boxes, though I use them for camp and picnics, go against my natural frugality as well as my environmental efforts), and I continually, if not perfectly patiently, instruct my sons to bring the stuff home.

Ziploc bags are where I straddle the line between being green and being a typically profligate consumer-and-tosser of packaging. Because I do use them–for snacks and sandwiches–but I also reuse them. Over. And over. And over.

Right now, in fact, there’s a mini mountain range on my drainboard, made entirely of inside-out, just-washed Ziploc bags. Objectively, it’s kind of pretty – the diminutive snack-size bags are the foothills, the sandwich bags rise into higher mountains, and the large freezer bags, which once held frozen chicken breasts or rings of Italian sausages, are the range’s Everest and K2. They’re sprinkled with water droplets, and sparkle in the light from the kitchen window, their blue-and-green zippers anchoring them to the dishtowel.

I’ve just done the pain-in-the-butt job of turning a week’s worth of bags inside out, sticking one hand inside them, and soaping them up with a sponge. Then the rinse, and the slow-drying mountain range. Once dry, I turn them back right-side-out, fold them, and stack them back in the drawer that holds the boxes of their pristine cousins, Ziplocs I try my best not to use, at least not until my motley collection has seen its last days.

I know there are other earth-friendly options for the task of packing my sons’ lunches and snacks every day, such as reusable containers that can be popped in the dishwasher, and I do fill reusable bottles with milk or apple juice rather than buy juice boxes, but I like my Ziplocs. I enjoy the mental game I play: how long can I make the bargain box of 50 snack-sized bags last? The whole school year? Until winter break? And I don’t like the other option: succumbing to the siren song of single-serving bags of pretzels, popcorn, Goldfish crackers.

My wash-and-reuse system of sandwich- and snack-packing may seem modern, but really I come by it genetically. My grandmother tore Brillo pads in half (really, a half does just as good a job, and goes rusty and unusable just as quickly as a whole), and actually washed what little aluminum foil she used. I remember the one hearty laugh my sister and I got on the otherwise sad day more than a decade ago, when we were clearing out our grandmother’s apartment before she entered the nursing home. “Oh my God!” my sister exclaimed, rummaging in a pantry shelf. “This box of foil is from Hill’s!” Which was a five-and-dime store in our old neighborhood in Queens—where Grandma hadn’t lived since 1978.

As a schoolchild, I was admonished daily to bring home my brown paper lunch bags. Sometimes I did, but many days I forgot and felt bad, especially when I’d see my dad, who brown-bagged lunch for work, with a stack of five on a Friday, neatly folded as though hardly used.

It was a chore for me—but it seems to be sinking in to become second-nature for my boys. Such as the time not long ago, when Daniel handed me his lunch box full of cups to be rinsed and Ziplocs to be washed, and said, “Mom! Ally, who sits next to me? She said her mom told her to throw out her bags! Why would she say that?!”

Meanwhile, our Ziploc mountain range gleams in the sun.

How do you teach your kids about recycling?

I'm (not) lovin' it.

It should probably come as no surprise that I’m not a fast-food fan. I used to love it, as a child, and even into my twenties, but no more. The few times I’ve had it, post age 30 or so, it didn’t sit right, in more ways than one. So, me and McDonald’s (or BK or Wendy’s…)? Not so much. Especially after I read author Erik Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation, and saw Morgan Spurlock’s brilliant and nausea-inducing documentary Super Size Me, which details (horrifyingly) his 30-day experiment of eating nothing but fast food for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

My problem with fast food is that it’s changed from being an occasional treat, a fun but unhealthy island in a sea of good eating, to a commonplace part of many American children’s weekly, or even daily, diet. I sort of knew this, just by noting the sheer number of Happy Meal toys that turn up in the preschool treasure box and in friends’ and relatives’ toyboxes, and the sheer number of cars clogging the parking lot and snaking away from the drive-throughs of every fast food joint I pass. But I wanted a little more empirical evidence.

How about this, from a 2004 study in the journal Pediatrics: On a typical day, 30.3% of 4 – 19-year-olds in a survey had fast food at least once. What?! That’s just wrong. The researchers also found that all those high-fat, high-salt, low-nutrition meals were adding pounds a year to our kids’ bodies. Not only that, but the average fast-food meal has gotten bigger and bigger and less and less healthy (the addition of salads and side orders of apple slices to the menu notwithstanding) than they were when I was a child.

Back then, my experience with McDonald’s was as exotic as a weekend in Paris might be to my present-day life. We’d only go there if my parents were going out for an evening (which happened at least once a month), and my mom had nothing in the house to feed us kids (highly unlikely). But when we did get it? Boy did I enjoy my cheeseburger, fries, and milkshake dinner! That and a fun babysitter, and I was set for a rockin’ Saturday night.

All this is my longish-winded way of saying that I don’t take my boys out for fast food all that often. Daniel is 6 and James is 4, and they’ve had McDonald’s precisely three times in their lives: once on a winter-day playdate in a mall food court (oh, they places we’ll go when we can’t play outside!); once with my parents when my mom, who does not eat fast food but who does love a bargain, was babysitting and had a coupon for something like a zillion McNuggets for $3); and once a couple of weeks ago, with me. As a Treat.

Which it was not. Not really.

On this particular day, the boys both had soccer games, with an hour to kill in between. Because I try to space out treats to give them more impact (see my post on the power of delayed gratification, I figured a trip to a fast-food joint, Chicken McNuggets and a Happy Meal would pack a punch (and the happy-kid result would outweigh the lack of nutrition; after all, it’s just one meal in between a good breakfast and a healthy dinner).

So off we went! First funny thing that happened: We got in the car at the soccer field, I told the boys we’d go to McDonald’s for lunch before the next game … and I had no idea where the closest McD’s even was. I had a vague idea, so I sort of drove on a major road for a while until, voila, the Golden Arches loomed. Second funny thing that happened: I realized that my older son, Daniel, actually had no idea that McDonald’s serves — indeed, is most known for — hamburgers! He’s only ever had their McNuggets and fries. I found that not just amusing, but gratifying.

I ordered two McNugget Happy Meals, and a salad for myself. And down we sat. I guess it’s nice that McDonald’s tries to keep its locations clean, but every time I’ve been in a McD’s restaurant (the last time before this was at a rest-stop during a road trip, so we could pee and get some coffee), someone’s mopping the floor. There’s something disspiriting about munching on a saddish-looking salad while someone’s swishing a mop around your feet, you know?

The boys did okay, though James only nibbled two of his six nuggets (he ate the fries and drank his Mott’s apple-juice box, though). For the boys, the peripherals of the meal — getting ketchup out of little packets rather than a bottle; eating out of a partitioned cardboard box; getting a “prize,” in this case a music CD that’s on endless loop in the car now — were more enticing than the food itself. I heard not one “Wow, this is so good!”

I’m sort of surprised by the lesson I drew from the experience. I guess I figured I’d get a “Gee, Mom, thanks for the treat!” reaction. Truth to be told, the boys seemed as disspirited as I had. They’d have been happier with a couple slices at the pizza place, or lunch at home with the promise of an Italian ice after the game.

How often do you and your kids have fast food? And how do you feel about it?

[photo: Everystockphoto.com]

Let me say this right upfront: I love snacks. I love chips, both potato and chocolate. I love little, picky things, finger food, cheese and crackers, nuts, trail mix… I love the good kind of snacks (baked pita chips dipped in hummus) and the bad kind (day-glo cheez doodles that turn your fingers orange).

But. I have come to believe that, for this generation of kids, snacking has become a sort of religion. There’s a belief in snacks, a cult of snacks and snacking. Many parents simply do not leave the house without arming themselves with snacks. You’d think when we venture out of our front doors, none of us has a clear idea of when we might return for a nourishing meal, or whether we might, in our travels, pass a place where foodstuffs might be readily available. (It’s not 40 years wandering in the desert, folks, it’s a playdate and a couple of errands in town!).

When I first became a parent, I didn’t pack snacks. First, of course, because I was breastfeeding my son; lucky me, I didn’t even have to bother packing bottles. But when he started eating food, and I was going to be out of the house for a while, I packed what might be necessary for his meals. And yes, I did include A Snack in his daily mealtime schedule, but A Snack is different from snacks. A Snack is a scheduled pause for a bit of food to tide tiny tummies over in the long stretch between, say, lunch and dinner. Thinking it’s snack time? Ask yourself these questions:

• Is the snack filling a gap? If Junior didn’t have the strawberries you gave him with his breakfast waffle, then fruit or 100% fruit juice is an ideal snack an hour or two later–sneaks in the nutrition he missed earlier.
• Is the snack timed well? Ideally, space snacks 2 or so hours before the next meal. A 10 am nosh? Great. A hearty snack 15 minutes before lunch? Not so much.
• Is the snack to satisfy hunger? See above. Kids do need snacks to keep energy up and spread nutrition throughout the day. They don’t need them to stave off boredom or round out a playdate or as rewards, except in moderation (think: a lollipop after that shot at the doctor’s office!).

So that’s A Snack. But generic, unspecific snacks are non-scheduled, often bribe-related, habits. In the car? Have a snack! At the library? Snack time! Need to spin through Target or the mall for a birthday gift? Better bring a snack because he might get hungry.

Really?

My first encounter with the Cult of Snacking came shortly after my second son was born. At home with a three-week-old and a 2-year-old was grating on me, so I took both boys  to the local Barnes and Noble. I figured I’d let Daniel tool around in the kids’ section (they have a great Thomas the Tank Engine table there), and then I’d buy a magazine and head home before the baby needed nursing again. When we arrived, an employee informed me that story time was about to begin. Story time! Sure, we’ll go.

I steered the stroller over, and sat Daniel down to listen. And just as the reader opened her first book, half the kids in the audience cracked open lunch boxes and snack containers and juice boxes. That was the end of that — my boy became far more mesmerized by his neighbor’s goldfish and fruit snacks than he was by the story. Then the baby woke up, pooped, and cried, so that was the end of story time for us.

Since then I’ve fought the battle of the snacks. I pack three snacks a day, along with lunch (one for Daniel in first grade, and TWO for James in pre-K). Why two? He has a morning snack, then lunch, and he’s home by 3:30. Can’t he wait? The answer is that yes, of course he can, but it’s part of the ritual.

Perhaps I’m spoiled by having boys who, for the most part and within certain picky parameters, eat their meals (and so probably have less need, as they grow, for quite so many snacks to “fill in” their diet). I do know that plenty of moms complain that their kids don’t eat their dinner. Um, could it be because they had a juice box and a bowl of pretzels and goldfish at 4pm? Just a thought!

What’s your snack stance?