Schools Banning Food

Sandwiched between the announcement of the PTA’s latest fundraising drive and the Principal’s pleas for kids to stop shoving each other on the playground, the administrators running the Friday morning assembly at the Bean’s elementary school offered up some thoughts on nutrition. The Principal said that kids who didn’t bring a “nutritious” snack to school would be “sent to the cafeteria for a sandwich.” It was clear that gummi bears and Flaming Hot Cheetos were deemed inadequate snacks. It was not clear if after sending a kid to the cafeteria, the school would pay for the healthy sandwich or if the kids were on the hook for it themselves. Listening to this, my hackles raised a bit.

We’ve had issues with this school and food before. Last year, the lunchtime monitor deemed some items in the Bean’s lunch unhealthy and scolded him for bringing them to school. The Bean happened to be in the midst of a brief obession with food where every bite he took was preceded by the question, “Is this healthy?"  WonderWife™ takes pride in packing nutritious lunches for our kids.  And as a person raised on fast food, who doesn't have the world’s best eating habits (read my numerous posts on candy and bacon if you don’t believe me), it’s really important to me that my kids learn to eat well.  The woman at the Bean’s school was plain wrong about judging the yogurt he was eating (it was healthy) and she certianly had no place saying anything to my son about it.  The issue was discussed with the school and it has not happened again.  But it was running through my mind as I listened to the Principal address the students.

The school’s heart is in the right place, but I don’t think schools should become food police.

We are a nation of overweight, processed-food junkies who are getting exponentially bigger while passing our terrible eating habits on to the next generation, and we need help. Schools should play a part by offering healthier food and not making soda and candy readily available in the hallways. But should they have the right to tell a kid what kinds of food they are allowed to eat? Shouldn’t this be up to parents?

A school dictating what is considered nutritious for a student takes away the ability and need of the parent to make those kinds of choices by removing them from the decision making process. Parents need to be able to choose their own paths and influence their kids behavior as they see fit, not because a group of public school administrators says so.  Doing so is forcing behavior change.  And as we parents know, forcing will inevitably cause backlash from our kids.

Recently Flaming Hot Cheetos have been banned in schools in California and New Mexico because of the poor nutritional value of the snack. While I personally find them to be tasty, I agree that Cheetos aren’t even in the realm of healthy. But is banning or confiscating these snacks the answer? Taking away snacks in school doesn't stop kids from eating them when their not in school.  It just makes them forbidden fruit.  So wouldn't it be better if the people educating our children attempted to teach them about nutrition instead of policing it?  Let's give the next generation the information and tools to change instead of forcing our will upon them. 

To my son’s school, I offer this suggestion: How about if you notice a kid eating unhealthy food instead of punishing the kid, maybe send a note home to engage the parents who are providing the food in a discussion? Explain why the food in question may be problematic and allow the now-informed parents to make a decision they deem best for their child. But stop being food bullies. Because nothing is going to get better by forcing it.

Nails, Part 3

Every morning, the first graders all swarm around me in the morning holding out their fists. I’m not sure how I became the ringleader of these massive games of Rock, Paper,Scissors, but once the proverbial genie had been released it wasn’t going back in the bottle because it was having too much fun playing with the grown up before school began.

On this particular morning one of the fingernails of the hands playing was painted bright orange. In the midst of the action, one brash girl stopped so she could tell the boy who was attached to the orange fingers that it was “against the rules” for a boy to wear nail polish.  She punctuated her proclamation with an authoritative, “My mom said so.”  Another boy chirped that his mom also said that boys were not allowed to paint their nails—only girls.

The orange-nailed boy quietly slunk away.

As the father of a boy, who on occasion likes to paint his nails, I have some strong opinions on the subject.  I told the objectionable kids that everybody has different rules and just because their moms told them one thing doesn’t mean it applies to everyone.  It took a lot not to use phrases like “narrow minded” or worse when talking to those kids about their mothers.

The kids scattered to line up when the bell ran. I hugged the Bean, who had witnessed the whole thing, and reminded him that no matter what anyone else says it’s okay for anyone to paint their nails if they want to. I then scanned the area for the orange-nailed boy. I spotted him at the front of the line and worked my way around some errant kids to get to him. I tapped him on the shoulder and when he turned around I looked him in the eye and said, “Just so you know, I think your nails are awesome.”

He smiled as he went off to class.

Painting Toes Pink

The Daily Show tipped me off to a story that’s been bubbling up across the media this week. Clothing store J Crew recently featured an ad that showed a mother and son where the son’s toenails were painted pink. Apparently the idea of a nail polish on a boy was cause for concern, but it was the color of the toes in question that seemed to send people into a tizzy.

Psychologists and other “experts” came out of the woodwork and spoke with places like Fox News (natch) about a world that is “abandoning the trappings of gender identity.” A spokeswoman for some traditional values organization fears that the ad “features blatant propaganda celebrating transgendered children.”

As the father of a boy who on occasion likes to paint his toes and fingers pink, I’d like to say one thing to these people:

FUCK YOU!

Just because your narrow ideas of gender identity are old fashioned doesn’t mean you have the right to suggest that my kid is anything but a perfectly happy, well-adjusted little boy. How dare you take a young mind that is open and without prejudice and try to teach him that a color is off limits because somebody along the line decided that it was “for girls” or that he can’t express himself by putting that color on his nails. Fuck you for implying that my son will have identity issues and fuck you for insinuating that I’m a bad parent because of it.

I thought we were beyond this. I grew up in the age of Free to Be You and Me and was taught that boys and girls shouldn’t be defined solely by their gender. It was okay for William to have a doll if that’s what he wanted just like it was okay for me to play kitchen with my sister. And because of the time I spent play cooking, I became a tornado in the kitchen who makes a mean red sauce. There’s nothing girly about marinara.

A color is a color, not a gender. Pink is red and white mixed together, not a lifestyle. A little nail polish isn’t going to change the way somebody is wired. Yes boys and girls are different, but it’s not because of colors or princesses or sports.

I’d like to invite these small minded so called specialists to spend some quality time with my son who does many “boy” things, like run around like a maniac and pretend to shoot guns and play superheroes and video games…all while wearing bright pink nail polish.

You simple minded, scared, homophobic assholes can raise your kids however you want. But you shut your damn mouths when you talk about mine.