Recently, I joined my son at school for Picnic With Parents in his 1st grade class. I genuinely had a fabulous time. It was so nice to get to know his teacher, the friends that live outside of our neighborhood, and of course the other parents. I chatted with some other mothers about our kids and the classroom - just the usual stuff. Lunch was fun and Kaden read me a story about spiders from his Weekly Reader News (I LOVED those when I was his age and glad he does too) and I read him and his pals a Halloween story.
So...now my problem. Again, I don't want to offend anyone because the truth is, I have been guilty of this too. We were all given the option of ordering a sack lunch from the school or bring in our own for us and our child. My kiddo had requested a ham sandwich and his water bottle; that was TOTALLY doable! We each had a ham sandwich with mustard and veggies; I even splurged and we shared a snack bag of Sun Chips. His teacher provided dessert so we both had a pumpkin shaped shortbread cookie - we agreed that it was just okay. Everything was fine until he noticed that almost all of the other kids that had parents there had McD's and sodas. "Mom, can I have a soda?" Dang! "Nope kiddo. Mom only brought us waters." This is when it hits me...What in the world are we teaching our kids without even intentionally doing it? Now I get to feel like the "bad mom" because our society is so trained to reward our kids with junk food. I said it...and it's the truth...and I'm just as guilty as anyone else.
UGH! Here we are trying to teach our children how to respect themselves, their bodies, their family and friends, but we are rewarding them with food that is less than respectful to their little bodies. It's time to change this trend. We love our children and we all want nothing but the best for them right? Silly to even have to ask that, but we are guilty of of giving them the complete opposite completely out of love. UGH again! I'm not saying that my children will never again get fast food, that's silly unfortunately. In a perfect world, the temptation wouldn't even exist, but it does, so saying they will never again eat a french fry is a lie.
There is one thing however that I do know for sure. I will be much more aware of our trips through the drive-thru and it won't be for rewards or "special occasions" because those should be nothing but the best. We have plenty of other treats that we use for rewards and celebrations (cake, cookies, etc) that are far sweeter than a french fry. ;) We already very rarely hit a drive-thru but it will be even more rare now.
If you agree, leave a comment and tell me what you would have brought and what you would choose to pack now? It's time to change the trend!
No comments:
Post a Comment