Unsafe at Any Size

So my son doesn’t want to eat dinner, even though it’s chicken nuggets, usually a big favorite.  Is he sick?

No.  He had a snack at school.

What kind of a snack?

Cereal bars.

Three of them.

My son is 6.  Even given he’s a growing boy, three cereal bars is a LOT of food.

I told him so, and will tell the after school teachers that maybe unlimited access to the goody of the day isn’t such a good idea.  I don’t want to get ahead of myself, but I wonder if I need to be concerned.

After all, I started fairly young, too.  My mother tells a story about the first time she gave me a peanut butter sandwich.  I liked it so much I begged for another, then promptly puked it all up.

Now, this story did not presage a life of bulimia, but I didn’t get to be so fat without relishing food, in large quantities, whenever I got an opportunity.  I was the kid who swiped frosting flowers off of birthday cakes–before we sang Happy Birthday.  Oh, and it wasn’t my cake.

I don’t want to give my kid a complex, but I also want to teach about healthy limits.  I’ve read about those crazy moms who are always after their kid to eat less, even though the kid is fine.  But I wonder what would have helped me find those healthy limits when I was a kid.

What would you do?

I’ve been moaning and groaning that my Y doesn’t have classes at 5.  Well, one class, but they changed it to zumba, which so far doesn’t fit into the fung shui of my workouts.

But I’ve got a little boot camp back!  How?  Kids joined basketball, and their practice is right at bootcamp time!  I’m more excited to sweat than I care to admit.

If it’s hard for adults to eat the right food, imagine how hard it is for kids.  They want to eat what other kids eat and fit in, and don’t have much in the way of impulse control.

Or at least I didn’t.  I guess I had an extended childhood in that I didn’t really develop any impulse control when it came to food until rather recently.

Frank Bruni’s recent article in the New York Times about how parents struggle to educate kids about food resonated with me as a parent trying to find health without turning my kids into diet freaks.  So far, neither of them are showing my early proclivities to eat excessively, but they treat vegetables like toxic waste.

I try to keep my program to myself, but every once in a while my kids will ask me how many points are in something they are eating, or ask me how much weight I’ve lost.

One of the reasons why I started on my journey was because I wanted to tell my kids how to eat and live more healthily, but knew that my actions would speak much more loudly than anything I said.  And I was being a hypocrite if I said they couldn’t have the cookies I bought for myself because I wanted them to be healthy, but wouldn’t do what it took to be healthy myself.

So now we don’t have cookies for anyone.  We do have some desserts, but none of us get desserts unless we eat our vegetables, or, in their case, a vegetable.  You’ve got to take care of business for your body first, before you get extras.

Sometimes, they actually do it and get that ice cream treat.  In fact, Sam waxed so euphoric about the virtues of green beans the other day he told me he would always eat them and never eat dessert.  I was concerned he was going too far the other way, and told him dessert was ok as a treat, but it wasn’t a treat if it was all the time.  I needn’t had worried; he hasn’t touched the green beans since.

But he is drinking orange juice again, so my fears of scurvy are assuaged for now.  And the boys are at least talking about what makes a healthy diet.  I can’t force them to eat anything, but I can provide healthy choices and a healthy example for them to follow if they choose.

So I didn’t loose this week, but I didn’t gain, either.  Overall, I consider that a win.

It was a tougher week than I expected with the kids going to 1st grade.  Nate was having a really hard time adjusting to the mixed grade playground, which is also much larger than that for the kinders.  He wasn’t able to find his friends for some reason, and felt very lonely.

Unfortunately, being a six year old, that’s not how he expressed it at first.  Instead, he blamed it all on having to wear a brace on one leg, and was inconsolable because it was no fair, and no one else had to wear one.  On top of that, he always loses races.

It was a lot worse than it sounds: night after night of crying about the injustice of the world.  I thought it was parents who were supposed to drive the kids to therapy, not the other way around.  How do you explain a disability to a kid when you don’t know the reason why yourself?  It really isn’t fair, and knowing like I do that it could have been a lot worse doesn’t make it any better. I’m glad my first instinct this time wasn’t to push down those feelings of being inadequate.

It turns out the disability was a scapegoat for these other feelings of being left out.  We were able to come up with a plan where he’d talk to a friend before going to recess about where he’d be so he could find someone.

I was surprised that a blog I follow for healthy kid’s foods wasn’t categorically against vending machines in schools.  In her Healthy Food Ideas for Super Healthy Kids, Amy says she doesn’t oppose putting vending machines in schools because we need to teach kids how to resist temptation and make healthy choices.  She argues that there will always be unhealthy foods, at work, at the autoshop… and our kids need to know how to stay away from it.  We won’t stop obesity by legislating away junk food because it will always be there.

Fortunately, making these choices at school are a long way away for my 6-year old twin boys, because if they had change and there was a vending machine with candy they would so not be making healthy choices.  It would be nice if vending machines even had healthy choices, but they generally don’t.

So no vending machines in elementary schools with Dorito happy 6 year-olds.  I think we’re all ok with that.

But when do we start trusting kids to make healthy choices?  We don’t trust them with the choice to buy cigarettes until they are 18, and alcohol until they are 21.

Now, is junk food analogous to cigarettes and alcohol?  Perhaps more the latter, as it’s possible to drink responsibly and sociably, but it’s more likely to be abused by the young which is why we limit their access to it until they are more responsible.  Drinking a six-pack is more immediately dangerous than eating a box of Ding Dongs (mmmm…. Ding Dongs), but both present serious health dangers over time.

Yes, our kids need to learn how to make healthy choices, but do they have to have these challenges everywhere, including school?  There are plenty of other places where they’ll have to exercise their healthy choice muscles.  Unfortunately, many are already addicted to unhealthy choices, as I was.

What’s your take?