Ways I’m Being Bad Enough

on April 18, 2012 7 Comments

Last September I pledged to stop trying so hard to be good enough. Instead, inspired by my good friend, I’m trying to be bad enough. Bad enough that I know I have lived my life well and fully. Bad enough that I don’t look back on this time in another 15 years and lament how I wasted it being so very good.

Trying to be bad enough doesn’t come naturally to me. For a good portion of my life my identity was all wrapped up in being the good girl, and making other people happy. In many ways it still is. But I’m trying, man. I’m really, really trying. Today I’m sharing some of the ways that I’m being bad enough.

Bad enough
This is me, being bad enough

Nine Ways to be Bad Enough

  1. This post was not scheduled in advance to run at exactly 6:00am Pacific time. When it was 11:30pm last night and I hadn’t started writing it yet, I decided that it could wait until tomorrow while I caught up on Glee.
  2. Yesterday I declined to complete a work task that had been assigned to me, when it became clear just how very much effort it was going to entail. It turns out you can just say no to some things. Liberating!
  3. Yoga pants. I love them. I wear them, even though I haven’t done yoga in ages. I don’t care if they’re less than fashionable.
  4. After a stint of trying to prepare a hot breakfast every day, I have embraced cold cereal as our morning meal of choice. It’s fast. It’s easy. The kids like it – and they can even make it themselves. Score one for me!
  5. I have discovered the wonder of Saturday morning cartoons. Plunk your kids in front of the TV when they wake up, and voila, you get an extra hour of sleep. Genius!
  6. I regularly spoil my dinner by eating chocolate. And I don’t even feel bad about it.
  7. I have a cleaning lady who comes every two weeks to help keep my house from becoming completely unlivable. I have stopped cleaning before she comes. Let her judge my slovenly ways, I can take it.
  8. I have let myself off the hook on some volunteer commitments. It feels good to let those things go.
  9. For the first time in my life, I quit a job, and resigned as the webmaster for my local arts council. I no longer had the time for it. It was really freeing. Everyone understood why. It was really good.

What about you – how are you being bad enough?

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Formula in my Cupboard

on April 17, 2012 8 Comments

I’ve been thinking about something recently. When my daughter Hannah was born at 34 weeks, she was given a bottle of formula in the NICU before I had a chance to try breastfeeding her. When I did try to breastfeed her, she refused to latch. I started pumping, but I was never able to get as much as the doctors and nurses said she needed, so about half of her milk intake was formula. When she left the hospital at one week old she still hadn’t successfully latched, and the nurses tucked a few jars of pre-prepared formula into my diaper bag. That formula only lasted a day or so, so my husband had to go buy a can within 24 hours of Hannah’s arrival home.

Now, I should make something clear: I had really not planned to give my baby formula. I was intent on breastfeeding for at least 12-18 months before my first child was even born. But when you have a premature baby, and many people in white coats are saying that baby needs a certain amount of food, you give that amount. When that baby refuses to latch, and you’re having limited success with pumping, you supplement. Looking back I think that a whole lot of things could have been handled better in general – like, say, not separating me from my perfectly healthy baby within minutes of her birth – but this was one of those times in life when I found myself doing the best I could with the situation I found myself in.

The good news in this story is that the morning after my husband’s trip to buy that big can of formula, Hannah finally latched using a nipple shield. Within 48 hours I had stopped pumping and she wasn’t receiving any more formula supplements. I think we ended up mixing a total of two bottles out of the big can of formula. I kept it for a few weeks just to be sure that everything would go okay, and then I threw it out with glee.

In the years since my first baby was born, I’ve spoken with many other mothers who found themselves giving their babies formula when they hadn’t planned to. Many of these mothers do everything they can to limit the amount of formula their babies receive. I also know moms who go to great lengths to ensure their little ones never receive any formula at all, spending their lives attached to breast pumps and forgoing sleep and showers and regular meals in order to get breastfeeding going.

I think that every mother needs to make her own decisions about just how far she’s willing to go to avoid infant formula. Some moms may not even try to avoid it at all. That’s not really my point here. I’m not writing this to moralize on why breastfeeding is so important. I think we’ve all read the public health messages, and we all know the drill. What’s interesting to me, however, is how different parents will respond to having infant formula available. Will you still avoid it all costs – or will having it in your cupboard lead you to offer that first bottle just that much sooner?

The evidence suggests that mothers who receive formula samples from the hospital are less likely to breastfeed. This is true whether we’re talking about commercial sample packs from a formula company, or nurses tucking a few jars into a diaper bag, which is what I got. To a certain degree, this just makes sense. Regardless of where you stand on formula companies, I think we can all agree that they’re big businesses, and they’re unlikely to engage in a widespread marketing practice if it doesn’t work. Formula marketing – such as handing out samples – is meant to sell formula, and at least some of the time it does that at the expense of breastfeeding.

I understand the evidence, but it doesn’t answer my initial question. Why do some mothers view that formula can on their shelves with extreme suspicion, while others view it as a welcome back-up plan or occasional alternative?

There are a whole lot of factors that influence breastfeeding rates, as it turns out. Here are a few, based on the research:

Looking at that list I see that there are a whole lot of factors that influence a mother’s breastfeeding experience. There’s no single thing that’s going to determine if a mother breastfeeds, how long she breastfeeds for, or whether she breastfeeds exclusively or supplements with formula. What’s more, any individual mother may have very different experiences from one baby to the next. It’s simply not true that any mom who has a can of formula in her cupboard is going to use it. However, that doesn’t mean we should all buy it, or that formula companies or hospitals should go ahead and hand out free samples “just in case”.

What I think it does mean is that, first and foremost, we need to make sure that mothers have good information and support. When you look at that list, most of the success factors centre around a mother who has access to the resources she needs, when she needs them. Whether it’s health care providers in the hospital, your mother helping you out at home, or a website you search out when you’re looking for information, if you can find the answers you’re looking for, you’re more likely to be successful.

Should we curtail formula marketing? I think we should. But I also think that we need to keep our focus where it belongs, and that’s on parents. The ideal outcome in my book is that parents are satisfied with their own experiences, whether we’re talking about breastfeeding or anything else associated with that transition to early parenthood. Because a can of formula in your pantry isn’t going to really be there for you, whether you ever give it to your baby or not.

What are your experiences with formula samples? Did you receive any? Did you use them? Where do you think we should focus our efforts at helping mothers succeed at breastfeeding? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

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Eight Random Cool Moments

on April 16, 2012 3 Comments

Are you a list-maker? I totally am. I make lots and lots of lists – mostly in my head. My lists have exciting titles like Four Things I Need to do Today, Impending Work Deadlines, Supplies my Kids Need in Their School Backpacks and Stuff I Need at the Grocery Store. My life is all itemized into things I have to do and want to do and should probably do. I’ll do them all, I promise. Soon. Ish. Totally. Just you wait.

In honour of my list-making ways, I thought I would make a different kind of list to share with you today. A slightly less, erm, pressing list. This list is about taking a moment to stop and take in what’s happening in my life, as it is.

Making funny faces with Jacob

Eight Random Cool Moments From my Weekend

  1. Home repair! I fixed handles on drawers and cupboards, and glued things that needed gluing. I love work like this, that makes a small but tangible improvement to my daily life. When I was able to just open a drawer more smoothly, it made me smile.
  2. Sulphur. Seriously. I toured a shipping terminal, because I’m a writer and sometimes writers find themselves in the strangest places. I learned lots of things about sulphur – and I saw that sulphur piles can have a surprising and stark beauty.
  3. Napping child. On Sunday three-and-a-half-year-old Jacob took a 30 minute power nap in my arms. He hasn’t napped regularly in over a year, and he hasn’t fallen asleep in my arms in at least that long. I soaked it up for all it was worth. (And I’m happy to report that he wasn’t even sick.)
  4. Going sockless. It’s now warm enough to pull out the flip-flops. Hooray for spring – and toes that can breathe! I kicked my flip-flops off and stood barefoot on the grass and breathed.
  5. Freshly-cut lawn. I love the smell of freshly-cut grass. I especially love it when I’m standing in my kitchen with the window open, a warm breeze blowing in, and someone else is doing the mowing.
  6. Flowers. While I was looking at sulphur piles, my children were at the park picking me flowers. No bouquet in the world is better than wilted dandelions delivered proudly to you by your babies. It just may be the very sweetest thing in the whole wide world.
  7. Reading signs. With each passing day my daughter Hannah’s reading ability grows by leaps and bounds. This weekend in the car she was reading signs to me as we drove past them. I was struck by the power of being able to understand the words you see each and every day.
  8. Dreaming. My husband and I spent some time planning and imagining and dreaming together this weekend. It was really, really lovely to just spend that time painting futures in the sky.

What about you – do you have any random cool moments from your own weekend to share?

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Embracing a Life of Less

on April 12, 2012 5 Comments

A couple of weeks ago for Enviro-Mama Thursday I talked about Environmentalism and Privilege. Specifically, I discussed the way that some sustainable products and environmentally-friendly choices are much more accessible if you have money. Like, say, buying only organic produce or driving a Prius. If you’re just getting by, some greener choices are out of reach.

As I discussed in that post, other times the greenest choice is also the most frugal choice. Like, say, buying less stuff overall, or shopping second-hand. Both of these actions are light on the earth, and both will also save you money. However, the same choice can feel very different depending on why you’re making it. If you enjoy second-hand shopping, and you’re doing it because it conforms with the sort of life you want to live, the thrift store may be your happy place. If you’re buying second-hand because it’s all you can afford, and you’d really rather be able to just go to the mall and buy a brand new pair of shoes, you’re probably not going to have an awesome shopping experience at your local Value Village.

In our culture (and maybe in most cultures), value and money are all tied up together. When you have a healthy bank balance, you’re said to have high net worth. When you’re shopping, you talk about how much something is worth. More money equals more value, for people as well as things. I’ve been on all sides of this equation, and it’s not much fun. It perpetuates the notion that we attain status by buying status symbols. And buying status symbols isn’t exactly good for the planet.

The fact that you can afford to buy something doesn’t mean that you should buy it. This is every bit as true for “green” products as for plastic tchotchkes with blinky lights that are manufactured overseas in a country with lax environmental standards. Sure, all things being equal, it’s better to buy something that’s created with the environment in mind, but in the end the absolute greenest choice you can make is to not buy anything at all.

One of the things that has helped me on my own personal journey towards living a more sustainable and meaningful life is learning to embrace a life with less. While I may not always be able to buy everything I want, the truth is that I already have everything I need. When I spend my time in gratitude for what I already have, instead of lamenting what I don’t, I’m much happier for it. I’m also far less likely to try to compensate for whatever isn’t going well in my life by spending money. This is another one of those things that is good for the planet and my wallet – plus it’s also good for me.

At the risk of being a little bit simplistic and trite, this act of embracing a life of less has implications in the discussion about environmentalism and privilege. When you feel as if you’re in control of the choices you’re making, it’s easier to make them. When you’re having a good time replacing some buttons on an old shirt instead of just buying a new one, it doesn’t feel like a burden. When you make lifestyle trade-offs so that you can work less, and you really do it with both eyes open, it’s easier to accept that you may not be able to take that big trip or buy the all-natural, hand-crafted, super-expensive, wooden Waldorf toys. When you’re clear on what you’re doing and why, things fall into place more easily.

I’m not saying that it’s okay that pesticide-free produce and non-toxic shampoo are out of the reach of many families. It’s not. But it’s the world we live in at the moment. We can advocate and we can write letters and we can contact our elected representatives. But at the end of the day we still have to make the best choices that we can with what we have. That may mean that we’re not able to do it all. No one person really can. But by doing what we can, and making our choices as consciously as we can, we come out ahead. Not because we have no other option, but because we are working to create lives that are imperfect, but meaningful all the same.

How does your attitude impact your experience of making green and frugal choices? And do you ever not buy something in order to reduce your environmental impact? I’d love to hear your thoughts on how embracing a life of less can make it easier to live more frugally and sustainably.

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What I Learned in March 2012

on April 4, 2012 Leave a Comment

Monthly reviews are one of my favourite traditions. Here’s how it works – every month I come up with some things I learned, and not always the easy way. Then, I ask you all to join in with some recent revelations of your own. And we all learn and grow and what-not. Or at least share a laugh at our own expense, because some of these lessons are both hard-fought and funny. Sound good?

So, without further ado, here are some things that I learned in March.

March Monthly Review

1. I learned that whether it’s caused by Mercury retrograde or just plain old coincidence, sometimes everything breaks all at the same time.

2. I discovered that I had a little activist on my hands when my daughter made a protest sign during a three day teachers’ strike.

Hannah's protest sign taped up in our front window

3. I found out that my three-year-old and I have differing opinions on interior decoration, when he insisted I hang the decommissioned Velvet Elvis in a spot of honour in his bedroom.

4. I learned that if you take out the wheelbarrow, the children will immediately climb in.

They're such a help in the garden

5. I witnessed my daughter’s acting debut, when she participated in a theatre day camp over Spring Break. The kids themselves created the play, and it involved witches, dogs, cats, princesses, space pirates and more. So. Awesome.

6. I interviewed a local mom of four who plays roller derby for VancouverMom.ca, and I was completely enchanted. I now harbour dreams of one day lacing up and giving it a go myself.

7. I re-visited my bliss list for the first time in two and a half years. It’s always illuminating to write your dreams out in black and white.

'Dreamers live here!'
“Dreamers live here!”

8. I learned that sometimes, you have to say no to other people, in order to say yes to yourself.

9. I discovered, once again, how very annoyed I feel when small children harm the little seedlings I’m growing for my garden. You can cover me in bodily fluids and wake me up at 2:00am, and I’m fine, but don’t mess with my baby broccoli plants!

10. I got a speaker for my kitchen, and found out just how much better cleaning is when you have the right tunes.

What did you learn in March? Please share! If you’d like to play along by writing a review post of your own, link up here:

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On Not Doing it All

on April 3, 2012 11 Comments

I don’t know how you do it.

People say this to me a lot. Like, several times a week, at least. I’m never really sure whether to take it as a compliment (as in, look at you, rocking it!) or a gentle criticism (as in, my friends and family really wish I had more time for them). When I hear it, I think that I must be giving the wrong impression. I must make it look as if I’m doing more than I am, or that I’m doing it all really well. I must not be sharing the whole truth, because I feel like I drop a lot of balls and let a lot of things slide.

There’s this inspirational quote that I found on Pinterest that I have fallen in love with. It’s from Steven Furtick, who Google tells me is a pastor in the US. But that’s really beside the point. What’s on point is that these words really resonate with me:

“The reason we struggle with insecurity is because we compare our behind-the-scenes with everyone else’s highlight reel.”

~ Steven Furtick

Here’s the truth: I have too much on my plate. It’s not even fun at this point, and I’m working hard to restore a sense of equilibrium in my life. I will get there. In the meantime, comments about how I do so much hit me in a sore spot, because I would like to be doing a whole lot less. At the same time, I can see that people who feel they should be doing more see that I have all these balls in the air and they think they should be somehow keeping up. We’re all looking at other people, who seem to be doing it better than we are, and we’re not seeing that they’re struggling, too.

In the interests of keeping it real, I’d like to tell you some of the things that I haven’t done recently:

  • Vacuum. My carpets are crying out for a good cleaning, and I will totally get around to it … eventually.
  • Register Jacob for a spring class. The kid is constantly asking to go back to preschool basketball or take music class, and I can’t pull it together to actually find a class and sign him up.
  • Read other people’s blogs. I really want to do more of this, so much I can taste it, but I also need to sleep sometime. Speaking of which …
  • Get enough sleep. I’m squeaking by on less than seven hours most nights, which is not enough to keep me at my cheerful best.
  • Sew with Hannah. The kid really, really wants to learn how to make a cushion. I have the materials, but I haven’t found the time.
  • Knit. Just last week I finally finished the socks that were meant as a Christmas gift for my mother. Luckily her birthday’s coming up soon.
  • Write. Okay, so I do write every day, but there are lots of things I’d like to be writing that I just can’t seem to find the time for.
  • Yoga. For two weeks I was getting up in the morning to do yoga, but that fell by the wayside once the sleep deprivation reached critical levels.

If you see someone who’s doing a lot, the odds are good they’re letting something else go. I guess the question each of us needs to answer for ourselves is what we’re willing to let go of, what we’re not willing to let go of, and how we can make that work in our lives. Mine is a work in progress, but I believe that a better balance exists, and I’m committed to finding it.

What about you? What do you let slide, that you’d rather not? How do you find balance and set priorities? And do you think that equilibrium is even possible when you have a life and a job and kids and all that jazz? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

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Musings on Mercury Retrograde

on April 2, 2012 4 Comments

Do you believe in astrology? I waffle back and forth on it. On the one hand, the idea that the location of certain planets in the sky relative to Earth somehow impacts the course of my life is completely illogical. On the other hand, sometimes my daily horoscope really seems prescient. Of course, this could just be an example of confirmation bias, where I’m only looking at the information that lines up with what any particular astrologer has to say. Knowing that feeds my skepticism. My life over the past two weeks, on the other hand, have fueled my belief.

Mercury is currently in retrograde. Mercury retrograde happens when the planet appears to move backwards relative to Earth. Astrologers say that during the few weeks this is in effect you can experience delays in terms of communication and technology. So far, during this Mercury retrograde, I’ve experienced the following technological snafus:

Vintage Fiat Fridge
Photo credit: Mick Amato on Flickr

  • My fridge died, for good this time. It was only a little over eight years old, and we already repaired it two years ago. This time, the compressor completely gave up the ghost, which meant that we needed to replace it. We lived out of the bar fridge Jon normally keeps at work for a week, and now we’re enjoying the new fridge we hadn’t planned on buying.
  • Our washing machine died when the little switch that gets pressed when the lid is closed fell apart. You learn about this when you have a full load in the washer that washes, but doesn’t drain, so you have all this water just sitting in there, making repair that much harder. Luckily this one was cheaper to fix, and we didn’t need to replace our washing machine, but it still took up most of a Saturday morning.
  • The internet went down at our house last night when I was attempting to write this blog post, so it’s several hours late. It was a problem with our internet service provider, so there was really nothing to do but give up and watch the season premiere of Game of Thrones. Luckily, that was good, so I suppose this wasn’t entirely bad.

The good news is that Mercury retrograde ends on April 4. Until then, I will continue to have my doubts about astrology, but I will be hiding in my house and treating my technology gently all the same.

What about you – are you an astrology believer? Has this Mercury retrograde had its way with you? Tell me all about it!

What leaps have you taken that have paid off? I’d love to hear what’s on your list of leaps this Leap Year Day!

PS – Every month I do a monthly review of things I learned. Some are serious, some are funny, and all are hard-won. I will be running my March review on Wednesday, April 4. I’d love it if you played along. Write a post on or before April 4 and come back here to include it in my link-up!

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Environmentalism and Privilege

on March 29, 2012 9 Comments

It’s Enviro-Mama Thursday, and today I’m thinking about environmentalism and privilege.

I’ve been spending some time lately contemplating whether the green movement is reserved for people who can afford to make more sustainable choices. A recent trip to my local organic grocery store to stock up on gluten-free flour and a few other things ran me $200, and I only bought two bags of stuff. Whole Foods is sometimes jokingly called Whole Paycheque, because that’s how much the groceries you buy there are going to cost you. And even when you’re shopping at a discount store, organic or sustainable products are going to cost you a lot more than their conventionally-produced cousins. The sustainable product that really gets me is toilet paper make from recycled paper. Shouldn’t it cost less to make something out of recycled material than raw lumber? Apparently not.

On top of some of the costs of choosing more environmentally-friendly products, there’s the time, energy and inconvenience involved in researching and implementing sustainable practices. Is that shampoo that says organic on the label really green, or just green-washing? What the heck is a paraben, anyway? When is it better to buy local food, and when does choosing organic really matter? And who wants to be responsible for keeping the green bin clean? (Answer: no one.)

In some cases, going green can be considered a luxury. When your food budget is already stretched paper thin, you’re probably not willing to pay two or even three times as much for organic, free-range eggs. When you don’t have reliable internet access, you’re probably not up-to-speed on where and when your local farmers’ market is happening, or what ingredients you should be watching out for in your personal care products. And when you live in an apartment, you’re much less likely to have access to curbside recycling than if you live in a house in the suburbs like I do.

In other cases, going green is the cheapest choice going. Reducing your consumption and reusing things you already have will save you money. So will second-hand shopping, gardening, repairing something instead of replacing it, and taking public transit. Sometimes, when you don’t have a lot of cash to play with, you make environmentally-friendly choices out of self defense. Even so, there may be times when you’d like to buy a more sustainable product, but it’s simply out of your reach.

As I considered the implications of environmentalism and privilege, I reached a conclusion for myself. I thought about this quote from Mother Teresa:

“Live simply so others may simply live.”

I get two things from this quote. First, we all do what we can. If you’re in a position of relative privilege, you need to consider that as you make your choices. Maybe you’re able to donate money to charity, or you can afford to buy organic flour. The second thing I get from the quote is that our actions impact others. The dish soap I use ends up in the sewer system, and eventually the ocean. This reminded me of the connection between food consumption and water consumption that I learned about on World Water Day. When I buy a less-polluting dish soap, or eat less meat, I’m not just impacting my own own pocketbook, I’m impacting the world around me. If someone else can’t afford to make the same choices, that doesn’t absolve me of my responsibility to do the best I can with what I have.

In an ideal world, non-toxic shampoo wouldn’t be a luxury item, and organic bananas wouldn’t cost twice as much as conventional bananas. Unfortunately, though, we don’t live in an ideal world. In our real world, all that any of us can do is make the best possible choices for our own unique set of circumstances. If that means buying luxury items because we believe they’re not only better for us, but better for the planet, we don’t have anything to apologize for.

As more people adopt a greener lifestyle, the costs of earth-friendly products will decrease, as manufacturers are able to adopt economies of scale. Until then, we can advocate and use our voices, so that everyone’s children are safe, and not just the kids whose parents can afford fancy bubble bath. We can work to create innovative programs to make environmentalism more accessible to everyone at all income levels. And we can reduce our own environmental footprint, so that there are some resources left over for others.

What do you think? Do you think environmentalism is reserved for people who can afford it? And how can we change things so that sustainable choices are more accessible to everyone? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

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Parents, Kids and Tolerance for all Things Icky

on March 28, 2012 10 Comments

When you have kids, your tolerance for all things icky and sticky naturally rises. All of the snot and poo and half-eaten apples left under the couch to ferment leave you no choice but to adjust your expectations. It’s a built-in defense mechanism, really, because if your tolerance for yuckiness didn’t rise you would surely go insane.

When my daughter Hannah was two and a half years old I attended a wedding where I was seated at a table with a new mom and her two-week-old baby. At one point, Hannah sort of half-chewed a perfectly good strawberry, and discarded it beside her plate. It was still mostly fine, so I did what many other moms of toddlers would do – I picked it up and ate it. The poor mom across from me was still naive in the ways of feeding children solid food, and she may have thrown up a little bit in her mouth. I apologized profusely. Sometimes, when you’re totally de-sensitized to all things icky, you forget your manners in public.

In the seven years that I’ve been parenting, my line in the sand when it comes to my tolerance of mess has constantly been pushed, until it’s several kilometers from its starting point, at least. Here are some of the things that I would never have dreamed of doing in my pre-kid life, but which I now do almost every day.

Untitled
Luckily for my kids, they’re totally adorable

Icky Things I Do Almost Every Day

  1. Picking things out of my kids’ noses or ears. If they won’t deal with their boogers, I am forced to take matters into my own hands. That saying that you can pick your friends, and you can pick your nose, but you can’t pick your friend’s nose? It doesn’t apply to parents.
  2. Discussing genitals over dinner. There was a time when I never would have dreamed of discussing what one does and does not do with one’s penis while eating my chicken caesar salad. Now, it’s a regular occurrence. You don’t get to choose when etiquette lessons will be delivered with little kids.
  3. Pulling out someone else’s tooth. I feel super squeamish about wiggly teeth. It’s all I can do not to run from the room when my daughter starts playing with her latest loose tooth. And yet I found myself pulling a tooth out of her mouth when it was really bothering her and she couldn’t handle it herself. Luckily, it didn’t bleed. Much.
  4. Clapping for someone’s poop. When you have a little kid who’s just mastering the potty, every deposit is cause for celebration. Enough said.
  5. Feeding someone else my pre-chewed food. I’m not the only one who eats strawberries someone else spit out, as it turns out. I console myself on this front by realizing that for millenia humans didn’t have access to blenders or graters, so most babies probably survived on pre-chewed food.
  6. Smelling other people’s kids’ butts. When I found myself pressing my nose up to my friend’s kid’s butt, while my friend was present, I knew that I could never go back to being the person I was before.
  7. Using my saliva to style my kids’ hair. We’ve all spit-washed the occasional face. Once you find yourself spitting on a kid’s head to try to tame that cowlick in the car outside church, though, you’ve entered a whole other league.
  8. Wearing dirty clothes. My kids wipe their hands and faces on my shirts, sweaters and pants. Plus, in the course of my day I’m splattered with paint, cookie dough and a whole lot more. I could change my dirty clothes, but frankly, I’d be going through five or six outfits a day, so I just tolerate the stains.

Tell me, what icky things do you do almost every day? Spill in the comments!

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Short School Lunch Periods

on March 27, 2012 18 Comments

This weekend I had the chance to chat with Karen LeBillon, author of French Kids Eat Everything. One of the things that we talked about is how we approach school lunches in North America as compared to France. Just as one example, Karen catalogued the lunch menu from a French preschool in Boulogne-Billancourt this week. Here’s what the children ate yesterday:

Monday, March 26, 2012
Tomato soup
Beef tongue mironton with bulgur wheat
Cheese: Emmenthal
Dessert: Fruit compote

These school lunches are prepared by real chefs, and no fast food, flavoured milk or ketchup is allowed. This is serious cuisine for young children. I’ll be sharing our discussion in an upcoming podcast, if you want to hear more about how the French get their kids to eat beef tongue, or if you’re skeptical that this is actually real. But the main point here is that, as you can imagine looking at this menu, lunch is not rushed in French schools. The children get a minimum of 30 minutes to eat, and often up to an hour, as they consume their four courses.

In contrast, my daughter gets 15 minutes to eat her school lunch. Karen LeBillon’s daughter gets only 10 minutes at her Vancouver school. Here in Canada elementary school children typically bring their lunch from home and eat at their desks. There’s no cafeteria at my daughter’s school. You can buy lunch through a third-party service, but very few people do, and it’s prepared off-site and delivered to the classroom. This means that kids don’t have to get through a cafeteria line-up or bus their trays during their 10 or 15 minute lunch period, but it’s still very short for many young children.

The situation I’m describing doesn’t seem to be unique to Canada. School lunch periods are getting shorter in the US, too. The reasons for a short school lunch period seem to be similar on both sides of the border. School budgets, teachers’ schedules, a drive to fit more instructional time into the day and even the way that many children themselves rush through lunch all seem to factor into the equation.

I’ve run into issues with the short lunch period with my own daughter. She comes home at 3:00pm complaining of hunger, but I see that her lunch was barely touched. I quickly learned not to send treats to school, as well, even though my kiddo says everyone else’s parents do. When a kid is in a rush to eat, they’re going to choose the tastiest things first, which means that the cookies get eaten and the sandwich gets left behind. It often takes longer to eat healthier foods, as well, which is another factor in the debate over what gets served in school cafeterias in the US. When you only have a few minutes to serve and eat lunch, chicken nuggets are just easier.

One school in Berkeley, California changed its approach to school lunches in a simple way that had a big impact. They moved lunch recess so that it happened before the kids ate, and then lengthened the amount of time they allocated for both outdoor play and eating. The result is that lunch stopped being something to just “get through” before the real fun of heading out to the playground. The other result is that with more time to eat, the kids ate better.

At the Berkeley school, teachers spend the last 10 minutes of lunch in the cafeteria with their students, and it’s counted as instructional time. This lets the school meet its educational requirements without lengthening the school day. It overcomes one objection that would naturally come with increasing the time that kids get to eat, which is that you would either lose teaching time or you’d have to keep the kids at school longer. Both of those outcomes have their downside, for sure. Plus, having teachers sit down to eat with their students provides additional lessons about the concept of the shared table, which is lost when kids are sitting at their desks.

Speaking as a parent, if tacking 10 or 15 minutes on to the school day meant that my child got more time to eat and to play outside, I would be willing to make that switch. I would also be willing to accept some kind of compromise position, like they reached in Berkeley. Quite honestly, I think that even shaving a few minutes of instructional time off the day would probably be okay. Does adding or removing 10 minutes from the school day of a seven-year-old dramatically impact how much information they take in? I would guess not.

I think that many parents agree that our kids need more time to eat. Speaking with Karen LeBillon only cemented my opinion, because I saw that it doesn’t have to be this way. We really can do better. Will it cure the dreaded childhood obesity? I don’t know. I doubt it – at least not on its own. But I do know that rushing through meals isn’t really good for anyone, so why are we teaching our kids to do just that?

I wonder what you think. How long do your kids get to eat lunch? Do you think it’s long enough? How would you like to see lunchtime changed at school? I’d love to hear!

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