For the last five years, starting in preschool, I've sent a lunch to school with my daughter, Ariana. Ariana has always been a good eater and I've been able to put a wide range of healthy foods in her lunch. Now, suddenly, at eight, she is no longer happy with the nutritious lunches I send. She says kids make fun of her soy milk, apples and nut butter sandwiches. She wants to eat what they eat: Lunchables, Ho-Hos, GoGurts and candy. If I'm going to make her a sandwich, she only wants one slice of packaged bologna on white bread. She says she has to have soda instead of milk. Basically she wants pre-packaged junk food for lunch and that's not how we eat in our family. We're at a standoff right now on this issue. Neither one of us wants to back down. What should I do?
--nutrition-conscious Mom in Bellingham
It's not surprising that Ariana is suddenly asking for a different lunch. At eight, she is acutely aware of the social dynamics at school, and lunchtime is one place where those dynamics come into play. At eight, children are getting lots of information from their peer groups about what is cool and what isn't. For many 8 Year-Old children, what is cool is definitely not what is happening in their family.
At the same time that children are starting to question the norms in their families, parents are starting to realize that they don't have as much control over their kid's lives as they did when they were younger. As children spend more time away from their parents, in the presence of their peers, they start developing their own culture and making some of their own decisions. For instance, you may send a healthy lunch to school with your child, but you can't control (and may not even know) whether she eats it, or instead, throws her sandwich in the garbage and trades her fruit leather for a Ding Dong.
As people who are figuring out how to live in the larger world, it is essential that our children be given the chance to learn about the world and about people who are different from them. The challenge for us arises because 8 Year-Olds aren't developmentally ready to figure things out abstractly; they have to try them out to see what they feel like, to see if they fit. So as parents we're continually in the position of having to decide which things are safe for our children to try and which things aren't.
There are three basic ways you can support your child's experimentation with different ideas. In some circumstances, you may decide that it is fine for your child to experiment with whatever she's interested in. You buy your daughter a Barbie despite the fact that you have some objections to Barbies. In this first scenario, where you give your child the go-ahead, your input doesn't end with granting permission. You also have the opportunity (and responsibility) to help your daughter think about her new experience and how well it does or doesn't fit for her.
In the second scenario, you're not comfortable letting your child develop her own plan for experimentation, but instead, feel okay about working with her to develop a strategy that takes into account both your ideas and hers. Let's take the example of school lunches. There may be parts of her request for a different lunch that you feel more comfortable with than others. So you and she might decide on a carbonated juice drink, rather than a soda, or some dessert you feel better about than packaged cupcakes.
In the third instance, you decide you're not comfortable having your daughter experiment at all. This latter category might include things that are strongly in conflict with your values or that have dangerous or permanent consequences.
The challenge in each of these scenarios is figuring out how to support your child's interest in the larger culture, and in people who are different from her, while at the same time ensuring her safety and honoring your essential values.
As you work to resolve the lunch issue in particular, here are some things to consider:
. Assess the changes in your sphere of influence. As our children get older, spend more time out of our sight, and begin to make more decisions on their own, we have to come to terms with our decreased ability to be in control. It is simultaneously difficult and exciting to think of our children facing and making decisions we might not even hear about.
Many of us feel fearful when we imagine our children on their first "solo mission" out in the real world. We are faced with the questions, "What is my sphere of influence now?" and "How has it changed?"
Surprisingly, even when our children are the most defiant, they are still interested in what we think, even though they might not be able to admit it. If we can remember this, it will help us maintain an open dialogue in which both parent and child get to express their opinions and be heard. Children who feel their opinions are respected (although not always agreed with) are more likely to make wise decisions and are also more receptive to their parents' opinions.
. Listen to your daughter. It's important for Ariana to feel that you are willing to hear her out and that you care about her feelings and her school experience. Rather than setting hard and fast rules about her lunch, take some time to draw her out and listen to her. Open-ended questions like, "Tell me what's been happening at lunch time," or "It's seems like you've been unhappy with the lunches I've been sending. Could you tell me more about that?" will let her know that you care and that you're willing to listen.
A sample dialogue might start like this:
. Talk together about what needs to go into a healthy lunch. This is a chance for you to do some teaching about nutrition and a balanced diet. You can explain the difference between proteins and fats and carbohydrates, and talk about the kinds of energy you get from each one. Together, come up with a list of things that need to be in a healthy lunch-try to come up with broad categories, rather than specific foods. This will give her some choice and control within a healthy framework.
. Negotiate some bottom lines and alternatives. This is a time for both of you to talk about the issues that are the most important to each of you. Maybe for Ariana, the whole wheat bread is the worst part of her whole lunch, and maybe you could compromise and get white bread for awhile. Maybe for you it's the fact that all that plastic packaging is wasteful and polluting.
Once each of you has come up with the issues that matter the most to you, try to figure out a common solution that respects both people's bottom lines. Maybe it's really important to you that she have a fruit or vegetable in her lunch, but she gets to choose what it is. If she really needs to have dessert in her lunch, and Twinkies are too much for you, maybe there are some healthy treats she could bake and take to school to share with other kids. And if Ariana really wants soda and you don't want to buy Coca-Cola, maybe she could get some non-caffeine soda or bubbly juices as a compromise.
Try to come up with a list of things that you could live with that might be less offensive to her friends. Often, when you start thinking together creatively, you find some middle ground.
. Get her more involved in lunch planning and preparation. At eight, Ariana can begin to take some control over making her lunch or perhaps even shopping for the raw ingredients. If she takes part in planning and preparing her lunch, she'll be more invested in eating it. Shopping with her and looking at labels is one way you can teach her about the nutritional value of one food versus another. Give her access to the information but don't hit her over the head with it. Let her make some of the connections herself.
. Let her have some experience with forbidden foods. Letting your daughter eat a Ho-Ho or a Lunchable will take some of the mystique out of a desired, but forbidden food. Have her look at the nutrition information on the back of the package-the amount of sodium, sugar, protein, fats and chemicals. Then have her do a comparison with the foods she usually eats. This could even turn into a science project or a report for school: how much nutritional value there is in one kind of lunch versus another.
A little junk food now and then is not going harm a child who gets healthier kinds of food at home. Kids, like all of us, need to explore, to experiment, to experience forbidden pleasures. One mother we know, who consistently provided homemade, natural foods the rest of the year, bought her son a box of Cocoa Puffs every year for his birthday. He ate the whole thing in two or three days and didn't ask for it again until the following year.
When we totally prohibit certain foods, we don't give our kids a chance to look at them and evaluate them on their own. Part of growing up is learning to make choices and develop your own inner sense of judgment. If kids are so boxed in by our rules that they never get to experiment with their own desires, it takes them that much longer to develop their own capacity to make wise, healthy decisions.
. Help your daughter think about her lunch time companions. If Ariana is getting teased at lunchtime, help her think about which friends she wants to eat with. Maybe certain friends might be better saved for recess or after school rendezvous. Ask her which of her friends might be more tolerant of her having a lunch that was a little different. Which friends might it be best to avoid at lunchtime?
. Help your child learn to stand up for herself and for anyone else who might be different. Lots of kids eat different lunches for all kinds of reasons. Lunch choices may reflect cultural differences, economic differences or different values about food and nutrition. Teaching Ariana to advocate for the right to be different will equip her to navigate all kinds of peer pressure later on.
Have Ariana practice standing up for herself and for other kids whose lunches may be different: "Our lunches don't have to be the same. There are lots of different kinds of good lunches. "
. Advocate at school. You can advocate at your daughter's school to support all children around these issues. Classroom curriculum could include information about nutrition, communication and diversity. Parents in a number of communities have successfully organized campaigns to influence school lunch programs and to develop curriculum about conflict resolution, diversity and communication skills.
