Her school is banning any homemade items from being shared with the class. All class parties or celebrations must be done with food that is prepackaged with a complete ingredient list attached. As a chef-in -training this is truly abhorrent to my way of thinking. No Noah's bagels dropped off for the class, no homemade cookies or cupcakes for the birthday celebrations. Only Sara Lee bagels from a bag and Hostess Cupcakes. Please do not bring in fresh cut fruit, instead grab some canned peaches in heavy syrup. And they are going to schedule a classroom celebration once a month full of this type of food.
On one hand I get it. Kids have allergies, it is hard to keep track of them and monitor that the class treats don't have something that the kid is allergic to. A complete ingredient list helps that.
On the other hand, I am saddened and angry for several reasons. I am sad for myself because I enjoy making things for Audrey's class and the school teachers. I think that feeding other people is one of the clearest ways of showing you appreciate them, care for them, or are interested in knowing them and I will be no longer able to convey that message in that manner. I don't cook for people I don't like, and I like the people who make me and my kid happy. I am sad for Audrey because SHE likes that I cook for the class sometimes and asks me to. I am angry because in a time when we should ALL be teaching our children that processed food is not the best choice, it is being mandated by the school as a CYA method to deal with the extremely small percentage of allergies that would make this necessary. I am frustrated that they are not dealing with this on an individual basis, perhaps working with the parents in each class that have allergies to educate them on what can and can not work for the class as a whole. (For what it is worth, I have brought in egg free and gluten free treats to Audrey's class when the roster makes it necessary and have never harbored even a second thought about it.) I am angry that this puts me in a position where I have to be either a really mean mom and ban my kid from participating in the class parties, or have have to suck it up and allow her to eat things that I don't want in her diet more often than I would like. I am frankly just kind of pissed that someone would think that the solution to any food issue is to feed our kids more chemical-laden, preservative-riddled crap. I find it exceptionally infuriating that they are making an exception for things brought in for the teachers to eat. Because THEY want food that tastes good delivered for their teacher appreciation week. And guess what? The food that tastes the best isn't the stuff that comes pre-wrapped.
I keep telling myself that really it is minor in the long run. This is about class parties, Audrey will probably just learn to stop asking if we can make things for the class. The dose of massive sugar, pesticides and red dye #40 that she gets once a month at school probably won't cause major damage to anything but her mother's psyche and frankly I do feed her some of that on my own at home so she is not entirely a stranger to it anyway. But I still just seethe about it. I would love for my daughter to be able to learn about her classmates cultures by eating curry on her Indian friend's birthday or try a Cantonese dish made by one of her classmate's parent's but she won't get that option and the list of ways to share a culture and learn about each other is diminished. And that makes me saddest of all.
That's interesting. My daughter's preschool went the higher effort route of education and increased vigilance on the part of parents of children with allergies and also the staff, but the preprocessed thing is becoming more common, I think, simply because it's easier. At the Bean's regular school, no homemade food can be brought to share, which I find to be slightly stupid, since kids can and do bring their own lunches and share stuff all the time. It's just a liability thing, I guess.
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