Well, after reading the news this morning, I have decided that my family is pretty much a mess. It is also time for "Confessions of a Terrible Mother". You see, I don't know what my kids eat for lunch most days. Yes, you read that correctly. My almost 14 year old daughter attends a private school and she packs her own lunch each morning (pang of guilt just shot through me as I eked those words out). As for the boys that are home schooled, well they are simply on their own. I have this unrealistic expectation that my 15 year old son can manage to fix lunch for himself and his 7 year old brother while I attend to other duties around the house. OK, now I've said it.
Well, I guess I could lesson my guilt by saying I know what they are not eating. I generally don't buy chips, ho-ho's, oreos, pop, fruit roll ups, and the like. So unless they have a source of income that I don't know about or a strong desire to contribute from their limited financial resources to the family food pantry, they can't be putting these foods in their mouths in a daily basis. Still, my stocking the pantry probably isn't enough to allay my concerns and get me off "the bad mother" list. It appears that an incident just occurred in my state of North Carolina that has upped the anty on what a good lunch is. The Carolina Journal is reporting a story from an elementary school in North Carolina where a preschool girl had her lunch inspected by a state employee. Yes, you should read that again. Her lunch was inspected by a state employee. Upon inspection, it was discovered that she had a turkey and cheese sandwich, a banana, some chips (gulp), and apple juice. The lunch was confiscated, she was given a government issue, nutritious, 3 chicken nugget replacement, and her mom was billed for the replacement lunch. Wow, am I in trouble when the state inspectors visit my daughter's school and I can't even tell them if I knew what she had packed that day! (minus of course the things that I knew I hadn't purchased based on my, albeit probably flawed, parental judgement) Even worse will be when the inspectors come to the house because on rare occasions I do purchase a bag of chips and my oldest son might have chosen that day to give them to his younger brother! And, oh my gosh, sometimes they eat canned fruit instead of fresh!
Then I read the article about mental health and I can feel myself slipping even deeper into the "my family is a disaster" abyss! In a Feb. 9, 2012 Reuters report, there are new definitions of what counts as mental illness coming out. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is used internationally as the mental health medicine "diagnostic bible". Apparently, revisions of the DSM are in the works. In it, definitions of various mental disorders will be updated and new ones will be added. For example, the definition of "Oppositional Defiant Disorder" is being broadened to include those that "perform deliberate actions to annoy others". Just yesterday I caught my daughter telling her brother he couldn't use her hand held game even though she wasn't using it. When I asked why, she said because she wanted to annoy her brother! She purposely tried to annoy him! That classifies her as having Oppositional Defiant Disorder now!
But it gets worse! They are also including "shyness" as a mental disorder in the new DSM. My fifteen year old is very shy! He hates going into new group settings, he is the one that waits for people to approach him, and he would rather be with one friend than in a group of 20. He suffers from shyness, so he also fits into the DSM classification of having mental illness!
So there you have it. Thanks to government and bureaucratic intervention at various levels, I have come to the conclusion that my family is in serious need of help here. At least when my kids are all in the mental hospital for their various disorders they will probably be given a proper lunch. Heaven knows I couldn't figure out what would constitute a good one.
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