The Bad Mom

I’m the bad Mom and there doesn’t seem to be a way around it. Seriously.

When my children were old enough to eat sandwiches, I fed them only whole wheat, my philosophy being they would never have to adapt to wheat when they were old enough and really needed to watch their health. Same goes for milk, from the minute they no longer needed the fat of Whole D, I gave them skim. They know no different. Or didn’t.

Then school started or they were exposed to eating lunch at other kid’s homes and suddenly I started getting, ‘Mom, why don’t you ever buy us this GREAT meat called bologna. Why do we only get ham or turkey?’ or “Mom, why don’t you EVER buy us WHITE bread like ALL the other Moms?” or “Mom, I really like the red milk better, can’t you get that for us instead of the blue?” (Red and blue refer to the color of the lid. Red is Whole, light blue is Skim.)

At first I was kind of snippy and said things like, “Because I love you more than their Moms love them.” Seriously. I did say that. But knowing what a sarcastic person I can be, they didn’t take me seriously and have continued to press the issue.

Flash forward to last week. They won the battle. I know tactically they could not have planned it this way, but it is what happened and they won. I just got tired of the flak and I caved.

We are standing at the vegetable department; I’m picking up salad stuff because we eat a lot of salad. My youngest, the pain in the neck he is, the child that I told blog sister Sally that if her daughter dialed 666 on the telephone she may actually get my youngest, said to me, “MOM! Why don’t you ever pack carrots for our snack? All the other kids Moms do!” Ack! Trust me, it is not like I pack them crap for snack. I pack them nutri-grain bars or goldfish or trail mix with M&Ms. I tried to actually think of something they like to eat at home and put it in their lunches. But now, this is being hollered at me in public!

Calmly I said, “Wait, EVERYONE in your class gets carrots?” and the answer is of course yes, because he is the Drama King, but then, THEN, Son#2 chimes in, “Yeah. Mom. We want carrots. All the other kids have them. Seriously.” (I love when their speech patterns mimic mine.)

I feel kind of bad then. Of course my kids don’t want the carrots in a bag; they want the plastic packaging of the Bugs Bunny carrots with the ranch dressing for ‘dipping’. $2.20 for 3 packages of carrots. I caved. It was the beginning of the avalanche. It just seemed morally wrong to tell my kids, “NO! I am NOT buying these carrots for you for your snack!” (I did tell them we are on the last leg of the prepackaged carrots and they’ll have to go to my packing them… the marketing ploy by this carrot company has gotten under my skin.)

But it went from there. They saw I caved and I was over them and their abundance of flak throwing and as we made it into the bread section, I got a whole new ration from them about bread. Same with milk. And I gave in and my kids are with all the other kids now eating white bread that might as well just be ‘shaped sugar’, and whole milk.

The whole milk thing I am rationalizing. They are growing, they may need the fat, although I assure you, we have enough of it in our diets. I am no health freak. My only issue with the whole milk now is, you should see my refrigerator. I could open my own damn dairy section. I have my non-fat creamer for when I do drink coffee, MY skim milk, THEIR whole milk, and Son#2s lactaid as he is lactose intolerant… and we are now switching him to whole milk lactaid.

So that’s my story of the week. I’m only looking out for the long term health of my kids and I’m the bad guy. I have a feeling they think they won the war. They only won ONE battle. I’m not through with this…