Nina In New York: How Do You Eat An Oreo? You Don't, And You're A Horrible Parent.

A lighthearted look at news, events, culture and everyday life in New York. The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer.
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By Nina Pajak

The care and feeding of toddlers is a complicated practice. It requires, by turns, the delicate, studied touch of a surgeon and the swift, blunt force of an Acme anvil dropped off a cliff. This is particularly true of the "feeding" aspect of the equation. It is an issue that plagues so many parents. Toddlers are picky. They are irrational. They are mercurial. And unlike most functioning mammals, they can appear at times not to require basic things like sustenance or sleep.

There are some kids who will only eat foods that are white. Or foods that contain cheese. Or foods that contain no cheese. Or foods that are square. My child is a freakishly good eater, but even she has gone through phases during which 90% of her daily nutrients are derived from chicken nuggets. And she picks off and rejects anything that has a stringy consistency, deeming it to be "yucky fuzz," even if it's just a bit of cheese hanging off a slice of pizza which she has already approved. For many, mealtime is an endless battle.

So the last thing we need is judgment from outsiders, let alone blatant admonishment for the choices we make in feeding our kids. Such was the case at a publicly-funded preschool in Aurora, Colorado, where a teacher sent a kid home with an uneaten package of Oreos and a note explaining that they were not a part of the school's nutrition program. The note, which is somewhat incomprehensible, also dictates:

This is a public school setting and all children are required to have a fruit, a vegetable and a heavy snack from home, along with a milk. If they have potatoes, the child will also need bread to go along with it. Lunchables, chips, fruit snacks, and peanut butter are not considered to be a healthy snack.

You guys. Even Bloomberg didn't mandate packed lunch guidelines for 4-year-olds. There are a lot of oddities about this note, and I'm just itching for my red pencil.

1. Use of the term "heavy snack," as though it is widely known and accepted parlance. Perhaps in Colorado, it is. Are we talking ounces? Or caloric content? Maybe it's more of an existential thing. Or maybe it's a careless typo.
2. You find me a preschooler who will eat a vegetable every day with her lunch, and I will buy that mom a trophy.
3. Forcible milk-drinking.
4. Why would a person want bread with their potatoes? And what ever happened to pronoun agreement? This scolding is rapidly falling apart at the seams.
5. What's wrong with peanut butter? When did good, old PB get such a bad rep? Sure, half the country's youth is suddenly allergic to it, but it's got protein and fat and calories and even a little fiber. Lay off peanut butter, you fascists.
6. The day fruit snacks are banned from kids' lunch boxes is the day I finally make good on that threat to move to Canada. This is America, lady. A-freaking-merica. Fruit snacks are our jam. Literally, fruit snack jam would be so good.

Anyway, the school implies that the teacher must have gone rogue because they have no lunch policies in place and would never have allowed such a correspondence to be sent directly to a parent. And let it be known that the parent packed other items for her child, including a ham and cheese sandwich and a string cheese, which I would say is a damn sight better than potatoes with bread.

Honestly. There are restaurants in our city that won't provide potatoes or bread if you ask for them, let alone serve them together.

Enforcing healthy choices is important, and the school cafeterias and class curriculums need to help children understand how to eat well and feel good about their bodies. But shaming a child out of eating the Oreos her mother packed for her is not going to help her develop these skills. If anything, it's going to contribute to creating yet another woman with a twisted relationship with food. Lucky for this one, she and her therapist will be able to get straight to the root of the problem pretty quickly.

It is hard enough to get our kids to eat like regular humans. Is it so wrong to let them eat a few cookies? Isn't that part of what childhood is about? And will this teacher also send home kids who show up with juice boxes, because those are arguably even emptier calories? Maybe you would say four Oreos is too many for a 5-year-old. Maybe I'd agree, for my own child. But then again, am I in any position to judge another mother for how many cookies she allows her kid? I once found myself spoon-feeding icing to my daughter because she wouldn't try it and I needed her to know how wrong-headed she was being. I have let her eat nothing but cheddar bunny crackers for lunch because it was better than nothing, which is what she'd have consumed instead. Weeks have gone by when I have to hope that the tomato sauce on pizza really can count as a vegetable. We all live in glass houses filled with tater tots and uneaten string beans.

Nina Pajak is a writer living with her husband, daughter and dog in Queens. Connect with Nina on Twitter!