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Dear Care and Feeding,
I have a daughter in high school, “Holly.” We don’t have the greatest school district, and the food they provide is filled with all sorts of processed crap that will kill you. I’ve made sure that she doesn’t have an account with the school cafeteria and instead I give her actually healthy lunches and snacks, mostly fruit and raw vegetables.
She’s been seeing this guy in some of her classes “John.” I’ve met him twice. He seems like a respectable young man, he gets very good grades, if a bit squeaky and timid around me. Ordinarily, I think he and Holly would be good for each other. But in the past few days, I’ve been noticing something that disturbs me on her school outfits.
There have been suspicious crumbs. I asked her about it, and I found out what he’s been doing: sharing food with her at school, including stuff he gets from that awful cafeteria. She knows that’s against the rules, and bad for her besides, but she says “it’s different when he shares with me.”
That’s utter nonsense. Bad food is bad food, and the only difference is I suppose she’s only eating half of that crud if he’s poisoning himself with it too. I can’t exactly go over to the school and make sure she eats healthy, and I’m not so dumb that I think that telling her to stay away from her boyfriend is going to help. How can I make sure my daughter doesn’t harm herself with this stuff?
—Wanting Her Safe
Dear Wanting Her Safe,
Oh boy are you in for a rude awakening as your daughter becomes an adult and starts to make her own decisions. You need to come to terms with the fact that you cannot control your child forever. And, just like Leia told Tarkin in Star Wars Episode IV, “The more you tighten your grip, the more star systems will slip through your fingers.” A little deviation from an existing healthy diet isn’t going to kill her, and if you come down too hard, you might cause a rebellion.
Not to freak you out even more, but there are tons of foods that fall into the “not good for you” category that don’t leave crumbs! Gummy worms? No crumbs! Sodapop? No crumbs! Vaping? No crumbs!
You will not be around all the time to check for crumbs or gummy-worm residue. Instead, you’re going to have to (gasp) trust your kid to make good choices, and to talk to you about the choices they’re making. It sounds like your daughter trusts you enough that she didn’t lie to you about where the crumbs came from, so at least you have some foundation of trust here. Keep the conversation going. Ask why she wants to eat foods that she wouldn’t eat otherwise when it’s with John. Put yourself in her shoes! If your boyfriend offers you half a Twix and your response is either (a) “that food will kill you” or (b) “my mom says I can’t,” neither of those responses are going to lead to a make out session. (And, especially if she’s never been allowed to have candy bars at home, a few bites of Twix might sound really good.)
Also, it doesn’t help to frame these foods as “bad,” “poisonous” or “killers” when she sees kids at school eating them all the time and they are still alive and well in the hallways. Sure, the American public school cafeteria diet is deplorable. But the effects of that diet take years and years to manifest. Also, for a lot of students, that’s the only food they’re going to eat that day. Looking down on that food as “bad food” could send the message that you think all those kids are choosing not to eat a healthy diet out of ignorance or recklessness. Disparaging all her classmates is another great way to increase the growing divide between the two of you. Work on treating her as an equal before it’s too late.
—Greg
