Rebellin

My daughter has been stealing from school lately.  She calls it “borrowing”, as she usually brings the item back, but I believe she is the only child at the school who sneaks items home from school simply because she thinks they are “beautiful”.

Her teacher says that Little Miss thinks everything beautiful is hers.

Which, OK, the child appreciates beauty.  And I know the items are trivial, but I’ve been doing my best to teach her that this is wrong, and every time I find a crystal or doll at home that belongs at school, I make her return it to her teacher and apologize, and I make a big fuss out of it, thinking one of these times she’ll get the gist.

Today, the teacher who has never said anything negative about Little Miss told me that this is becoming a “real problem”.  And of course, she started this conversation on a morning that I had an early meeting I was trying to make.  Hence, I stood there and agreed, “yes, this is a problem, yes I’ve addressed it, yes, I’ll frisk her before we leave school every day.”  And the conversation took so long that I completely missed a crucial meeting.  And how is that for an excuse — “sorry, my daughter has been stealing from school.”

We switch schools next month.  On one hand, I don’t think the next school will have such an array of “beautiful” things as the Waldorf school does, but I also worry that the next school will not be as accepting of my little kleptomaniac as her current school has been.

I’m open to suggestions…  This morning, I told Little Miss that every time she steals something from school, I will take one of her favorite toys and give it to poor children.  Of course, her response was, “no, not the poor children!  If you do that I will not like you very much.”

Ah, life as a mother.  I could have never imagined such situations if I had tried.

I’ve been focusing a lot lately on healthy eating for our family.  I was definitely inspired by Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution.  What a great show.  I’m behind him 100% in improving the food at our schools in America.  I was pretty disgusted by what I saw (pizza, fries, chicken nuggets — all processed foods with unhealthy white flour and tons of sugar). 

Seeing what the schools feed children convinced me that I’ll be packing lunches for my kids for the next 18 years.  That is fine, but I worry about the peer pressure.  I vividly remember a time in middle school where I thought bringing a lunch wasn’t cool, and I threw away my healthy lunches that my Mom lovingly made and instead bought a jumbo pickle and a Diet Coke.  I think that was my staple lunch for the entire school year.

(Sorry, Mom, not sure if I told you about that.  I did wise up and start eating your delicious lunches again, and sure wish you were around to pack lunches for me now!)

I cringe when I think about how unhealthy and nutritionally lacking that was, and ick — all that acid on my teeth!

Anyway, I digress. Peer pressure can undo all of the good efforts I’ve made to teach my children to eat healthy food.  I am a perfect example of that. 

I signed up this week for the Great Basin Basket CSA (Community Supported Agriculture), which gives me a basket (OK, really a box) full of seasonal veggies and fruits from locally grown  farms every week.  I picked up our first box last night, and evidently it is the season for lettuce, as we have like 5 varieties of lettuce.  I’m taking it as a challenge for us to consume all the lettuce and not let it go to waste.  The basket even comes with recipes for what vegetables are in the box that week, which also has me excited to branch out and try new things.  Tonight, we’re having herbed oregano chicken with braised spinach.  And I guess a side salad, considering the lettuce challenge this week.  I think it will be a refreshing break from the run of the mill vegetables I’ve been buying at Costco (i.e. same veggies throughout the week).

I like what this is teaching my daughter, as well.  Supporting local farms, what vegetables and fruits are grown locally, and what the seasons are.  Plus, I’m having her help prepare them, so she can see what her food is made of.  I figure any veggies that we can’t consume will be turned into baby food. 

Hopefully I’ll have time for all of this inspired cooking!