My 8-year-old doesn’t care for cheese, so we keep a close eye on the school lunch menu or he’ll face choosing between cheese pizza and a cheeseburger one day and a bean-and-cheese burrito or cheese lasagna the next.
Sometimes, we screw up, and Sawyer has to buy lunch on what we call a “cheese day” because he didn’t pack anything. Yesterday, he left his grilled cheese sandwich to congeal on his tray but devoured the accompanying barbecue beans.
Why didn’t he trade his sandwich for someone else’s beans? I ask. “We're not allowed to,” Sawyer says, eating twice as much as usual at dinner.
Not allowed to swap? Not allowed to trade a ham sandwich for a peanut butter and jelly? No using a chocolate chip cookie to barter
for a Hostess cupcake? No, Sawyer says, it's against the rules.
Now I can understand that school officials and parents don't want children shopping their lunch around and trading for all junk food, but that's not how the school lunch trade works.
A kid can't get a Twinkie for a pack of baby carrots with Ranch dressing. A kid can only get a sweet treat by trading a sweet treat – a Ho Ho for a cupcake, a cookie for a chocolate-dipped granola bar, with the occasional bag of Pringles warranting a pack of mini doughnuts.
If kids can’t make trades at lunch, I bemoan, how are they supposed to learn the art of negotiation, the power of a deal, or to shake on it? Sawyer shrugs: “We learn all that in Junior Achievement.”
Karina Bland is raising her 9-year-old son in Tempe with a lot of love, humor and support from her friends and family. A longtime journalist covering child welfare and education issues for The Arizona Republic, she blogs about raising good kids.
I know my littlest one gets
I know my littlest one gets excited when she gets green apple applesauce because she lets a friend sniff it. Oh to be young again!
Yeah, to bad they can't trade, but I suppose it could cause delays in eating and if someone isn't being fair a fight could break out. The bottom line is probably trying to keep the kids on task - also known as - get it done and I can go on my break teacher duty :)
KarilouMomof2 is a discussion leader for arizonamoms.com living in Tempe. Her daughters are 9 and 6.
My kids school is the same
My kids school is the same way. My son also dislikes cheese (or how it's prepared mainly) so we skip the nonsense completely with him and just pack lunches (I keep well stocked snacks, fruit, bread, lunch meat and caprisuns for this). My daughter is finicky so I can always tell if lunch wasn't up to her standings...she'll come home have a huge snack and 1/2 an hour later when I walk in the door bug me for dinner right away. I know back in our day they ALWAYS offered PB & J but I guess that's too expensive now a days lol.
"It's not to late to become who you've always wanted to be..."
I don't know if it wasn't
I don't know if it wasn't allowed formally, but when I was a kid, no one traded lunches. I guess the culture of the school was such that we just didn't do it. I don't think it ever occurred to me until I watched TV and saw some sitcom where trading school lunches was part of the plot.
If you didn't like the lunch your Mom packed, you didn't eat it. And there were days I came home really hungry. I used to get a ham and cheese sandwich with butter on the bread, carrot sticks, and fruit. But after about age 6, I didn't like butter on sandwiches. So I would take the sandwich apart, scrape any butter off the cheese and eat it, and eat the fruit. I'd throw the rest away.
I was amazed when my
I was amazed when my daughter told me about the "no swap" rule. I instantly thought of the puplic service announcement commercial depicting a boy making several trades and then ending up with an apple he then gave to a boy with no lunch at all. It made me weepy.
sure, fine, whatever
I don't know if trades are
I don't know if trades are allowed at my son's school or not, but they may have different rules than a public school.......I wonder they do that because they don't want to be liable for some kid with food allergies ending up with something they should not eat, because they traded with someone else?
BTW, Karina, I feel Sawyer's pain because I hate cheese, too...............except for fresh mozzarella and gouda, and even at that I can only tolerate them in small quantities.....and it seems like everyone else on the planet is wild about cheese it so they typically put cheese on everything.......which ruins perfectly good food in my opinion!!! It is sometimes a challenge to find a dish that doesn't incorporate cheese in some fashion.....I am the queen of "no cheese, dressing on the side, etc, etc" fussy ordering at restaurants.
I was thinking the same
I was thinking the same about the food allergies. There are so many more kids with allergies these days than when I was in school.
I have seen kids share food at my kids' school, but I don't know if it's technically allowed. I'll have to find out.
But I agree with Karina. Kids don't trade chocolate treats for celery sticks or yogurt for a ham sandwich. They're smarter than that. The ultimate snack with my daughter's friends is Flamin' Hot Cheetos. It has to be something good to see any kids share those. And I've not witnessed a full trade.
Arizona Moms Editor Yvette Armendariz shares stories about raising her kids and tips for busy parents in her Time-starved (goddess) Mom blog. She and her husband are raising two children, ages 8 and 11.