Thank You For Sharing

Mia's preschool class has an interesting practice. It is called "shared snack." Each child brings a snack each day and the teachers divvy them all up so each child gets a little bit of every other child's snack. (No applesauce or yogurt, please.) I am a little uncomfortable about this, but I go with it so as not to have Mia known as the girl with the Mom-Zilla. Why don't I like it?

1. Because I like to have more control over what my child eats. (After week 1, the teachers sent an email reminding families, "No candy, please!" I found that a bit alarming.)
2. Sarah pointed out that the food gets handled a lot. We think we can trust the teachers, but we don't know if the other parents wash their hands before grabbing a handful of goldfish crackers to put in the ziploc bag. (Eeeuw)
3. Another potential problem is portion control. Sarah reports that Mia doesn't eat a very good lunch on Tuesdays and Thursdays. If every family is a bit generous knowing that the snack is shared with 9 other children, the portions could get a bit large.

Something might have to change here, since by the second week of school Mia was getting rather irregular. I gently inquired via email what exactly Mia has been eating and got the following response from her teacher.

"About our snacks, we have a wide variety of foods. Often a couple different crackers - goldfish, cheese-its, ritz, saltines, etc; a type of cookie; a couple types of fruits - apples, bananas, grapes and raisins are all popular; sometimes cheese or gummies. Nothing too odd."

I wasn't too thrilled to hear about cookies and gummies, but after careful reflection, I will stifle myself. I'm sure there will be plenty of better opportunities to be a Mom-Zilla. In the meantime, we've added prunes to Mia's diet.