A Mommy Story

Every now and then, a wave of embarrassment washes over me and I feel like I’m a bad mother. It could be when I drop my child off for babysitting, not realizing at first that I dressed her in shorts and a t-shirt for a day that will barely get above 70 degrees.

Or it could be when I’m in the car with a friend, with Cordy in the backseat, and as we drive past a McDonalds, she spots the Golden Arches and her little voice interrupts us with, “Nug-gets? Fwies?” (That is officially the name of McDonalds to her, by the way.)

Yes, I sometimes don’t dress her properly for the weather, and we do make way-too-frequent trips to McDonalds or other fast food establishments. At a day away from two years old, she still has no idea how to use a spoon or a fork, can’t dress herself, and she won’t drink from anything except a sippy cup.

In some circles, that might be enough to label me a bad mother.

And yet, anytime I need perspective, I turn to my mother. My mom works as a lab tech for a small hospital in my hometown. Since it is such a small hospital, anyone who works there tends to know what is going on with every patient that comes in. And sadly there is a high number of bad or abusive parents in that town, so they often see children brought into the hospital with varying signs of neglect or abuse.

Every now and then, during my daily talk with my mom, she’ll tell me about someone who was brought into the hospital that night or the night before. Sometimes she just tells me about running into people I went to school with, but other times she tells me horror stories of some of the children brought in to the emergency room. I think just talking about it helps her to cope with seeing these types of parents day in and day out so she doesn’t snap and yell at one of them.

The latest story floored me. A one year old boy was brought into the ER. His gums were extremely swollen, red, and bleeding. The baby teeth that had already come in were yellow or black, one was broken, and the others were falling out.

How did a one year old baby come to have such a diseased mouth? Because his parents filled his bottles with soda constantly. This kid didn’t drink milk, and he didn’t even drink juice. He drank nothing but soda, and was allowed to eat candy and suck on lollipops instead of pacifiers. His diet was nothing but junk food, fried food, and candy. His mom ate that way, so she didn’t see why he couldn’t just eat what she ate. Obviously, she didn’t brush his teeth, either. She fed her child whatever he liked, and he just happened to like the sweet taste of soda and candy.

That little boy is now in foster care, thank goodness. The foster dad is one of my mom’s coworkers, and he said it has been difficult to break this tiny child of his bad habits. You can’t leave a can of soda anywhere in a room, because he will find it, crawl to it, and drink it right from the can. The baby is addicted to sugar. He doesn’t like to eat solids because his mouth hurts too much.

The foster dad took the little boy to a dentist, and the dentist said that this child’s mouth is so injured and diseased, that he will probably have to face dental surgery in the future, and may have problems with his permanent teeth when they come in.

What parent could do this to their child? While I doubt few parents follow all the rules all the time, who could so blatantly hurt their child by giving them soda in a bottle? Even as a kid, I knew that, even though I liked soda a lot, it wasn’t healthy for me. Surely an adult can figure this out.

Malnutrition is a steady, silent problem in the US, not just because some families have trouble affording good foods, but also because some families choose to eat only junk, putting the health of their children in jeopardy. I can understand the appeal to some extent – junk food is sometimes cheaper, and generally easier to prepare or already prepared for you. It’s easier to go through the drive-thru at McDonalds for a $2.50 Happy Meal than it is to go home, prepare food, and cook a meal for a child. I admit I do it far too often, but certainly not for every meal, or every day.

While stories such as this little boy’s make me realize that I’m a pretty good mom, they also lead me to wonder how problems like this can be fixed. Children don’t learn about the food pyramid and what foods are good and bad for them until they’re in school – by that point habits are set and it is far too late for many.

When I was discharged from the hospital after my c-section, they gave me all kinds of information about breastfeeding and about keeping myself healthy, but nothing was said about making sure I transitioned my child from milk to healthy foods. At each pediatrician visit, they would ask what she was eating at that point, but nothing more was said. Maybe they would have said more if I had answered, “Oh, her favorite foods are pizza, chocolate cake and Mountain Dew,” but then again, I wouldn’t be surprised if someone who does feed that to their kid lies about it to the doctor. Truthfully, I’d bet many parents like this don’t even bother attending all of the recommended check-ups.

I wish I knew of a solution to make parents better educated about healthy eating for their children. Or for their entire family, for that matter. (Yeah, I know, pot calling kettle black here, but at least I’m trying.) There needs to be a way to reach parents and stress to them not only the importance of feeding their kids good foods, but also the possible consequences that could happen from eating junk food. The anti-abortionists have their giant signs with pictures of aborted fetuses (gross, by the way) – maybe we need giant billboards with pictures of that one year old’s mouth, or an obese 4 year old who can’t keep up with his peers, or a 7 year old checking her blood sugar levels due to Type II diabetes.

As far as I’m concerned, Cordelia will never know the taste of soda until she’s much older. Right now, she picks up soda cans, looks into them, and says, “Yuck.” I encourage her to keep saying yuck, too. She knows the word “cookie” and all of the sweet tastiness that comes from that word, but what she doesn’t know is that the cookies I give her as very occasional treats are actually Arrowroot cookies with added vitamins or whole wheat cookies. Right now, her only drink choices are milk (her favorite), juice (actually 1/3 100% juice with 2/3 water added), and water.

I hope that as she gets older, we can convince her to try new foods that are healthy, and avoid the junk food trap to give her the best start in life possible. I only wish some parents would want the same for their children.