The BTS Edition

The sunscreen tubes are empty, the goggles have gone missing and the crumbs on the car floor have been replaced with sand, yet this cruise director isn’t ready to see her passengers disembark from their summer adventure.

As I forced myself to look through our summer homework and piles that came home on the last day of school (which may or may not have been touched in 8 weeks) to make sure my passengers were ready for school, I was reminded of the beauty of summer. 

Yes, its those sun-filled, agenda-less, pool and popsicle filled days, but its also the ability to give your kid the right messaging around food without worry about what counter messages they’re getting at school. 

In our piles, I found an all school assignment to take a photo of yourself over the summer doing various things and one option to photograph was, get this, “a photo of yourself eating something new AND HEALTHY”. The shouty all caps weren’t in the directions, I’ve just added those her for dramatization purposes. 

Guess what? Any food that you try is healthy. A banana split? A new doughnut? Your grandma’s peach cobbler cake? Yummy and delicious and healthy, too. Healthy doesn’t just mean grilled carrots or a tomato basil salad fresh from your garden. Health happens along a spectrum and so does your food. You don’t need to eat “perfectly”  by diet culture standards every minute of every day.

We’re enjoying our last splash of summer on Nantucket and I know there’s going to be a steady diet of ice cream from the Juice Bar (in particular Green Monster and Cookies and Cream). Sounds like a perfectly healthy way to cap off summer of 2022. I might just take a few pictures of us licking our sun kissed cones and submit them to school.

If you’re worried about what messages your kids might be getting at school this year, you’re not alone. When kids are told what they can and can’t eat from either a school lunch or a lunch brought from home, its confusing and chips away at their own sense of knowing intuitively what their body needs. I talk a lot more about this in my upcoming book which will be available in the next few months!

If you need a little help in talking with your teachers or lunchroom helpers when it comes to handling your kid’s lunch, I love this resource from Dr. Katja Rowell, aka The Feeding Doctor. Teachers and school helpers mean well, but they’re part of the same diet culture web that’s sucked us all into it’s tentacles over time. 

Let’s get kids BTS minus the negative messaging around food. Once you’ve packed their lunch or they’ve filled their trays, remind your kids that they get to decide what and how much food they need.

I’m off to cut my sunscreen bottles in half to squeeze out the last drops of summer so we don’t get burnt while waiting in line for our ice cream.