Here’s why I cut off the crust to our son’s sandwich

Prior to being a parent it was easy for me to judge.  Sheesh those kids are loud-Why is that person bringing a stroller in here-really, a child at a beer festival?   Now that I’m a parent the only one of those situations that makes sense is the beer festival one, really people, get a sitter.  One of the more popular stereotypes that I finally bought into is cutting the crust off of our son’s sandwich.

Before children:  Get over it kid, you can’t even taste the crust and there are starving children in Africa, eat the damn crust.

Now:  If my child doesn’t eat lunch at school then he’ll come back home hungry and irritable.

It’s OK to cut the crust off their sandwich.  It’s not going to make them listen to Enya, join a drum circle, start demanding Grey Poupon or start a local chapter of Occupy Kindergarden.   I’m sure when I was a kid that I wanted the crust cut off my sandwiches too.  Aside from my vivid memories of my Star Wars lunch box I don’t remember too much about my school lunch.

I remember that I used a paper bag after sixth grade, because when you went to junior high school nobody used a lunch box.  One day I took my Rubik’s Cube to school with me.  I was having a great lunch and we left the cafeteria to go to sixth period.  On my way to class I stopped, turned to my friend and said, ‘shoot, my Rubik’s Cube was in my lunch bag, which is now in the garbage’.
They didn’t believe me because they said that if I really threw it away then I would’ve been running back to get it.  In my mind’s eye I already saw lunch lady Doris taking the garbage out with my historical relic under hundreds of half eaten sandwiches with the crust’s cut off.

Even at home the upper crusts of their sandwiches are cut off.  The older one will yell and kvetch if he sees the crust and the younger one will quickly follow suit.  Sometimes when he’s potentially super moody he’ll whine that he needs all of the crust cut off.  That is where I draw the line.

Cutting off the entire edges to the sandwich is simply not going to happen.  It’s like people in a hot yoga class trying to bring water in or saying that you need help when you really don’t need it.  In the case of the sandwich, it’s a crutch where he can do it, he’s just looking for attention.  Can do it, he can eat the sandwich-like it’s manual labor.  If a child is hungry enough they’ll eat it.

We have the same policy for dinner.  A smaller version of our food is made and that is their dinner.  If they don’t like it we’ll add some catsup or ranch dressing, but that’s it.   It’s the Sam Kinison culinary school.   (slight language warning on the video) (having said that, GREAT movie if you haven’t seen it)