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It was only a matter of time really. Our kids come home from kindergarten telling us that we’re not as smart as the teacher. Now a Chicago school has told all parents they’re too dumb to craft a healthy enough lunch for their kids. They’ve enacted a school-wide ban on the homemade lunch.

The kids now have the option to buy lunch or … well buy lunch (unless they have a medical condition and a doctor’s note). And all this is in the name, of course, of making the students healthier. Let me be the first to say bull-pucky! If I can’t make healthy enough food for my child, pray tell me, why are you even letting me be her parent?

Are you going to take her shoe shopping too? How about finding an orthodontist? Paying for it? Yeah, that’s what I thought. I’m not responsible enough to take care of my kid … until it starts to inconvenience them.

Making all kids eat school lunch is easy for a school. There are no fights between the haves and the have nots. No separate lines for the “buyers” and the “carriers.” And the cafeteria has an almost exact count for food orders. No more wasted food. It’s perfect really — for the school.

But the news that a school building could be better able to meet an individual child’s needs is more than a little ironic considering schools are being called out more and more in recent months for painting kids with a broad brush rather than attempting to work with the individual. And what is a one-size-fits-all lunch program other than a washing away of a child’s individual needs?

Take, for example, the way we balance our kids’ food, meal to meal, snack to snack. It’s a process for most parents. We know that Little Johnny had Read more…