My mom told me that our dad would cheerfully eat anything in front of the kids, and then if it was “fine,” after we left the table, he would tell her, please let’s not have that again.
My mom is one of those. When she was in school or behind in her book club, she only read the right-hand pages. It gave her enough to get through the test or the discussion.
I am a multi-time Portland Spelling Bee Champion. Can’t say anyone pays me for it, so not sure how it would work as a profession, but I have T-shirts in multiple colors.
You’re not having fever dreams. I was one of those girls. My dresses were supposed to be exactly down to my fingertips. In the store I would slouch as much as possible to show my mother that the dress was too short. I was in elementary school then. Thankfully, by the time I was in middle school, it was okay for girls to wear jeans.
We ate a lot of raisins as kids also. My guess is that parents like them because they’re sweet enough for kids to eat them, but they’re less perishable than other fruit, and they’re not candy.
Now, I won’t pick them out of salads or rice pilaf-type dishes, but I won’t buy them or eat them on purpose. My big issue is people who put them in cookies or other desserts. When you think you’re getting chocolate chip, and it turns out to be raisin, that feels like an April Fool’s joke gone too far.
I don’t think Drbarb meant that coming from a family whose first language isn’t English is abuse. But it can be harder for kids learning English in, say, middle school to keep up with substantive subjects. And it’s harder for those parents to help their kids with homework. Not every child of immigrants or other language speakers has problems in school, but it can be a disadvantage. Similarly, kids who are abused at home or other places can have difficulties at school.
We’ve started embracing holistic medicine. I think we need to start looking at education that way also.
Kevin is a class clown/daredevil. We’ll see if he suddenly becomes a model student because he’s getting extra reading help. Given his personality, I doubt it. Also, given that his mom is a single working mother of four, how much time she’s going to be able to devote to his new lessons is questionable. But she is a medical professional, so she probably will understand more than a lot of parents would. IRL, at least, it seems like his grades would get better and he would hate school less, but it won’t give him a personality transplant.
Yes, my dad’s goal was to encourage the kids to eat anything, and it worked with three out of four.