Callie and Matthew Have Goldfish, I Need Them!

My three-year-old son, Wyatt, came running into the house the other day after pre-school announcing, "Callie and Matthew Have Goldfish, I Need Them!" At first, all I could think of was, there’s no way I’m getting you a goldfish, your sister’s fish thankfully just died after two years of neglect and it was one of the best days I can remember in a long time. 

Finally, I realized he was talking about the edible version, Pepperidge Farms Goldfish. He wanted Goldfish as his snack at school because his friends had them. Fine by me! So I said, "OK Wyatt, I’ll get you Goldfish, no problem." 

Now, as I’m packing his Goldfish in the Ziploc for the next day, I am fully aware that he’s never eaten a Goldfish. Wyatt doesn’t eat anything except yogurt, oatmeal, macaroni and cheese and pasta with marinara (sometimes if the wind is blowing just right). And, well, you get the idea. He really causes us much stress at mealtime. So this is kind of an experiment for me to see if the Goldfish come back uneaten. When he came home I ran to his backpack and to my surprise every Goldfish was gone. The teacher returns any uneaten portion of his snack so I can track what he has and hasn’t eaten, so I know he actually ate all of them. I was in shock. 

A couple of days later he sees an apple on the counter in our kitchen and says "I want the red apple for my snack tomorrow, like Johnny." Now that's just crazy talk coming from my little Ghandi. An apple?!? I excitedly pack it as requested and...it didn’t come back. The child ate it. It was a miracle. I'm now thinking about calling the mothers of his friends and making requests of what they pack for their kids' snacks. A whole new angle I had never thought of. I could have him eating broccoli by the end of the month.

Instead, I screech to a mental halt and overanalyze what’s going on here. Is this just the earliest form of peer pressure? I am totally blindsided by this thought. Oh, no! First it’s Goldfish and apples and by the time he's 17 is it going to be pot and shoplifting? I'm so confused because so far this need to be like his friends has gotten him to eat an apple which in three years, and all the bribing I could muster, I have not been able to do. Why was my kid the follower and not the leader? Was this going to plague him his whole life? Am I enabling this problem? Should I have "just-said-no" to the Goldfish? I could have stopped the cycle before it started. Should I manipulate the situation and pack him Oreos so his friends will want what he has and torture their moms instead of the reverse? 

I know what I'm saying is far fetched, OK some might even say crazy. But if you think about it, there might be a little bit of truth to it. If my Wyatt is so influenced by his friend Matthew at the age of three that he actually ate an apple, then I'm telling you this is a powerful force. To recap, he only eats yogurt! So before you all think I’m nuts, I’m just sayin', watch what and who your little ones are influenced by. And maybe it’s not a bad idea to help guide our kids into having their own opinions and to steer their own ship rather than jump onto someone else's that might be sinking.

Teenagers are a topic I know nothing about other than I was one once. That alone is enough to scare me to death. And I grew up in the 80’s when it was a lot less scary than it is now. Well, at least the hair is not as scary now. I don't know the moment that peer pressure takes hold, but I know that it does. I was a lemming in high school, and as an adult looking back I wish I had been a leader instead of a follower. Maybe if someone had stopped me from eating the Goldfish when I was three, I just might have been that leader.

But being a leader comes with responsibilities. It helps if our teenagers have some guidance along the way to help them develop a moral compass that will help them along. I don’t know what would be worse, for our own children to follow someone else’s child down a bad path or to get the call that another child has followed one of our kids down a bad path. Either way is not good, so the next time one of my kids asks me for an apple, I'll think twice. Ha ha.

Author: Shari Dabby