Fathers for Organic – Part 7 of 7: A Father Teaches

article_Fathers for Organic – Part 7 of 7_getty.jpg
1 comment Send to friend Print this article

Even before our babies are born, we are teaching them about the wide world around us. We communicate our choices, our values, even without thinking about it. They hear our voices, smell our aromas, and they taste, remember, and prefer the foods we feed to their mother.

After they are born, they will continue to learn, day and night, from what we say and do. Within just a couple of years they will learn to speak and understand our language, just from listening to us speak and trying to imitate what we say. This is quite an accomplishment! When was the last time you fluently learned a language? Imagine tackling another in the next two years. Meanwhile, babies will also be learning the figurative language of our habits, our relationships, our emotions.

This truth hit home to me one day as my toddling son finished brushing his teeth. When he was done, he tapped his toothbrush on the side of the sink to dry it - tap, tap-tap, tap-tap, tap. It was precisely my habitual toothbrush percussion rhythm! But I had never noticed before that I had this minor routine. He had.

Tonight, as my oldest son enjoys tuxedos and boutonnieres, gowns and corsages, at his senior prom, he has learned 18 years of lessons from observing my example, for better or for worse. He has absorbed most of these lessons without either of us noticing. Tonight Cheryl and I celebrate the cycles and seasons of life.

By choosing organic foods for our families, we teach quietly and profoundly. We teach our kids about healthy nutrition, at a time when obesity is overtaking many American children. We teach our kids about justice, as we choose to pay fair prices to the farmers who grow our foods without the use of persistent synthetic chemicals. We teach our kids about respect for our planet, as we take steps to save the wildlife our children love. We teach them to one day be fathers and mothers themselves, creating an inheritance for their children. We teach, we provide, we protect. We are dads.

More From Fathers for Organic:

Dr. Greene’s Organic Journey
Fathers for Organic – Part 1 of 7
Fathers for Organic – Part 2 of 7
Fathers for Organic – Part 3 of 7
Fathers for Organic – Part 4 of 7
Fathers for Organic – Part 5 of 7
Fathers for Organic – Part 6 of 7

3.5
 
 
 
  • Allowed HTML tags: <em> <strong> <cite> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd>

More information about formatting options

CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.
Image CAPTCHA
Enter the characters shown in the image.

Comments

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous on Wed, 2011-06-29 11:20.

thanks for sharing

Dearest Dr. Greene, I was told of your site by a friend, who knows you, I guess from Stanford, since that is where she is. She, being a doctor herself, was always trying to encourage me to share my food knowledge with our local community. You see I was raised off the grid, on all organic home grown food, including an amazing farm family that made all their own yogurt, cottage cheese, ice cream etc. to sell to local people. My mom was soooo strict, no processed food or sugar ever. Lots and lots of fresh organic veggies and fruit, brown rice, whole grain rolls, raw honey, raw fresh organic milk. I mean she made sprouts and sour kraut and canned all of our food for the winter, that we couldn't store in our root cellar, or dried it. She seasoned with herbs and we always had tamari, virgin olive oil and nutritional yeast to condiment our rice and salad. It wasn't so bad, I just remember that when we did get sweet treats at the co-op they were really treats because we rarely got anything, and it would be like carob instead of chocolate, sweetened with dates. I was so mortified as a child when I finally started public school, and the other kids at lunch would pull out their crustless white bread, ham sandwich, mini bag of doritos, home run pie and box punch, and I would pull out my hard hearty wheat roll with home made mayo and sprouts and goat cheese. Oh, the humanity! I would save my allowance to buy some of the enticingly packaged, overly seasoned, msg filled junk that all the other kids had but me. Or so I thought. Anyway, my mother moved far away from her southern Georgia roots, and even further away from the salt, sugar, butter and white flour, and bacon drippings diet that they ate. She vowed to raise us more like our native american ancestors might have eaten and it wasn't easy. She was sworn off as "nut" for even questioning all of the synthetic pesticides and processed food. Her mother, had wanted to breastfeed her, but the doctor said her milk was too thin and blue to provide enough nutrients and instead put her on the common "babyfood" of the day, condensed milk and corn syrup...who is crazy? I know, I still find this so hard to believe but it is true and sadly money talks and people are stubborn. So, my siblings and I were raised differently than most of the kids around us and today we have not forgotten. My own children and husband occasionally, want to know why we can't have the soda and this and that around the house. The other kids get all the Lunchables and gummy princesses they want, we want that too. Well, my son, is in school and I look over the lunch menu with him and he is allowed one hot lunch a week, which I still am not excited about but I feel like he eats so well most of the time that I don't want him to feel like he has to sneak junk, which he does anyway. It is a daily battle for me, and everytime I turn around there is another party or holiday, of which the theme is SUGAR! I like Jamie Oliver's "Food Revolution" and am encouraged by people like you who are educated and well meaning, in a world that doesn't want to hear about changing the junk they are feeding their kids and actually get mad at those trying to raise awareness. I have kept my battle on the home front because people think I am crazy for feeding my family so strictly, which in perspective is not nearly what my own mother was able to accomplish. If people care, they might notice the difference in our family and I will be happy to share. I am also blogging a bit, but with little children this is not as consistent as I would like. Thank you and Cheryl for sharing and having this wonderful site. I have been visiting for many years and have linked you to my blog, called Simplify 2 Balance. You offer a much needed source of informative reading and resources, and you are so right, the eating habits we teach our children, shape their futures more than we know. I thank my mom constantly for her strong will and belief in that what she was doing was the best for us, even though it was not the easy path. Children are like anything else in one way, you get out what you put in, both literally and otherwise. Thank you and best wishes, from our family to yours, Mrs. Thompson