Nursery School Darwinism

"Daddy, I can't have jelly sandwiches because of an allergy."

This is what my 3 year old informed me when I picked her up today from nursery school. Obviously I'm out of my gourd to think that it would be acceptable to send my kid into school with a jelly sandwich. Jelly?? OK. The peanut thing was far enough but now we've gone beyond the pale. It's bad enough that I've never been able to send my 7 year old son into school with a good ole American PB&J but now we've gone crazy. At the risk of offending everyone, I would say that if you're kid's immune system is so weak that an airborne sniff of raspberry jelly from another kids sandwich is enough to send them into anaphylactic shock, maybe there are other issues - like maybe if this were "The Wild" your progeny would have been a carcass years ago. It's called thinning the heard. Do you think the "Greatest Generation" ever had a peanut table in elementary school? I don't think so. If they did a bunch of blond haired, blue eyed Germans might occupy all of Western Europe today.

However I think there's something else afoot here. I blame the parents. We don't allow our kids to be kids anymore. They have to be little adults from the age of three. Well you know what? Kids are supposed to get dirty and play and make fart noises and wipe snot on their sleeve and drop food on the floor and eat it. You know why? BECAUSE THEY'RE KIDS!! Instead what do we do as parents? We Purell the crap out of them from the womb, expose them to nothing and basically raise them like bubble boys and girls. Then we send them out into the petri dish that is nursery school - with the snot and the mucus and such and we're shocked when Johnny has issues? Of course he does - just like his parents. Can we let our kids live life people? Putting their fingers in their mouths after squishing an ant won't kill them - we just think so.