AskDrRachel.com

I posted earlier this week about parenting multiples without losing your mind.  Some may believe I'm the kind of doc who thinks she has all of the answers to raising kids.  What happened yesterday serves as the proof that this presumption is fallacious:

My twins have dental appliances called palate expanders right now, designed to widen their jaws so their teeth will grow in properly.  The orthodontist told us she recommends eight-year-olds have expanders that are fitted to the mouth with glue because kids lose them so often, and because they're REALLY EXPENSIVE.  Now, I believe my kids are responsible people, so we let them have the removable type because - eew - we couldn't imagine them being able to keep them clean otherwise.

For almost four months we (read: the children) have had no trouble keeping track of removing the expander, eating, and replacing expander.  We were also on summer break...

Third grade has started, and yesterday I got a text from Big Daddy saying an expander had gone missing in the cafeteria.  Twins had searched bags of trash during school hours and the principal kindly allowed this and also made an announcement over the PA system in search of the lost item.  No luck.

That afternoon, mommy decided she'd touched and smelled things in her line of work that are much worse than anything in an elementary school trash can.  Vinyl gloves and black plastic bags in hand, I went - GULP - dumpster diving in a public elementary school parking lot.  This school is in the middle of my neighborhood on a busy street that connects the homes with the school and with the fast food restaurants on the other side of the school.  And I had no shame - even waved at a few people as they wrinkled their noses at me!  To be fair, I'm sure I was quite a sight by the end of it... as my momma would say, "No well-bred Southern Lady would..."

Ten or twelve 55-gallon bags of half-eaten food and utensils later, I learned a few things about human behavior that I hadn't been taught in medical school:

1) Children DO NOT use napkins - why do we even try to push it and why are we surprised by the stains on their sleeves every day?  Why don't we just dress them all in sackcloth and throw the clothes away later??

2) Children WILL NOT eat their vegetables (well, OK, I learned this before - but not in med school)

3) Grown ups eat a LOT of salad with ranch dressing - it was easy to tell which garbage bag came out of the teachers' lounge

4) Twenty minutes is not enough time for most of your kids to eat even the stuff they like to eat - there was much more pizza in the garbage than I'd figured on.  No wonder kids come home asking for a snack...

5) Kids WILL EAT grapes - if they can get them out of the plastic baggie

6) Kids will TELL mom and dad they ate their sack lunch, but unless it's a prepackaged fun meal with cartoon pictures on it from the grocery store, they're lying to you.  They don't even drink the expensive fruit punch unless it's in the silver packet.

7) Kids will throw EVERYTHING away.  Don't expect to see the lunch box or the reusable plastic food containers again.

8) The lost dental appliance will ALWAYS be in the last bag at the bottom of the dumpster, after you've changed gloves three times and you smell like the back alley of Restaurant Row.  And your neighbors may be thinking about calling the police soon.

9) The fast food dinner your kids brought you won't look very good after you've spent an hour in a trash dumpster.

10) But, you find you would do it again if you had to...because you're a mom.