A child is embarrassed over his lunch.
One of the hardest times in a child's life is hitting that awkward phase around 10 that lasts 'til at least, 16. A hallmark of this time is when kids become obsessed with status symbols such as clothing, shoes, bikes, technology, and even what they bring in their lunches.
Kimberly Church, a Los Angeles stylist and mother of three boys, recently discovered that her 10-year-old was embarrassed by her packing his snacks in a Ziploc bag. “News today from my fourth grader that this kind of snack is embarrassing,” she said, holding up a Ziploc bag with chips inside. “So if I'm gonna send a snack, it needs to be in, like, one of those individual single-serving bags.”
It seems that the kids at his school will shame you for having your snacks in a Ziploc bag instead of individually wrapped, branded bags. Is it because it's cheaper to buy a large bag of chips and then divvy them up, day by day, rather than buying individual bags? Who knows what goes on in the mind of a fourth-grader?
"My son told me yogurt is embarrassing, like what? Why," one viewer asked in the comments. "I remember in 3rd grade we had $.25 popcorn Friday, and all my mom had was 2 dimes and 1 nickel, and I remember crying because I wanted a quarter because I was so embarrassed," another added.
As a parent, dealing with your child’s embarrassment over their lunch is tricky. You don’t want the child to be picked on for something so trivial as the type of lunch they bring to school. Still, you also want to teach them resilience and to stick up for themselves in front of other kids.
Why do tweens and teens get embarrassed so easily?
Carl E Pickhardt, Ph.D., says that it’s crucial for parents to avoid minimizing their tween or teen’s sense of embarrassment and to think of it in adult terms. “Sometimes, to give adults an emotional reference for the teenager’s embarrassment, they can relate to I’ll ask if they ever have any performance fears, stage fright, interview anxiety, social jitters, party discomfort, or nervousness about public speaking,” Pickhardt writes for Psychology Today. “Although not exactly the same, such sensitivity to personal exposure and fear of public scrutiny may be comparable to the emotional distress that adolescent embarrassment can cause.”
A group of kids lining up in the cafeteria.via Canva/Photos
Pickhardt adds that children of this age are easily embarrassed because they're walking the tight rope between adulthood and childhood, and it’s easy for them to act too old or too young. In this young man’s case, eating chips out of a Ziploc bag may appear to be something a younger child would do.
Tweens and teenage kids are also very conscious about violating the norms of the group and feeling included because they are trying to find their place and assert their individuality outside of their family unit. Facing rejection from their “tribe” of peers can create extreme feelings of social isolation. This age of insecurity is easily taken advantage of by marketers who are working to make their brands an important part of youth culture.
An elementary school kid's lunch.via Canva/Photos
“Branding is about finding a group or tribe to identify with,” Chris Hudson writes at Understanding Teenagers. “The message teens hear is ‘if you have the right brand, you belong to a family that share your identification with the brand and its lifestyle/values.’”
Parents may scoff at their child coming home and feeling embarrassed about their lunch, but there is much more at play if you dig a bit beneath the surface. Tweens and teens are going through a challenging phase where fitting in is paramount because the pain of rejection and bullying is terrible. So, it’s up to parents to have some sympathy by getting in touch with their feelings when they were younger and embarrassment made them want to disappear. Church may be surprised that her son is embarrassed about his school lunch, but in the end, it’s not really about snacks; it’s a request for belonging and evidence of the incredible importance that his peer group plays in his life.
A Generation Jones teenager poses in her room.Image via Wikmedia Commons
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An angry man eating spaghetti.via 
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Woman gives toddler a bath Canva
An Irish woman went to the doctor for a routine eye exam. She left with bright neon green eyes.
It's not easy seeing green.
Did she get superpowers?
Going to the eye doctor can be a hassle and a pain. It's not just the routine issues and inconveniences that come along when making a doctor appointment, but sometimes the various devices being used to check your eyes' health feel invasive and uncomfortable. But at least at the end of the appointment, most of us don't look like we're turning into The Incredible Hulk. That wasn't the case for one Irish woman.
Photographer Margerita B. Wargola was just going in for a routine eye exam at the hospital but ended up leaving with her eyes a shocking, bright neon green.
At the doctor's office, the nurse practitioner was prepping Wargola for a test with a machine that Wargola had experienced before. Before the test started, Wargola presumed the nurse had dropped some saline into her eyes, as they were feeling dry. After she blinked, everything went yellow.
Wargola and the nurse initially panicked. Neither knew what was going on as Wargola suddenly had yellow vision and radioactive-looking green eyes. After the initial shock, both realized the issue: the nurse forgot to ask Wargola to remove her contact lenses before putting contrast drops in her eyes for the exam. Wargola and the nurse quickly removed the lenses from her eyes and washed them thoroughly with saline. Fortunately, Wargola's eyes were unharmed. Unfortunately, her contacts were permanently stained and she didn't bring a spare pair.
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Since she has poor vision, Wargola was forced to drive herself home after the eye exam wearing the neon-green contact lenses that make her look like a member of the Green Lantern Corps. She couldn't help but laugh at her predicament and recorded a video explaining it all on social media. Since then, her video has sparked a couple Reddit threads and collected a bunch of comments on Instagram:
“But the REAL question is: do you now have X-Ray vision?”
“You can just say you're a superhero.”
“I would make a few stops on the way home just to freak some people out!”
“I would have lived it up! Grab a coffee, do grocery shopping, walk around a shopping center.”
“This one would pair well with that girl who ate something with turmeric with her invisalign on and walked around Paris smiling at people with seemingly BRIGHT YELLOW TEETH.”
“I would save those for fancy special occasions! WOW!”
“Every time I'd stop I'd turn slowly and stare at the person in the car next to me.”
“Keep them. Tell people what to do. They’ll do your bidding.”
In a follow-up Instagram video, Wargola showed her followers that she was safe at home with normal eyes, showing that the damaged contact lenses were so stained that they turned the saline solution in her contacts case into a bright Gatorade yellow. She wasn't mad at the nurse and, in fact, plans on keeping the lenses to wear on St. Patrick's Day or some other special occasion.
While no harm was done and a good laugh was had, it's still best for doctors, nurses, and patients alike to double-check and ask or tell if contact lenses are being worn before each eye test. If not, there might be more than ultra-green eyes to worry about.