"But my mom only knows how to make peanut butter sandwiches."

On the 2nd day of school I sent Gracie a peanut butter sandwich for lunch. It's Gracie's favorite sandwich and what she took nearly every day to school last year. Well, later that day I got a call from a friend from our ward that works at the school. She told me she thought she should call me and tell me what happened to Gracie today. My heart instantly sank into my stomach. In her words she said Gracie's lunch was confiscated while she was eating it. I guess Liberty is a "Peanut Free School" which means no peanut butter or things that contain peanuts or anything that MAY contain peanuts because it was manufactured in a factory containing peanuts. Unfortunately I didn't know that at the time. So Gracie had eaten half her sandwich and then had the rest of it taken away from her. Gracie hates to cry in front of anyone because she gets embarrassed. So you can only imagine how hard it was for her when she started crying in the lunch room in front of everyone. She was just really embarrassed that her sandwich was taken away from her and everyone was watching. She said she had a jacket and put it over her head to hide. I guess there were a couple of women there that gave her a hug and tried to reassure her it was okay. She told them, "But my mom only knows how to make peanut butter sandwiches." I guess they made her a sandwich made with soy to eat instead. After lunch the kids went to recess and Gracie said that she sat on a bench away from the other kids because she didn't think anyone would like her after what happened. The thing is, I had to hear that from this kind friend that called and from Gracie. I didn't get a note or a call from the school to explain what happened.

Okay, this totally broke my heart! I was so upset that she had to experience that and feel those awful embarrassing and lonely feelings. I was upset at how it was handled. I really wish they would have just let her finish the last half of her sandwich and either call me or send a note home to me telling me not to send PB sandwiches. So needless to say, her first couple days of school got off to a rocky start. Phil and I tried to help Gracie and help her to learn some valuable lessons from this experience.

I know we need to teach our kids lessons to survive in the real world, but dang it's hard to have to actually see them go through these experiences in order to really teach them.