Yes, I agree...gotta do what you gotta do! Sometimes it is all you have time for and all that stuff. Just to let ya know, I didn't take offense to any of the discussion...lol. I know I'm not a bad parent, and get comments everywhere I go with my 3 children because they're so respectful (say ma'am and sir and please and thank you ALL THE TIME) and behaved. I just got that the majority had the 'bad parent' thought on us fast fooders. Doesn't bother me though, at all! Every parent has different parenting ways!

Kim

Yeah. I think we all have things we do that others may see as "bad" or whatever. I guess we all just have to do what we gotta do and live our lives for ourselves, not others.

;)

I just don't like the implication that us mom's who allow our kids the OCCASIONAL Happy Meal are bad mothers.

Nobody can make that judgement.

Like I said before, just because you see a child in a McDonald's eating a Happy Meal, it doesn't necessarily mean they're allowed to eat that stuff all the time. That's like me and my fried chicken - on very rare occasions I'll grab a piece of fried chicken from a food buffet. Just because I'm eating it doesn't mean I pig out on it every single day.

I think the one thing i've seen as a common thread through everyone's responses is the word "treat." When i was a kid, we couldn't afford fast food on any sort of regular basis, so we always understood it to be something special and rare, and not really about the food at all, but more about the special occasion. I think the danger with fast food is not necessarily that it exists, but that we tend to treat it as an every day part of life instead of something unusual and rare in our diet. Then kids just learn to expect it.