Dear Teacher,

My son Angelo is in your freshman "Foods" class.

We adopted Angelo from Haiti about three years ago, just before his thirteenth birthday. He has always had some odd quirks about food. For example, he'll only eat off of certain colors of plates, and he really prefers to eat out of Tupperware-type containers instead of plates. He also does everything he can to avoid sitting and eating at the table with us as a family; he prefers to fix his own food and carry it to his room to eat. If we insist that he sit at the table at a family meal, he gets angry and refuses to eat anything.

Lately, he seems to have gotten even worse. His latest thing is that he has decided that our silverware is too unsanitary to eat with, so he's eating with his fingers. He's even eating messy stuff like Ramen noodles with his fingers.

He says that in class, he learned that a dishwasher is the most sanitary way to wash dishes. We recently moved to a house where we don't have a dishwasher, so he's decided that our silverware is not clean enough to eat with.

Most of the world doesn't have dishwashers. If he returns to Haiti as an adult, he will probably not have any access to a dishwasher.

I know you have a lot of other kids to teach, but if you ever, in class, have the opportunity to discuss sanitary ways of handwashing dishes, that would be nice.

I just thought I would mention all this in case Angelo is exhibiting some of this behavior in class and it confuses you. It confuses us too.

Thanks,
Angelo's Mom