The moms in my neighborhood think I'm nuts for giving my kids all the choices I do for breakfast, lunch and snacks. They offer one or two choices for breakfast, they pack their kids' lunches and snacks without consultation.

At my house, the pantry and fridge are wide open for those meals. If my older son, who was adopted from Vladivostok at 18 months more than seven years ago, wants baked beans for breakfast, he can eat baked beans. If my little guy, who has been here less than two years from Sakhalin Island, wants yogurt and a banana, that's what he gets. If they want Gaeta olives or cucumbers or tortilla chips for their school snack, that's what we pack. But the "eat what you want" rule ends at dinner: We take turns picking what to eat then, but it is strictly one meal for all.

I can imagine some of you shaking your heads, too. What keeps the kids from having soda and cookies for breakfast? (I don't have the former in the house; the latter are home-made and whole grain, so they are OK.) What mother in her right mind would open her morning to such chaos? A mother of children adopted from Russia, that's who.

Here's my reasoning. In an orphanage, children are given no choice of which food they will eat. What's put on the table is what the orphanage cooks have. The children never learn how to make a choice. They never learn the benefits of a good choice, or what happens when you make a bad one. They never learn that fresh fruit tastes better than candy and is a better choice. That choice skill gap echoes across many different aspect of their lives and organizations that work with children who age out of the orphanage system report some of their greatest problems stem from poor decision-making skills.

Orphanage children aren't accustomed to abundance. Shortly after I brought my older son home, I can remember meeting a family who had adopted two older children. The kids constantly carried around lunch bags full of food because they were fearful that there wouldn't be any more.

Orphanage kids also aren't used to something that many of us take for granted: The good smell of food cooking in a kitchen.

My kids are learning to make good food choices. They are learning what their body feels like when it has a good breakfast and how the right snack can help them re-charge mid-morning. They are learning how to grow good food just outside their back door. They are learning how to make a meal.