OK, so Cecil’s explanation is basically: “Parents see what they want to see, and kids lower their behavior to their parents expectations.” No doubt that’s true to a degree, and certainly the study Cecil discussed seems to support that claim.
But isn’t it also possible that the perceived “sugar rush” has just as much to do with what kind of situations the kids are in when they’re getting excess sugar? Cecil mentions birthday parties. Isn’t possible the kids really are behaving worse at birthday parties, and the parents only mistake is thinking it’s because of the sugar rather than because they’re being overstimulated. Plus, there’s also the fact that at a typical birthday party the kids have the poor parents hosting the thing drastically outnumbered.
Another example: My mother-in-law runs a daycare, and she has commented that kids always act up the most on the day after Halloween. Her theory is that their parents are letting them eat candy for breakfast, and the kids show up on a sugar high. Based on this column, it seems like Cecil would say that the causative factor is my mom-in-law’s lowered expectations. But if I had to venture a guess, I’d say the kids are acting up mostly because their parents let them stay up late trick-or-treating and they didn’t get enough sleep.
Not disputing your take on what is really happening, but the theory about “sugar highs” exists even in situations where there is no good reason for a child to behave worse than normal; see, for example, the study quoted.
Yeah, I get that. Parents expect their kids to be hyper just because they’ve eaten a bunch of sugar, and the study indicates that’s not correct. But Cecil seemed to take it farther, saying that even in situations like birthday parties the parents probably only think their kids are hyper because that’s what they expect. I’m saying in a lot of those situations the kids probably really are hyper – the parents are just mistaken in thinking sugar is the cause.
Right, and if you will notice, I was saying that you probably are correct, that that happens some of the time. But there are plenty of other times where the parents jump to the conclusion, and there is no good reason to believe the child is likely to be “hyper” or “bad” at all. So we cannot do as I thought you were trying to do, which is draw the conclusion that “that the perceived ‘sugar rush’ has just as much to do with what kind of situations the kids are in when they’re getting excess sugar”.
My experience has been that the “sugar high” in kids is more likely to be excitement due to being at a party, staying up late, drinking caffeinated soft drinks.
When my daughter is denied candy she has been known to scream “there is nothing better than candy!”. I think part of many kids’ problem is that they are in an environment (ie party or clinical “sugar high” trial) where the promise of sweets is either extant or implied. They may misbehave when wanting their favorite sweet taste or placebo thereof.
I work at a preschool/daycare where the kids are not allowed to have cakes or cookies in their lunchboxes on ordinary days. Each child can, however, bring a treat to share on his or her birthday. Sometimes that’s a platter of fruit, sometimes it’s a cake, and sometimes, especially for warm-weather birthdays, it’s popsicles. What I have observed is that the “sugar high” behavior starts as soon as the children see something like a chocolate cake coming out for afternoon snack time. That means either sugar is such insidious stuff that it can travel through the air, or something else than sugar is going on here.