I don’t suppose it would help to remind SIL of how expensive the dentist is nowadays?
I just had to fork over ~$500 on two fillings (replacements for older metal amalgam fillings past their prime). Ouch. Thank god for insurance.
They better pray their dental coverage is sufficient, or else they’ll find themselves pillaging the college fund just to make sure their son can continue masticating into adulthood.
I was horrified at a recent hockey game to see a woman sitting with a very small child on her lap, holding an open cup of soda. The baby was dipping his pacifier in the soda, sucking it off, dipping it back in the soda…repeat ad nauseum.
Eww. Just ewww.
I meant to mention; my kids are not permitted anything with artificial colourings - this used to be a massive and uncomfortable restriction for them, but it isn’t anymore, as there is now quite a broad range of sweets available that use natural colours - even Haribo uses them now.
This isn’t just me being ignorantly afraid of ‘chemicals’, BTW - this is just the experience of me, and many other parents - anecdotal, I know, but now starting to be confirmed by proper scientific data - that certain colourings seem to aggravate hyperactive behaviour in certain children.
We are now in the middle of The Season of Greed (it’s St. Nicholas time in Holland) so I think it is fair to say that most of the kids within swing-a-cat distance of my keyboard are eating cookies and/or chocolate for breakfast. And may I just say, I am so happy not to be an elementary school teacher or coach of young kids’ sport at this time of year. I work in the school library and the change in the younger kids is…um…remarkable. It’s fun to see them so excited and enthusiastic, but on a full day basis getting to deal with upwards of twenty excited enthusiastic kids might be a bit, er, wearing.
It must be said that the traditional cookies left by the Good Saint are both spice cookies – a better choice than oreos and probably closer to a par with muffins or maybe old fashioned gingerbread for breakfast.
Still, the Good Saint comes but once a year. Though Dutch kids do regularly eat chocolate sprinkles or shavings or spread on bread for breakfast year round. Is it possible that this is an artifact of its being holiday time in the US? Maybe not, the line about “doesn’t like” meat, fruit, or vegetables sort of makes me go WTF.
In any event, at 18 months I found that kids only took in so many calories a day and from those calories have to do a lot of growing and developing. I was and remain not really restrictive in terms of candy or baked goods; I just taught my kids that there is real food and candy/chips/cake and the real food comes before the candy/chips/cake. They are now 8 and 5, and once a week we buy candy – they choose what they want, and I buy what I think is a reasonable amount for a week for each child. And that’s it until the next week. They may eat it all in the candy store without interference from me; or they may stretch it out, it’s their candy. But when it’s gone, there isn’t any more until a week later.
I have one “will pass on candy for an apple/mandarin/carrots” kid, he does it regularly at his friends’ houses also and it never fails to amaze his friends’ mothers. I figured this was just because I was such a Great Mom; then I had Youngest and found out that this was not the case. ahem
But at that age my kids did not even know that hard candies, caramel, or gum existed as I had no plans to practice my heimlich maneuver, nor to pay for the dental bills.
My almost 3 year old loves candy, just like most other kids, but we are careful to limit his intake. He started having it occasionally at around 18 months or so (but no gum or small hard candies!). Now he gets a small lollipop from his teacher every day as he leaves daycare, and since Halloween he has learned that IF he eats a good dinner, then he may have ONE piece of candy from the huge stash he got while trick or treating. I don’t worry too much about it, since he is a healthy eater by nature – he loves fruit, yogurt, and a wide variety of veggies (whoever heard of a 2 year old that would pass up macaroni and cheese in favor of turnip greens?), so he generally gets a balanced diet.
Not only is that toddler going to be a cavity filled, obese child, but will come to learn that the only way to feel better is to eat sweets, and that instant gratification is to be an expected part of daily life. He’ll never learn patience, or sacrefice, or that hard work, not a tantrum, is to be rewarded. And he may even become a bully, and that’s the saddest of all.
The first time I had gum I was 5 years old. I got it in my hair. After several unsuccesful removal attempts with ice and peanut butter, my mom was forced to cut the gum out.
I was not allowed gum for some time after that.
The only time we had candy in the house was around the Holidays (Halloween, St. Nick’s, Easter) and we were only allowed a piece or two at a time. Cookies were around more often, but were also only for after meals.
(In all honesty, the fact that I was allowed candy after dinner was frequently the only reason I ate my whole dinner. I was not a kid who liked my veggies.)
Do your relatives just not care about their child’s health? That poor kid’s teeth are going to rot out before he’s four!
Just wow…
We were not candy deprived, I can remember being 4 or 5 years old, and having a small allowance spending a dime for a hershey bar as a treat maybe once a month or so. My grandmother kept a candy bowl around, and I really dont remember gazing more than a piece or 2 out of it any given sunday. I was more into fruit - i would steal the little sunmaid boxes of raisins out of the cupboard and my favorite snack was an apple or some fresh grapes.
To this day my preferred snacks tend to be raw veggies or a piece of fruit except for my just before bed snack [diabetic, I need some protein and a touch of carb to keep from tanking in the middle of the night, so I like cheese and crackers=)]
Wow! I hate to criticize parents (because I know how hard it is to do things “right”) but that doesn’t sound like a good idea at all. In fact, it sounds like a very bad idea. How is this child not spazzing out all over the place? Doesn’t his mood fluctuate horribly? Is he fat? Lethargic when the buzz wears off?
I think my kids had their first tastes of candy at Halloween when they were about 21 months’ old. They licked some lollipops that day & that was it. And I’d let them have cookies from McDonald’s once in a while.
I’m no paragon of virtue or anything, my kids eat mostly chicken nuggets (frozen, McD’s or mine) and Jif on whole wheat. Yogurt is a hit sometimes. My daughter loves kidney beans. And they’ll eat any and all fruit. Love the fruit. Dry cereal is an excellent snack, I have a lot of luck with rice chex and cheerios. After that, they love salty snacks - goldfish and pretzels in particular. But the only veggies I can get them to eat are corn and fries (which I do make out of nice fresh potatoes, skins on) and an occasional carrot.
We went through a spell this summer where I knew they were eating too much junk. Primarily because my husband and I don’t eat as well as we should, and the kids had noticed and started asking for our food. So I started a tradition - “Sweet Monday” and “Chip Friday”. On those two days, the specified junk food is permitted (after they’ve eaten a decent meal). On other days, NOPE. Knowing they had a treat day to look forward to has helped (all of us) considerably.
Of course, the holidays shoot it all to hell. Preschool is the worst, they give us this handy guide to healthy snacks and then the teachers give them candy on holidays. I don’t know what it is about adults that compels them to give candy to children.
Wow. That’s extreme. When my 3 year old was just starting on solids, he would only eat oatmeal cookies from Trader Joe’s. We couldn’t get him to eat anything else, and his doctor said that cookies and soymilk (he was having gastro issues) were better than nothing. He got over that pretty quickly though.
At our house, dessert is a twice-daily event, because my husband is a chocoholic who bakes. He also weighs only 145 pounds (at 5’8") so dessert’s not hurting him. Portions are tiny, and no one is permitted dessert unless they’ve had a fruit or vegetable with their meal.
Dessert for my 6-year old is usually a small dish of ice cream. The 3 year old can go without dessert (that’s when my husband usually accuses me of cheating on him), but he likes baked goods like cookies, brownies, and cakes over candy. No one EVER gets fruit snacks because their dentist says they’re the worst because the sugar just sticks to the kids’ teeth. Only the 6 year old can have gum as dessert, and that’s very rare–he only gets it if he was given some at Halloween or a class party (and we usually try to throw it away before he gets to it).
No one gets sweets at any other time of the day; snacks are things crackers, cheese, yogurt, sunchips, granola bars, fruit, etc. Soda is right out. I don’t know how people can give little toddlers soda. I drink diet, but I try to limit that around the kids because it really interests them and I don’t want them drinking it. I grew up drinking Pepsi like water and I’m fat, which may or may not be related, but they certainly don’t need the chemicals and the high fructose corn syrup.
Marienee, we’re in Canada, so it isn’t holiday time for us. We were celebrating Christmas early together because that particular group of family (me and my husband, BiL and SiL and kid, grandparents) usually do our Christmas celebration the first weekend in January, and I’m due to be in labour right then.
So it was sort of a holiday, but not an official one. Our Thanksgiving was back in October.
Mr. Lissar found used gum on the inside of his laptop case yesterday. The kid generally chews a couple of times, and then spits it out. Less choking hazard with that behaviour, I guess.
We’ve got a fairly long list of things we don’t want to do as parents, compiled from watching my nephew and inlaws. No hard candy, no following them around begging them to eat cookies, no hitting people, no video games for the under-threes, no McDonald’s before they’re eight months old, no pop when they’re babies… It’s sad to have such a list of noes from their parenting.
I’m with you on all of those…except for the video games, if you count playing Dora on the computer. It took my son a while to get the hang of the mouse, but my daughter caught on right quick. “Get off the computer so I can change your diaper” is one of our family jokes now.
It’s not something they do every day, however.
At other people’s houses, sure. And maybe when they’re toddlers. It’s mostly that we don’t want to start our kids off on WoW at age one, and that in general I think buying a lot of vidoe games for a really little kid is kind of ridiculous. It goes with the limit-the-flashy-blinky-expensive-toys-for-babies rule. Since in my experience babies prefer tupperware, paper bags, and boxes of tissues.
Oh, absolutely, yes!
The best toy I bought them was cardboard “bricks”. They make them into everything, from walls to skis.
Plain old $0.87 balls are great, too.
Beyond that, they’d rather play with kitchen utensils, water, sticks and little rocks. At 18 months, mine spent hours spooning water from one bucket to another. They also liked PlayDoh then, which worked since the taste is so nasty.
Most children do not react to sugar in the way you describe, though it’s a popular myth. My own children could eat straight table sugar after breakfast, lunch and dinner washed down with a soda and it would have no appreciable effect on their mood.
Our approach has been to try to build good habits that our daughter can maintain herself. She had very little refined sugar before she was 2, to give her a good appreciation of the wide range of food tastes.
Since she was 2, we do tend to have in the house: ice cream, gummies, cookies (homemade and frozen), and chocolate (the good stuff that hubby & I eat, a lot less sugary than candy bars). We don’t have specific times for treats, but rather if she says “can I have a cookie?” I’ll say sure, give her a plate with carrots and hummus (or apple slices and cheese, etc), and a cookie. She’ll eat most of the healthy stuff and a bite or two of the cookie. Not sure if it would work with most kids though.
Edited to add: we have given her xylitol gum since she was 3, to help her teeth.
This is going from my own childhood, not having kids of my own.
No soda except on special occasions like Christmas parties, and then only Sprite till I was probably 7 or 8 (and then my uncle taught me how to mix Sprite and Coke to look like whiskey like the big kids were drinking- freaked my mom right out!)
Candy was only allowed around Halloween or holidays, and then only a couple pieces at a time.
Snacks were usually Cheerios, pretzels, apple slices, grapes, and cheese. Sometimes at the grocery store I could convince my mom to buy me a fruit roll-up (the all-natural kind, where you could still see little bits of strawberry seeds in them) if I behaved.
Fast food was an occasional treat, usually after the dentist for being so brave (and, as we always complained, to wash the gross taste out of our mouths).
No sugary cereals at all, ever. I remember when my brother would come home from college (he’s 15 years older than me, so I’da been around 3 or 4) I’d get all excited because there’d be Lucky Charms in the house for a week.
It’s sad for your nephew- sounds like he’s going to have some serious food issues. And entitlement issues. And probably horrible teeth and a weight problem. 