We're usually very concious of how much chocolate and candy Cate gets. More recently we've become really careful because hubby allowed me to indulge in my pregnancy cravings for Iced Capps over the winter and Cate certainly took advantage. The other day I was driving her to preschool when she told me she was hungry. I explained to her that it's too late and she will have to wait until snack time at preschool. She replied by pointing to the Tim Horton's and telling me that we should go through the drive thru to pick her up a timbit...
Add to that all the jelly beans she was getting for potty training, and then all the "rewards" for various mundane tasks like eating her dinner or staying in the cart at the grocery store and it started getting pretty bad. We decided to use our change in diet to have a positive effect on her and so we eliminated a good part of the sweets from her diet.
When I picked up Cate from preschool today, I was shocked to find that they were giving out a ton of candy. They had the decency of giving it to the parents, but still, there were atleast 15 pieces of candy in the various little bags!
Last year, I filled plastic eggs with Lucky Charms and grapes for Easter. I figured it was better than chocolate and besides, most of it went to the dogs anyway. I plan on doing the same this year, but have also bought a bag of chocolate eggs out of guilt of depriving her from the traditional Easter experience.
The most challenging part of it all is teaching a toddler self-control. If a two year old gets a bucket full of chocolate eggs, they are under the impression that they can eat them all at once. Sometimes you can explain that they need to spread it out, but in my experience, they do not forget about the basket full of chocolatey goodness waiting on the top shelf of the cabinet...
I have no doubt there will be tears and tantrums over the next few days due to sugar overload. I can only hope that I have the patience to deal with it.
2 comments:
This is such a tough one for us too. Our kids love DESSERT. For ages now the rule has been you eat your lunch or dinner (all of it) you get dessert. Dessert is one cookie or a pudding or GASP Dora treats (which is a little wee bag of sugary sticky jubes). Doesn't sound so bad...they eat all their healthy dinner they get a little treat. But we are 'trying' to get them down to one a day and show them that dessert can be sweet berries and fruit. Somedays it works. Others not so much. Yesterday I got suckered into buying them each a big Easter cupcake for dinner. Holiday Candy isn't so bad....they day of we let them have a little treat and the rest is put away for their after dinner treat. (and we always eat or throw out a lot of it so far they don't seem to notice) But they are far too focused on that TREAT and really want to teach them that healthy food can be treats too. I guess it starts with what we eat. Showing them by example....damn that sucks.
you could be talking about me, too! :-)
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