When my kids were younger I was very careful about the kind of food they ate and how often they could eat it. They had very little processed stuff and rarely ate white sugar. When Halloween came around however, all of that changed.
In the beginning I wanted to control the candy intake and restricted the amount they could have. This was quite a job and I quickly realized it wasn't worth the effort. I decided to do something different and set up a deal.
The deal was that when they came home with their huge satchel of items (we live in the country so the bounty is huge) we would go through and throw out anything with Aspartame or similar substances. Colas were given to Dad to take to work and other can drinks were put away for later. The kids then divided their candy up into a pile of everything they liked (or thought they would like) and anything they didn't like. The stuff they didn't like was put in a bag to go to our local food bank. On occasion I would buy some of their might like items for a nickel a piece as a further incentive to let stuff go.
Armed with their bag of favorites, the first holiday (i.e. Saturday) after Halloween my kids celebrated what we called candy day. This was a day when they could eat as much candy as they wanted, starting as early as they wanted. The only rules were that all wrappers (or other evidence of the candy fest) had to be put in the garbage and that no matter how much sugar (and other things) they put in their bodies they had to maintain their self-control (i.e. you could not go ballistic and start fighting with each other just because you were feeling the jitters)
The first time we did this, I really thought my kids would feel sick and never want to over do it like that again. I thought they wouldn't eat anything but candy until supper and would quicly become cranky and rude. I was wrong.
They ate a tonne of candy, still ate every healthy meal that was offered that day and never lost control of their behaviour. They had a lot of fun playing games all day and at the end of the day went to bed tired, but happy. No ill effects were noticed even a week after the fact.
Best of all, by the end of the day their candy--or at least all their favorites--were gone and that huge pull the sack of goods would normally have over them completely disappeared.
I learned from this little experiment that sometimes its fun to just let go of the rules and enjoy the reality of the moment. My kids love candy day and still talk about it every year. Being teenagers their diets have taken quite a dive, but I have faith that the healthy start they were given in life will still benefit them. I also believe that this little experiment has allowed them to create happy memories of the days following Halloween and I'm not sure that would have been the case if we hadn't gone in this direction.
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