We all love the festive season and since October it’s just been one after another starting off with Halloween, smoothing through Thanks Giving and now vast approaching Christmas!
Now if your kids are anything like those I have running around each family celebration, then you probably understand when I say kids don’t just see the festive season as a holiday with the privileges to presents, they also see it as the right to eat as much of anything that they like. (As through somehow grandparents exist to enforce that right)
Sadly much of that ‘anything they like to eat’ food belongs in the sweets and deserts group.
Now though I would want as many happy memories of the holidays as possible for the children to have, the last thing I want, is a pack of children gone wild from a sugar high rush stampeding my pristine home to the ground!
Believe me I have experienced a sugar pumped 3 year old with the encouragement of his equally high 6 year old brother hanging on to a door and rocking it back and forth to get a swinging motion.
I’m not kidding, that really happened and it was absolute madness trying to get him down! He wasn’t’ mine, but a family friend’s so I had to somehow do it with finesse – that meant no loud harsh tones and certainly no show of fear for my door misaligning or him ending up broken over a simple dinner at my place.
But honestly the mess isn’t the worst of it. The worst is actually the dangerous position children can put themselves in when hyper and then the health related aftermath of having one too many pieces of sweet treats.
Whether it’s chocolate Easter eggs, Christmas candy canes, Halloween Gummy worms or just Thanks Giving pecan and maple syrup ice-cream- it’s all the same. If it were left to children, that would be all they eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner- the embodiment of alarming health concerns and children whining in pain from it just waiting to happen.
When kids have too many sweets, they instantly get a tummy ache or throw up. A long term effect would be within the range of fuzzy heads, weight gain, cavities, diabetes, liver problems etc. -all of which is a loving parent’s emotional and financial nightmare come true.
So what can you do if your kid is a sugar junkie? Can’t possibly make him go cold turkey…it would seem a bit harsh. Well how about you does the next best thing…monitor, limit and go organic.
Monitor
Watch what your child eats. Keep in mind that hard candy can crack or chip a tooth while soft chewable ones like gummy can get lodged in between teeth. Remember that it is not the sugar that causes cavities; instead it is the bacteria that feed on it!
Limit
Too much of anything (even a good thing) becomes a bad thing. So watch your child and makes sure he doesn’t have more than he should. You want to make sure that he gets stuffed with turkey and vegetables too.
Go Organic
Sugar is either made from beet or sugar cane, but once they pass through to the factories that make those delicious candies, realize that it is not all that comes out as those brightly coloured candy canes.
As with any other conventionally manufactured product, synthetic chemical additives are included to make them tastier, fancier and longer lasting (natural products have a shorter life span). I don’t think anyone is about to forget anytime soon the recent alarm over Melamine.
While the damage too much sugar can do to your child is bad enough on its own, imagine how much worse it could be when he has too much sugar plus even more chemicals like synthetic colouring and flavouring!
Organic sweet treats are just as delicious and just as just as much eye candy as they are well…candy!
If you’re starved for ideas of where to get them then maybe you can visit:
Have a safe fun holiday and make sure your child brushes, flosses and rinses after his sweets!
