Apr 26, 2011 11:48
My youngest daughter doesn't wet the bed any more unless we stray from her diet. When we volunteered at the American West Heritage Center and they offered us treats. My plan was to smile, nod, and avoid the treats. My friend was taking her kids over, and of course my kids wanted to go along... I allowed my plan to be foiled, hoping there was fruit or something a little less scary than straight sugar in the offerings. I was appalled to see that everything they had was 100% sugar. While the other kids were scarfing down iced cake doughnuts half the size of their heads, I let her have one little sprinkled cookie. Of course she wet the bed, and has been off & on for the rest of the week.
I have goofed before with my own body. I've been off sugar for 9 months or so now. I use xylitol and honey when I need to sweeten something. I'm more or less on the specific carbohydrate diet. I follow it, but I resort to canned tomato paste or coconut milk on occasion. One night I ate a piece of chocolate cake to be polite. That's three forbidden things: chocolate, sugar, wheat flour. And I ate the whole darn thing. Foolishly. I don't even like chocolate all that much. I just sort of "nervous eat" when it's in my hands. I thought my belly's feelings immediately afterward were just my imagination. But I woke up in the middle of the night feeling like I urgently needed a potty break. Wound up coughing up the cake quite involuntarily instead. My body didn't want it.
It was triumphant to pass easter without giving her any sugar at all. I have to thank my sister for this. She organized a candy-free egg hunt. We filled the eggs with small toys and stickers instead. And nobody said "where's the candy?"
It's tough for me to see how much sugar is just thrown at kids without a thought. At church every week, there's a drawer full of lollipops in the bishop's office the kids can run over and take from. The nursery kids are always given "fruit" snacks (Have you looked at the package? It's not fruit. It's fruit flavored corn syrup.), breakfast cereals, and goldfish crackers (again, high fructose corn syrup). At their dad's church, there's always soda and doughnuts after mass. When I go grocery shopping at one store the bag boys give the kids smarties, and at another there's a roving store employee who hands out lollipops. Sometimes they do ask the mothers first, but usually they do it while they're waving the candy in front of the kids. At my friend's house, sugared breakfast ceral bags are on the pantry floor next to the living room. The kids just walk over and grab a handful. I don't take my kids over there anymore unless I have to. And I try to have something else for them. But what can I take to compete with all this? Sure, there's sugar free junk food on the market, but it all contains grains, which are cut out of her diet right now. Not to mention when they make things sugar free, they often put some nerve damaging toxin like asparteame in its place. Yeah. good idea.
On Sunday, despite my having told her teachers that she was not to have any of the usual snacks, and can't have sugar, she was given a plastic easter egg bagged together with a thought about Jesus. Happily, she can't open it herself, so I got to discover the jelly beans inside, and swap them out for something I happened to have along. Last week while we played at the park, a mother brought out carrot shaped bags full of candy to share with everyone. What a grinch I look like saying "Thanks, we can't have that." I would like to say, as one of my sisters recently did "they don't get it often, so I don't mind." But I can't. They do get it often. And I don't even buy any. I throw the stuff out when it comes into my home.
health