Sugar

I decided to title this entry Sugar because this is a word I hear frequently from Abby. She asks for sugar all the time. I have all these issues around food and I don't want to pass them on to her but I can see that I am already doing this. I am torn about giving my kids sugar, although they do get it all the time. I used to be a big Weston Price person, still am in the sense of buying grass-fed meat, raw milk, pastured eggs, eating kefir, kombucha etc. and because I have done so much reading from WAP/NT, and issues from my own childhood I have big issues about sugar. It became evil to me and I didn't want my kids to have it. I have come to realize this is ridiculous and am trying to also embrace the idea that food only has the power one gives it. So, I started letting Abby have more and more sugar. Around Easter I was thinking about putting out a candy dish that she could have access to whenever she wanted it. I bought candy from the co-op and there it sat in the pantry. I just couldn't get myself to do it but also realized she was getting plenty of sweets anyways. I have started to make ice cream at night which the kids are really loving and I don't feel bad about them eating it because it seems pretty healthy since I use raw milk, egg yolks, and maple syrup. I also add mint extract and chocolate chips, because that is Abby's favorite. Basically, every night we eat this and I was hoping it would fill Abby's cravings for sweets but she still asks for sweets all day long. I usually just tell her to see what she can find. Since I don't keep that many sweets in the house she usually doesn't find much or maybe she will find fruit twists or granola. The other day she came running out to the backyard ecstatic with her find, jelly beans that I had bought for the candy jar. She ate them and ate them. I kept resisting the urge to tell her she had had enough. Finally, I did say maybe she should save some for tomorrow. She didn't resist at all, that was very surprising, and she put them away. The next morning after breakfast she said she wanted dessert. Everything in me wanted to say no but I said, oh yeah, what do you want? Jellybeans! Ok. Man was that hard for me to watch and she was giving Joe some too, which was basically his breakfast since he doesn't usually eat for a long time after waking up. The following day the same thing occured, she wanted dessert after breakfast and she chose jelly beans. I was really getting sick of those damn jelly beans and couldn't wait for them to be all gone. Besides the jelly beans she found a bottle of rootbeer (from my rootbeer float the night before!) that had about 1/4 left in it and she decided to have that for dessert too. Oh my god, everything in me wanted to SCREAM!!! She kept talking about it and going on and on about how yummy it was and how nice I was to let her have it, yadyadyadyadyada. I just smiled at her and didn't say a word because what I really wanted to say is that she shouldn't be eating it, that it is bad for her, that she should start her day off better, that her teeth are going to fall out, her gut is gonna get screwed up and a million other negative comments. I am glad I kept my mouth shut and I look forward to the day when I can embrace her joy when she is having jelly beans and rootbeer for dessert after breakfast.