Taking Candy from a Baby

, I don’t know who originally thought taking candy from a baby was all that easy. Instead, I think talking candy from a baby should be a metaphor for something that people think will be a snap, but in reality turns out to be really, really hard.

Case in point:

It is well established with my family members, among my friends and in nursery school, that I limit my daughter’s sugar intake. I have to emphasize the word limit—I do not deny her altogether as I once did. I’m not an extremist, but I refuse to buy into our society’s obsession with sugar. I maintain that we do not have to frost the first meal of the day. We do not have to eat a dessert after dinner every night. And we do not have to celebrate every holiday—from Earth Day to Birthdays—with pounds and pounds of sugar.

All this refined sugar—whether it’s from organic beets or high fructose corn syrup is making us sick: replacing nutritious calories with empty ones; causing tooth decay; fostering insulin resistance, and possibly even leading to metabolic syndrome, which is now thought to be the culprit behind heart disease.

I am tired of being the mom who says “no” all the time: When everyone else is piling their plates high with homemade macaroons, and chocolate matzoh crunch, and jellied candies at the end of the seder. When I’ve promised my daughter a special treat after dinner, but I’ve found out that she’s already been slipped a goodie by a well-intended grandparent. When it’s a Spring Celebration in nursery school, and, right after the kids have just celebrated a birthday party with cake, juice and strawberries they return to their classroom for a second celebration—with cupcakes, chocolate, marshmallows, and lemonade.

The last episode occurred this week. I had gone into the classroom to return a book, but when I saw Sophie mainlining frosting at celebration number two, I lost it. I went to my mother, the director, and told her I was upset. My mother (who agreed with me this time) went vigilante—before I said anything, she walked into the classroom and took said candy from my baby.

Needless to say, my daughter was neither oblivious to the pilfering of her cupcake, nor was she down with it. She instantly fell to the floor screaming and crying. I hid in the adjacent classroom, debating, for a moment, whether to let her teachers work through it. But I also knew that none of this was Sophie’s fault, and she was just reacting the way any addict would if you blew the coke out from under her nose. I came in to clean up the mess. “Mommy, uppy!” she cried, when she saw me.

“What’s going on, Sophie?”

“Read me a book to calm me down!” was her response.

So I took her out of the room, read her a couple of books, explained why, grandma took her cupcake. “You had too much sugar, Soph. One slice of cake is fine, but cake AND chocolate AND a cupcake AND juice AND marshmallow peeps is way too much. All that sugar will make you sick and give you cavities.”

“I want it back!” she wailed.

“Of course you do. And its fine to have another treat another day. But we’re done for today.” Grandma came in the room. Sophie wouldn’t look at her. Grandma, after all, was responsible for the cupcake caper.

“Sophie, I wrapped up your cupcake for you to have another time.”

“After lunch?”

“No Sophie. Another day,” I jumped in.

“After dinner?” Ach. This kid.

“No Sophie. Dinner happens later on today. You can have it ANOTHER day.”

Of course, I’m lying. The truth of the matter is she will never see that cupcake, full of nasty artificial ingredients and dyes, again. I will be throwing it out. Right behind it would be the marshmallow peeps and the jelly beans.

And by the time I do, she will have forgotten all about it.

Here’s the thing. Children are not inherently sugar-crazy. We create the desire (this being the royal we—marketing, peers, the institutionalization of bad nutrition every where, from schools to hospitals). And once kids have that first lick of a lolly, that first spoonful of ice cream, it’s all over. Perhaps, before this introduction it might have been possible to take candy from our babies. But once the get a taste of the stuff, I pity the one who attempts to pry it from their grasp.

Pick Your Battles

I believe in picking your battles. As a teacher, and later, when I was in private practice as a psychologist, I used to dispense this advice regularly. You have to decide what is most important to you, and then stick to your guns when it comes to those things. The other stuff you can let slide.

But as with most parenting issues, it is one thing to be childless and degreed. It’s another thing to be the parent whose child is screeching in a restaurant because she wants out of the high chair, or throwing her food on the floor because she doesn’t want to eat it, or is trying to walk out of the library with a monkey she lifted from the lost and found and who clings to said monkey and screams “Share! SHARE!” when you gently encourage her to put it back.

The public battles are, perhaps, the most difficult to deal with because you have the humiliation factor. And they know it.

So how does one pick one’s battles? How does one decide what’s most important? What gets “ignored” and what gets a “no” and what gets a “time out?” As a behaviorist, it used to be my job to analyze what was motivating the behavior, identify the antecedent and the consequence, and think about how to manipulate either of these to change the behavior. In other words, I had the luxury of time and brain space to think through these issues. But, today, when groggy from lack of sleep and before caffination has taken place I am wrestling my child down to the ground to remove her 20-lb soggy diaper, and she’s screaming “Babies, BABIES!” (translation, “Mother, I won’t let you change my diaper unless I can watch video clips of myself on your Treo.”) do I show her the videos so she’ll lie still for the 2 minutes it will take to change her or do I decide that diaper changes are a fact of life and she shouldn’t get a reinforcer for something she should just naturally do.

Yes, pity me. I really do think about these things.

I choose not to have the dirty diaper battle, so I hand over my defunct Treo and Sophie compliantly lies down on the mat. Babies it is. Sophie: 1 Mommy: 0.

The day continues in this way, with me wearily deciding at ever turn whether to take away an object I told her she couldn’t have, make her pick up something I just told her to pick, make her come to me the first time I call not the thirtieth. I fear the long term—what happens if I don’t follow through—a spoiled, defiant child who doesn’t clean up after herself—and it is my motivation to bite the bullet and have the battle.

But will she really? I mean, is it sooooo terrible if I give in and let her eat a raisin bread and cream cheese sandwich on the floor instead of her highchair (that I just spent five minutes trying to strap her into as she arched her back and screamed). Cause we’re already late and I want her to eat and the floor isn’t THAT dirty.

Okay, maybe it is. (But, remember, the NYTimes says its okay.)

I let her eat on the floor. Sophia: 2. Mommy: 0. She gets a little food in her. Sophia: 2, Mommy: 1. We get out of the door in 15 minutes instead of an hour: Sophia: 2, Mommy: 2.

Finally in the car, and headed North, Sophia demands “E O! E O!” (Translation, “Please, mother, could you play Raffi singing, ‘Old McDonald Had a Band,” on a constant loop for the next 45 minutes?”) At first, I try to ignore her, but the kid has staying power. “EO EO EO EO! Mama! Song! EO!”

As I reach for the CD player, I think about something that I learned in couples therapy: there is no malice; only competing needs and desires. I think of Sophia’s need to be independent. To exert her will and make choices in this world. To hear a little music while strapped to a chair in a five-point restraint.

I press play. Raffi’s dulcet tones replace my toddlers piercing cries.

I catch Sophia’s eye in the mirror. Signing, she extends her hand from her mouth towards me, “Thank you,” she says and smiles. The words are spontaneous and genuine.