Posted By Tough Cookie Mommy on January 20, 2011

    My youngest son, “E”, has a sweet tooth.  Actually to say that is an understatement because he is addicted to sweets.  Now, before you press the comment button to enlighten me about the importance of eating a balanced diet and limiting children’s sugar intake, know that I already know and do all of these things.  My husband and I encourage our boys to eat healthy snacks and always have plenty of fruit available for the kids to eat.  After all, Hubby works in the produce business so he always has access to the best fruits and vegetables.

    I’m not sure when E’s love affair with sugar began.  Lately I have been wondering if it all started during my pregnancy with him.  Since I had gestational diabetes during that pregnancy, I adhered to a strict no sugar and limited carb diet.  Maybe that initial deprivation of any kind of sugar made him go crazy over it when he was finally able to taste it for the first time.  All I know is that he loves anything that contains sugar from cakes to candy.  Believe me, I know that all kids like sweets but this is different because he has become like a little sugar addict. 

    The first incident where we saw signs of this addiction was when he was two years old and he climbed out of his crib while everyone was sleeping to eat all of the chocolates that my husband had gotten me for Valentine’s Day.  This is his mugshot from that morning…

    Let’s just say that my sweet boy has intensified his efforts to acquire goodies, no pun intended.  Lately, we have been having to confiscate all of the candy bags that he brings home from school birthday parties.  We had to resort to this candy patrolling after a string of incidents worthy of Willy Wonka himself.  The first being the Halloween fiasco of 2010.  My little sweetheart took all of his candy and ate it in the laundry room where he hid all of the empty wrappers under the dirty laundry.  The next event involved him hiding chocolates that my parents gave him for Christmas behind his bed which my husband just found this week.

    This afternoon, we found empty chocolate wrappers in the refrigerator which E admitted tasted very good after we questioned him and he admitted that he had been the one who had eaten these treats.  It is amazing to me how such a little person could love to eat something so much that he is willing to get in trouble over time after time again for eating without permission.  He is generally a normal eater and he is not overweight.  I just want to make sure that we teach him some self control now that he is little so that he doesn’t overindulge when he gets older.

    Honestly, I blame this on my mother because I think he gets his addiction from her.  She has been a chocolate addict for as long as I could remember and my son’s sense of urgency to eat sweet things reminds me of how she reacts to having sweets around her.  It’s amazing the things that get passed down through the gene pool.  In any case, I will make sure that I am very vigilant from now on because it seems that my little guy is getting very hip to the junk smuggling game and I will have to try to stay one step ahead of him from now on…

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Categories: Family, Motherhood, Parenting
Tags: candy, Diet, health, Junk food, Motherhood, Parenting, sugar