Empathic Parenting Blog

My son and I have a bet going right now as to who will be able to go the longest without eating sweets. I went into this knowing he would win, but I’m alright with that.

It was his idea; he had just come back from a birthday party during which he had eaten 3 huge cookies, 2 slices of pizza, 3 small glasses of soda, and a slice of cake. I had just confiscated his 4th cookie, which I knew was the right choice by how quickly the objections - always loud and angry - tapered off. (I just had to get him separated from that “next-bite” craving for a few minutes while it subsided and then he realized how yucky he actually felt. I know this well, because I myself go through it frequently).

Of course, I then started in on the lectures….how he would crash tomorrow and to expect it (yes, despite my best intentions I had an “Look what you’ve done/I told you so” tone). How he would be craving sugar all day. I admitted that I shouldn’t have had the proffered piece of cake either, and certainly not the large cookie I grabbed off the tray after that (let’s not mention the Starbucks bar in the morning), and that I too would be craving sugar all day the next day. (Check.) Continuing the lecture, I told him how it was OK to indulge once in a while, which was why I hadn’t tried to get him to restrict his sweets before the party. (Actually, that wasn’t entirely true. I figured if I told him to restrict his sweets, he probably would have eaten more in response. I knew it was pointless in any case). However, I continued, it’s important to then eat healthily for a while, and because I had indulged so much, I would be trying not to eat sweets for a while.

And so started our bet - $1 from whoever ate sweets first (or in his case, 20 minutes of extra work, as I pay him $3/hour for helping with whatever I want done - though I do tip a bit for cleaning bathrooms!).

This time, I know he’ll win. When he was little, we always let him win because we figured he gets plenty of losing just through life itself and we didn’t need to add any. But, he has grown out of the need to win all the time. No, the reason I know he’ll win is that when he makes up his mind to do something, he does it, and I am horrible at resisting sweets. (I don’t know why I have this expectation that he should be able to do it naturally). Hopefully, I’ll be able to do so long enough that we will at least both be through the cravings and then he will have at least one example of *choosing* to avoid sweets for a while, rather than having it imposed on him.

So far, it is going well. He came up this morning with ribbon tied on each index finger. “No sugar!” he announced. He has been verifying that nothing I offer has sugar in it. And yesterday, he said, to my joy as a mother and dismay as a chocolate lover, “We should do this every week. Then allow ourselves a treat once a week, but not eat sugar the rest of the time.” I’m not sure I can last that long but it’s a wonderful flip of positions from a parenting standpoint!