I know that "studies indicate" that sugar doesn't affect a child's behavior (they're obviously not including my children in these studies, and probably not yours, either). Regardless of what those folks find, we've seen clearly that sugar--of the refined or high-fructose corn syrup variety--sets off sugar bombs in our household that release so much energy, I fully expect to see only three tiny dense white dwarves left behind once it's over.
Oh, you're thinking critically. You idiot of a DMFP. Why are you feeding your children sugar? And I respond to that, It's not me. It's Grandma. Not the Grandma who raised me, who wouldn't let sugar come near us, fed us yeast and lecithin by the spoonful, stuffed us with probably near-deadly amounts of vitamin A, and used carob instead of chocolate (reinforcing the adage, which I think I just made up, that when it comes to chocolate, there is no substitute). Nope. This would be Grandma-in-law (to me), the one who bought Pop Tarts and sugar bomb cereals for her kids and who still cooks meals the old-fashioned way that everyone secretly likes but that no one is allowed to use today and still hold up their heads as Good Mothers. Of course, I'm the one with all the health problems, while Mr. DMFP (a.k.a. The Viking) remains in startlingly fine condition given our advancing years. Must be all those Pop Tarts.
So they spent yesterday afternoon with Grandma Sugar. And when they got home, we could...tell. The damage, per the two older kids? About six lemonades. A fudgesicle. Chocolate chip cookies. And, according to TH, "about 10 soda crackers." Sigh. I'm not making it up when I say that last night, Dubya literally but accidentally ripped a towel rack out of the bathroom wall. He was hanging on it. Pretending to be a monkey.
Thus, it came as no surprise that well before dawn this morning, Little came to me, waking me from a weird dream involving a move from our house with the world's largest moving van. Such a lovely dream. I hope we were moving to Colorado. "My stomach hurts," he complained. Of course, that had me hustling him toward the toilet before my eyes opened, sure that hurling was going to follow close on the heels of that last syllable.
But no. He just needed to "potty." Way off schedule. I won't get into the details (you're welcome), but let's just say he was sugar 'flicted for much of the early morning. The thing is, when Little gets on a sugar high, he's hysterical. If you combine sugar and chocolate, you get a three-year-old with a bad case of the hiccups, drunkenly belting out the parts of Yellow Submarine that make sense to him: "We all...HIC!...live in a...HIC...yewwow submawine, yewwow submawine," followed by a quick interjection of, "HIC!..I am the walwus! Coocoocachoo! HIC!" We've been listening to the remastered Beatles a lot lately. Can you tell?
Funny as that is, we don't care for the effects of sugar or sugar+chocolate on our children and limit both. No matter what the experts say about it, the effects are obvious. I know sugar makes me feel like crap, and it turns my children into almost unrecognizable rumpusing chimpanzees. What is your experience with it?
7 comments:
My G will start talking really, really, really fast when it kicks in. But he still has trouble getting his words organized in his head so he ends up doing a high-speed repetition of the same phrase until he's ready to finish a given sentence. Then about 30 minutes later, he crashes and completely zones out. I wish we could have an expert over to observe G. With halloween just past us, this reaction is very predictible.
Well I don't know, maybe just hearing vaguely psychedelic songs set everyone off......
Charlie lived a virtually sugar-free existence until he was about 8 and we stopped doing gluten-free (but not casein-free). His sweet tooth has been more and more apparent, though he shows no interest in the majority of sweet junky treats out there. He just wants the ones he wants.....lately it's frosting, yes I am one bad mother, ha ha ha. Ha.
I hate to say this but I don't see a big difference with or without sweet stuff. (Maybe I just have a naturally sometimes over-energetic boy----or maybe due to his, er, growing size, it all just gets absorbed.)
On a completely different note, I can barely tolerate most sweet stuff myself. I used to have cravings for it all but post-pregnancy, not at all.
Jordan...we don't get this with, say, a single piece of H-ween candy, but with that infusion yesterday...whew.
Liz...Our kids get treats just in the way you describe. I believe in some laxity in that regard. I also believe in that balancing with protein thing.
Lynnes...Oh, brother. TH does this exact thing. Talks a million miles an hour, repeats phrases to begin a sentence about 50 times before getting to the rest of the sentence...just can't stop himself. It's rather entertaining.
Kristina...I'm the same way; I just can't eat sweet stuff. Now, all I want is a little tiny piece of chocolate, and that's more about the chocolate than the sugar. TH usually doesn't think about sugar at all...he's completely forgotten about his huge bag of H-ween candy since H-ween night. Nary a word about it. And he often turns down special "treats" that we might surprise them with.
I thought autistic children could not have food intolerances.... I read that regularly on LB/RB and get slapped regularly b/c my eldest use to be stoned on dairy. 7.5yrs later we've weaned him back on... took nearly a year and still not drinking milk out of a glass - taste preferance for soy - but I'm tired of being told it's impossible.
FW2, thanks for posting. In our situation, this isn't an intolerance, it's an overdose. Of course, just like any children, autistic children can have food intolerances and food allergies. They're fairly common. I've never read anywhere that it's impossible.
With the various and sundry food sensitivities that seem to be showing up in Charlotte all willy-nilly, I'm happy to say that refined sugar doesn't seem to be much of a problem. And this girl can knock back a half-dozen chocolate chip cookies like nobody's business. She gets that from her Mama.
And FW2 - my daughter is autistic and has quite a few food sensitivities, and I've never had anybody tell me that's impossible. And I've certainly never been slapped for it.
A little bit of sweet doesn't bother either of my boys. When they go to gramma's though, watch out! Too much sugar/chocolate makes them loud and obnoxious. They almost always throw up. It also seems to make them less focused and more "wild".
I like to give them treats (and eat them myself) but we are very careful that it's only a bit at a time. And we've had a chat with gramma.
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