The Fat Diaries: Can Kids Resist the Sugar Temptation?
I was in Wal*Mart the other day when I caught a glimpse of a loud group of kids behind me. They were tweens. They wore sports jerseys and I was surprised to see their pants were worn at “regulation” height. Apart from the one kid with the “Predator” dreadlocks, they all looked like clean-cut nice kids. I didn’t hear one word of profanity or rudeness.
The only thing that made me cringe (apart from the dreadlocks) was that they were carrying four boxes of Krispy Kreme donuts, a jar of Kool-Aid powder, Doritos and a bag of assorted Hershey’s candy.
The kids paid for it with their own money pooled together and left chatting happily amongst themselves. I knew that they were probably going to go to their favorite hang-out spot and eat all of that crap in one sitting. If the Kool-Aid powder was pre-sweetened, it would be fair to assume that they were going to eat it right out of the package. How do I know this? Because at their age I did the same thing.
Every week when I received my allowance, my brother and I would walk down to the candy shop and stock up on Jelly Bellies, Gummy Worms, Astro Belts and chocolate bars. If I had saved up, we would go to Al’s Diner and get a chocolate malted milkshake.
It wasn’t all junk food. Some weeks I’d head down to the thrift store and buy a shirt or two. I also liked the selection of comics and magazines at the newsstand and the WHSmith, but it’s a fair bet that 75% of my allowance went towards junk food. Could my parents control it? Not really. For one thing, I was very careful not to let them find out how much junk I was eating. I was embarrassed by the amount of candy I was buying so I made sure to keep a lot of it hidden. I remember one school trip when my backpack got dumped out by accident and inside it were 23 “Dime Bars”. That incident followed me through most of middle school, which meant I ate candy alone.
My candy consumption stayed pretty constant throughout high school and college, but here’s my point: my parents didn’t buy any of it. I bought it all myself without adult supervision. I knew candy was bad for me. I knew it would rot my teeth, make me dizzy, and give me diabetes, but I didn’t care. It was the same rebellious impulse that makes kids get tattoos, wear skanky clothes, change their name to “Coyote Song” and smoke cigarettes. Except in my case my rebellious ‘death-sticks’ were Pixie-Sticks.
The reason I’m going into more depth with this is that a few weeks ago I wrote an article about the government declaring parents neglectful for “letting” their kids get fat. Now, I’ve thought about this more and more since then. Kids being removed from their parents is a very serious thing, and when does it become “overstepping boundaries?” Seriously, how much control do parents have at a certain point? Especially when our kids grow old enough to go out unsupervised, how much of a voice do parents have anymore? These kids I saw today weren’t trying to buy cigarettes or beer. In their eyes they were probably being “good kids” for staying out of trouble and spending their income on snacks like responsible citizens.
For some people, the obvious response to this is that “their parents shouldn’t give them an allowance if they’re going to spend it on junk,” but I don’t think that’s the answer. Kids this age should be learning about money and how to spend it or save it as needed. So what now? Ten years from now when I give my kids a tenner and tell them to use it wisely, how do I make sure they don’t waste it on crap that will ruin their teeth and health?
And, come to think of it, how do I stop them from smoking, drinking, doing drugs, picking fights, and getting knocked up? I have no freaking clue.
