Yesterday I took my daughter Heidi’s children on an outing so she could get some work done. Our first stop was the Country Hearth store near her home where one can buy Country Hearth products at half price. I bought two loaves of whole grain bread, two packages of whole wheat English muffins and two package mixes for cheesy muffins. My intention was to share one of each with Heidi. For the kids I bought a box of doughnut holes.
My daughter expressed gratitude for the bakery goods, but asked me to please take the doughnut holes with me. I know that powdered sugar doughnut holes is not the kind of thing she likes to feed her children but there were four children in the house that could scarf them up in no time. Maybe she was afraid she might scarf them and I knew for sure that if I took them in the car with me they’d be scarfed before I got home. So I left them.
Driving home, I thought about when my kids were little and those huge bags of Halloween candy. I didn’t like the idea of weeks with children eating candy or the begging that goes with it. So every time they would have some of their candy, I would drop a handful into the trash when they were not looking. The candy was gone in no time and they believed it to be because they themselves had eaten it.
There you have it. A mom confession
I love your blog and agree with you nearly all the time. However, if your daughter asks you to take a bag of donuts, I think you should respect that and take them. It would be better to just through them out than disregard what she says.
As for the Halloween candy. . . I have two kids who still go out for candy. I wouldn’t sneak around with them. I prefer to set limits on candy, or tell them honestly what I am doing (“All this candy is really bad for your teeth, so I’m taking half of it and you can have the other half. . . “). Kids eventually figure out when you lie to them, even if they never tell you, and that undermines trust.
Just my two cents, and I am hardly an expert in parenting, this is just what I believe. No offense intended.
Thank you for your comment, Cath. Guess what, I am an expert in parenting, at least the state of Minnesota thought so when they awarded me a license to teach parenting. Of course, I became a parent educator long after my kids were out on their own and having children of their own. A lot of the personal stories I told in my classes were examples of what not to do as parents. I kind of hate to take this too seriously because I think my revealing blog is kind of funny. If you check the other comment you will see that even my son thought it was funny and he was my victim.
In defence of my deception, my children’s dentist told me that there is greater harm to children’s teeth when they eat candy regularly than when they eat it in big splashes like during holidays. So I wasn’t keen on allowing my kids to have a little candy out of their stash every day as some parents might choose. So getting rid of the candy quickly seemed like a good thing to me at the time.
But your comment was not really about candy. It was about honesty with kids. I can’t argue with you there. I know there are parents who believe that telling kids there is a Santa Claus, a tooth fairy or an Easter bunny is lying. I respect these parents’ persective. I let my kids believe in all of these. I had trouble with some of the stories around the Santa myth, however, and tried to avoid these. I can think of a couple of examples that might be considered lying to children. One is disguising food so kids don’t know that they are eating the vegetables they hate. Another is withholding information that a parent feels a child is too young or in too much distress to handle. The concept of truth telling to children always made for interesting discussion in my parenting classes.
You are good and thoughful mom. I would have loved having you as a particpant in my classes.
Judy,
Guess what? I worked as a family therapist, giving advice about parenting — *before* I had kids. Kind of the opposite of you.
That was an interesting factoid from the dentist. Though I am a big believer in honesty in parenting, I am not beneath “helping” the candy disappear by eating some myself now and then. I’m not sure if that is much different than tossing away a few handfuls every day. Both are kinda dishonest, but you were trying to help your kids, I was helping myself.
My kids are adopted, and there was distressing information they need to be told, and I have found it better to tell them it from a very early age. It is surprising how much they can understand, and the stuff they don’t understand they tend to shelve for later. This technique also leads to lots of questions and communication.
The kids do eat vegetables, so I don’t know what I’d do if confronted with the chance to put veggies in a smoothie. That doesn’t sound too appealing (taste-wise), and it sounds like extra work, so I don’t think I’d bother. We use a one-bite rule (must eat one bite of the veggie served at each meal) and its worked fine.
The reason I wrote about the donuts is that I wondered how your daughter felt when she found that fattening bag of donuts still sitting in her kitchen. Then she had to deal with the guilt of tossing it (or the guilt of letting her kids eat more donuts than they should). It was nice of you, though, to bring them at all. You sound like a great grandma.
thanks and great blog!
I don’t think my daughter would feel at all guilty throwing the bag of doughnuts away. She knew why I didn’t want to take them in the car.
It is nice learning about you.
I’m crushed. My youth taken advantage of by my own mother. The disillusionment of it all! What betrayal, what dishonesty, what….
…a good idea. I’m all over it come the holidays.