December, unsweetened, No. 5

12/5: Sweet strategies

This blog chronicles the author's attempt to endure the month of December, 2019, without eating sugary foods or drinks.

My days of parenting children ended a couple decades ago, but I'm still curious about the way people handle that most profound of life's roles. Even the generation of parents that came after me (including my oldest son and his wife) seem to tackle the responsibility in vastly different ways than I.

I suppose my own parents felt the same way as they watched me raise my two sons. I never felt negatively judged by them. It's not a matter of being right or wrong about the way one does things. Just different.

Yesterday, Holly and I were talking about my relationship with sugar, and noted a few ways parents employ sweets with dealing with their children. The most popular one, we assumed, was as a bribe. If that sounds too harsh, go with what psychologist B.F. Skinner termed, "positive reinforcement."

In the history of refined sugar, which some trace back about 2,500 years, has there ever been a parent who never told their child, "If you eat all your vegetables, you can have dessert."? Phrased differently, the dessert reward becomes more of a threat: "If you don't eat all your vegetables, you can't have dessert."

The first wording encourages your child to be good. The second warns your child not to be bad. I can't honestly recall which way my mother said it to me, nor which way I said it to my sons.

What I do remember, however, is that Mom never used sweets as a way to soothe or make me feel better. When I or my peers, who grew up in the '50s and '60s, ever suffered a cut, scrape, or anything else that qualified as a "boo-boo," first aid typically involved a Band-Aid and a kiss, sweetly applied to the painful area.

By the time Holly was raising her two children in the '80s, some genius at the Lemberger Candy Company, in Paramus, N.J., had come up with Choc-Aids—chocolate made to look like Band-Aids. They were followed closely by Gumi-Aids, fruit-flavored jellies, also in the form of Band-Aids.

Sure, a kiss from Mom was a nice, sentimental gesture, but a more therapeutic way to soothe a child's pain was with sugar. There. All better.

I wish Choc-Aids were around when I was a kid, although I'll admit that as an adult I've occasionally self-medicated with chocolate.

Maybe I should have asked my doctor if chocolate is right for me?