Cupcakes 24-7

 

 

 

Do you ever see habits developing in your child and wonder where they come from and whether they will continue?

My daughter is not even 2 years old and she already has a sweet tooth. Can a person be born with a sweet tooth? Is it biological? Blonde hair, blue eyes and an addiction to chocolate?

Is it inherited? I don’t eat a lot of sweets, but I am pretty sure my wife would put chocolate dressing on her salad if it existed.

My daughter’s main passion right now is cupcakes. If you have read this blog, you know she is a night owl who does not sleep if she can avoid it. One night last week, after we put her to bed, she sat in her bed and talked to herself for about an hour. She does this often. Thank God for the baby monitor. Some of my greatest joys come from listening to her conversations with herself before she goes to sleep and after she wakes. I can’t make out everything she says, but what I do understand gives me great insight into what is running through her little mind.

On this particular evening, it was cupcakes. For more than an hour, I listened to her say the word “cupcake” repeatedly. Sometimes it was simply, “cupcake?” like she was asking a question.   Other times, it was a demand: “CUPCAKE!” Still other times there was a little whine to it…”cuuuuupcaaaaaake.”

What became clear between maybe the seventh time and the 49^th time she said the word was that the girl wanted a cupcake.

Now I’m no father of the year, but I know better than to put a cupcake in the crib at 11 p.m. But her intensity did make me wonder, did she get enough to eat that day?

My philosophy on feeding is that kids will eat when they are hungry. If they don’t eat, they aren’t hungry. It is kind of basic instinct. Stick a decent meal in front of them. If they eat, beautiful. If not, heat it up for breakfast the next morning.

But as I listened to my daughter whine in hunger, I wondered if I had failed to feed her enough that day. Our son was in the hospital and my wife was staying with him, so daddy was in charge. Had he flunked a basic daddy duty?

So I tiptoed to her door, cracked it open and whispered “Sydney, would you like a hot dog?”

“NO! CUPCAKE!” She said this with the force of Al Pacino’s HOO-AHs in Scent of a Woman.

Relieved, I realized she wasn’t hungry, she just wanted to satisfy her sweet tooth. We face this struggle every day. She’ll take a couple of cursory bites of her meal, pronounce that she is “ALL DONE” – or worse, throw her plate on the floor – and then 15 minutes later ask for a cookie. Or a cupcake. Or ice cream.

You’d think we give our child a lot of sweets. I promise you, we don’t. She gets a couple of fig newtons a day and a miniature cupcake every other day or so. She gets ice cream on special occasions.

Is this a lot?

She drinks only water and milk. None of those sugary drinks that can kill you by age 5. We don’t even give her juice. We recently introduced chocolate pudding, but it was sugar-free.

She’s frenetic enough naturally. I’m not about to subject myself to a sugar frenzy. My house would be Romper Room on crack.

Where does she get this and will it continue? Can I play a part and stop it? Should I stop giving sweets altogether? Or is it harmless? I don’t know too many adult women who are not sweet addicts, so maybe it is a natural gender thing that cannot be denied.

If that is her only addiction, she’ll be fine, right? Dad shouldn’t be such a doomsayer.

But that is what I do. The other day I got a bit of a scare when I projected a current behavior into the future. She has taken to carrying my toothpaste around with her. I have no idea why this is the object of her fascination, but anytime she gets within a couple feet of my bathroom, she grabs the toothpaste, sans cap.

She then proceeds to march around the house with it in her hand. She hasn’t quite figured out that she can squeeze it hard and send it flying all over the kitchen cabinets, but she does like to periodically lick the top of the tube to get a little toothpaste in her mouth.

I imagine she does this because the minty taste makes her tongue tingle. But then I thought, what if this gives her some type of high? Is she training herself to get an instantaneous jolt from a foreign substance? Is this only a step away from huffing?

Then I smacked myself in the head and said, “She’s a FREAKING KID who likes toothpaste. RELAX.”

I realize how ridiculous it is. But my job is to protect her and guide her to a happy life. I take that seriously, whether I am heading off a meth addiction, ensuring she doesn’t balloon to 500 pounds on an all-cupcake diet or hiding the toothpaste so she doesn’t become the only child in her school with a mint addiction.

(After writing that last sentence, I Googled “mint addiction.” It really does exist!!! Listen to what this guy says: “It gives a distinct sensation in your mouth which makes it addicting more in the way that marijuana is addictive, rather in the way that alcohol is. The sugar intake you are experiencing is why you are suffering from postural hypotension. The high levels of sugar, at first, most likely gave you energy. Now your body has probably adapted to the volume of sugar and expects to receive that amount and/or more.” HOLY COW! The toothpaste is going out of reach in the medicine cabinet.)

So allow me to be a little paranoid. It’s my job. I will study my daughter like a science book, trying to determine where her little nuances and proclivities come from, whether or not they could turn into bad habits down the road and how I might nip them in the bud without sending her into one of her Terrible Two tirades.

If that sounds like a lot of work, it is. I’m going to need a jolt of energy. Anyone have a cupcake?