Sugar Crack

Yesterday afternoon I wanted to give both Declan and myself a treat, so I picked him up early from school. We played on the playground for about an hour and then he begged me for some ice cream. It was 4:40 – approaching dinnertime – but, after all, it was my birthday – and who couldn’t use some Cold Stone Creamery Cake-Flavored Ice Cream With White Chocolate Chips Mixed-In on their birthday? Enter treat #2.

Now. People keep telling me about all the zillions of studies that say kids don’t get hyperactive from sugar. Whatever. They haven’t seen my kid with pre-dinner ice cream at 4:40 in the afternoon.

It was all downhill after that.

For the rest of the evening he was a complete and utter spaz (a spaz who ate very little of his dinner, I might add) and when the spaz left his body, a whiney, cryey, selfish little shit stayed behind to entertain us till bedtime.

Then we had the crescendo of the biggest tantrum I have ever seen, including a huge tug of war over one of his toys (the likes of which hasn’t happened since he was still saying “gaa gaa” and “goo goo”), until we just gave up, left the room and let him wail helplessly till all that sugar finally worked its way out of his system.

Yeah. Sugar doesn’t affect children. At all. Maybe if kids eat sugar all the time and they are used to it, it’s doesn’t. Otherwise, I call bullshit!

Usually when we do our Friday night treat, we do it after dinner, when he belly is already full of non-sugar and I guess it offsets the effects.

All I know is, as Bryan and I sat in our room waiting for the storm to pass, I said, “Well, serves me right for giving him ice cream as his afternoon snack, I guess.”

And Bryan looked at my with these sad puppy dog eyes and said, “Yeah, happy birthday.”