It starts officially with Halloween. The kids work the neighbors over and come home with buckets of candy. When you have five kids, you can bet that the amount of candy they bring home is going to be 100 times more than the leftovers from the candy you have in the dish you keep for all the neighborhood trick-or-treating goblins. To my kids’ way of thinking, the more the merrier!
THREE WEEKS LATER there are more sweets and treats on our most thankful day of the year. Thanks to a few certain chocolate companies that wrap their candies in traditional fall colored metallic paper, mom just has to buy a few bags to fill the candy dishes at home.
FOUR WEEKS LATER, after the little chocolate-a-day-advent the kids have been observing, it’s Christmas. Time to reap the harvest of candy Santa has left in each little stocking.
ONE WEEK LATER we celebrate the New Year. Still chug-a-lugging the Christmas treats, there just has to be a new treat for the New Year.
A FEW MORE WEEKS LATER it’s time for Valentines and then a wrap up with St. Patrick’s Day.
Yes, my kids celebrate EACH and EVERY holiday they can milk for candy. This is why I annually impose a fast from all candy on those six weeks before Easter. And blessedly, that Easter Bunny goes light on the candy he leaves behind.
About the time the 4th of July comes along, the kids get a little reprieve. But they all know that once those pumpkins start grinning, it’s time to live suspended on a perpetual sugar high for the next four and a half months!
Oy.
Kids on sugar. They’re like little crack addicts. They even get the shakes if they don’t keep up a steady supply. They just HAVE to meet a quota and maintain a certain high or they get downright C R A N K Y.
And nobody wants a cranky kid through the holidays.
So I’m the dealer. I actually negotiate chores with the kids using candy as a commodity.
And this works pretty successfully through the sweet laden holidays. Just the IDEA that bad behavior means a suspension of sweets if Santa finds out they misbehaved is enough to keep these kids on the straight and narrow lest they are forced to suffer an early withdrawal.
In our house the annual Day of Candy Withdrawal is February 15th.
It’s harsh, but I can take it. I throw out the candy and unpack the trunk with the little white jackets with the REALLY long sleeves….
A few weeks later we have pure and natural kids with a level of crankiness that can easily be cured with a nap or a time-out.
Ah, but this season of tranquility has already passed, and now commences the crunching of leaves and candy wrappers, the falling of snow and blood sugar levels, the swelling wind and soaring candy highs….
God BLESS us, one and all!
(Jelly Mom is written by Lisa Barker, a busy mom of five, and syndicated through Martin-Ola Press/Parent to Parent. To read more, visit www.JellyMom.com.)
