Many of you may recall reading about our battle with artificial dyes here and here.
PBug had artificial colors on a birthday cake in January. She had such a terrible behavioral reaction that we washed our hands of them. Like most kids, she goes to a lot of parties. We always stop by Whole Foods on our way and pick up a cupcake for her. They're $2 each, but I prefer doing this to baking my own batch of cupcakes. (You see, I have no self-control, and I'd eat the remaining 11 cupcakes in about two days' time.)
In September she was invited to a birthday party. We were running late and didn't have time to stop by Whole Foods before the party. Since it was at one of those bouncy house places where you pretty much have to be on time or you'll miss the whole party, I gave PBug three choices:
#1: Stop by Whole Foods anyway and be late to the party, thus missing most of it.
#2: Go to the party, then stop by Whole Foods on the way home and get a cupcake after.
#3: Try eating the cake at the party and see how it makes you feel. You will be responsible for your subsequent behavior.
She chose option #3.
She ate the cake and by the next day she was in full-on, red-alert, no-holds-barred meltdown mode. Interestingly, there was no violence. She seems to have outgrown it. But as far as controlling her emotions, she was unable. Let's just say there was a lot of crying, a lot of screaming, and a lot of desperation. It wasn't pretty, but we needn't go into detail.
So, we went back to our strict ban on food dyes.
Last Friday morning PBug was getting ready for school. I was feeding Little Man his breakfast in the kitchen. She had her bedroom door closed, but I could hear her crying, screaming, slamming and banging. This went on for a few minutes before she came to the kitchen wearing nothing but her pants and sobbed/screamed "I CAN'T GET MY ZIPPER UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
Later that morning, she melted down because I told her it was time to leave for school and she wanted to draw me a picture.
Then she cried hysterically because she didn't like where I parked the car when we got to school.
I knew something was off. Turns out, her teacher had been giving the class individual Smarties as a reward. (My fault, I still hadn't gotten around to telling her new teacher that she couldn't have food dyes.) PBug, who's usually really good about asking if things have colors, didn't ask because they don't look like they do. Well, they do.
After school I described to PBug the scene from earlier that morning in which she freaked out about the zipper. She appeared to be quite thoughtful about it when I told her that I could tell she'd had colors the day before because of how she acted. She was even more thoughtful when I told her that without having colors, she would have come into the kitchen and calmly asked "Mom, can you please help me with my zipper?", or something along those lines, like she always does when she needs help with something.
It was a great opportunity to remind her that we don't allow her to have food dyes because they make it really hard for her to control her emotions.
Yesterday when I picked PBug up from school she told me that one of the boys in her class stole her Smartie. (Our deal is that if she gets something she can't have she brings it home and I trade it for something she can have, like a SunDrop.) While trying to avoid laughing out loud at the Smartie-stealer, I took her back to her classroom so she could tell her teacher what happened. I thought it would be a good excuse to talk to the teacher about the snack situation.
I explained that the first teacher made absolutely no restrictions regarding group snack and that my husband and I weren't comfortable with the kinds of foods that have been coming in. I'm sure she wasn't surprised since she sees PBug eat her hard boiled eggs, hummus with crackers, or homemade muffins every day. But I was pleased that she's on the same page as I am. She told me that she's appalled when she sees Rice Krispie Treats come in, she's "grossed out" by the Handisnax, and she doesn't even want cupcakes on birthdays (woo hoo!).
She is going to be sending a note home this week asking parents to bring healthy snacks, which I think is great. I hope she doesn't mind that I continue to send PBug's snack myself, since "healthy" can be a very, very subjective term!
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I am shocked. My jaw dropped when I read that your daughter's teacher gives them Smarties!!!
ReplyDeleteFirst of all I don't like the idea of food as a reward and second of all not only do artificial colors give children a reaction but so does sugar!!
My daughter has rarely had anything with processed sugar in it. The other night for my birthday we had pumpkin pie and homemade pumpkin cheesecake that a friend made.
I let L have a sliver of the cheescake with a tiny amount of whip cream. This is very unusual for me. Anyway she went NUTS!!! Seriously running around the kitchen not being able to control herself. It was funny at first and then sad. It totally reaffirmed to me why we avoid any sugars that aren't naturally occuring. This keeps your childs mood always on an even plateau.
It's very sad that you have to be constantly worried about what your daughter is going to be given at school. You'd think that would be the one place she would be "safe".
On a similar note, Josh had a orange pumpkin cookie at school today. He ran right up to me after school and told me he had one, that he did fine (no warnings even) and that he had controlled himself all day. I am wondering if he has outgrown it. Not that it matters too much since we won't be dishing out the dye anytime soon but it would be nice to go to a bday party without stress!
ReplyDeleteOh yes I can sympathise with the zipper incident - we have an issue with artificial colourings causing wild behaviour too. In Australia, Smarties have natural colourings and M&Ms use artificial colours - so I do allow the occasional Smartie but have a strict no M&Ms policy! But perhaps it's different in the states?
ReplyDeleteOur daughter has multiple allergies and your school would have been a landmine for her as she would have vomitted, swelled up, turned red and needed to be taken to the ER. I used to teach and saw way too much junk come through on a regular basis. Thus, we homeschool. For birthday parties, I bake cupcakes and freeze them for later.
ReplyDeleteOne of my friend's school has no snacks and birthday foods policy which I think is a good idea in general. Why spend so much valuable teaching time handing out things that aren't good for you?
@Sarah: Smarties here in the States are small, dimpled sugar discs, rather than the M&M-type sweet under that name in Commonwealth countries. They're composed of very little but sugar, corn starch, and artificial colouring.
ReplyDeleteManufacturers have begun being very good about using natural colour, such as beet pigment for red and turmeric for yellow, even in Pringles chips. Another lurking hazard is that some products contain entirely different things from place to place. Coming from Europe, I had no idea that Mountain Dew in the US contains so much caffeine I had another of my caffeine withdrawal stroke episodes. (Yes, I get migraines and sometimes minor strokes from some chemical additives, and used to throw the same kind of tantrums PB was described having in an earlier post. I sometimes still do, which is why I keep myself on a very strict diet).
ReplyDeleteWhen I was a child in school, we had a small notebook where we got stickers as rewards for good work at school, and we were always comparing who got what, and even trading ones we liked with each other.
Since I've worked as a gradeschool teacher, I came up with the habit of colourful stamps with animal motifs on them as rewards. If a math assignment was done, they might have gotten a lion or giraffe stamped on their notebook page, and even the wilder kids treated the stamping of their notebook as a very festive occasion.
Other parents and teachers I've seen in the blogospheres have reported pencils, colourful rubbers ("erasers" in the US, I believe), and little decorative trinkets as prices and treats, too.
I'd bring it up with the PTA, to suggest the school takes a policy into use where treats for a job well done can only be of the non-edible kind. If the school attempts to say it will be too expensive (most schools receive subsidies from the government for food), the PTA could probably sponsor a cute animal stamp and an ink pad to every teacher in the school in stead.
Best of luck with combating artificial additives. There are a lot of us who are hypersensitive, so you've got a lot of us anonymous supporters out here.