Free reign chocolate.

 

Lucy McAlister

 

My son will be three next month. He’s passionate about chocolate. From the moment he found a chocolate and managed to eat through the wrapper unnoticed at 11 months old he just hasn’t been able to get enough of the stuff. A friend babysat for him once and using her daughter as a reference guide decided to give him a large Lindtt bunny. Her daughter will eat 6 smarties and then go for a carrot stick. She was somewhat surprised when Jessy ate the entire rabbit leaving only the base, which defeated him because he fell asleep mid-munch.

 

So Easter is looming – socially sanctioned time of excess chocolate consumption. Last Easter, I was just entering a new phase of determination to let my child control his own food choices. I try to use trust in my child as my basis for parenting; one of the areas in which this can be particularly challenging is the area of food choices. The principle is that given free choice and access to a wide variety of foods a child will eat exactly what his body needs. It seems Jessy needs chocolate. Last Easter, he needed an awful lot of chocolate. In fact, for a long time, he called all chocolate ‘eggs’ and seemed to believe it only manifested itself in this shape.

 

I’ll be curious to see whether this Easter, the eggs will hold the same fascination. It’s become an unwavering routine to stop and choose a small chocolate bar on the way home from my partner’s house. Sometimes we to and fro a couple of times a day but nothing will deter him from his ritual! Often he insists that we take little chocolate gifts for my girlfriend’s twins and older daughter too. Holding the little bundles of chocolate frogs makes my new combined family suddenly seem so much bigger! It warms my heart to see his little gestures of affection, and the way he automatically thinks of my partner and her children in these moments.

 

Despite his continued passion, the predicted outcomes of free reign food choices are happening. Jessy will often leave half a bar of chocolate when he’s had enough, and will usually happily put it down to come and eat a healthy nutritious dinner. He’s more likely to exclaim ‘yummy!’ over a bowl of rice and prawns than over a chocolate bar and has been more distressed by running out of salami than by having no chocolate in the house. 

 

He’ll still enjoy being treated on a special day though. My girlfriend invited me out for a lunch date the other day just as I was about to leave, so we bundled up all the kids against the cold and headed out to ‘just around the corner’, which is as far as you want to go with a two year old and three year old twins in tow!! It’s wonderful how our kids are so instinctively open and happy about us. Through mouthfuls of chocolate cake, we had all three little ones playfully arguing over who was who’s girlfriend. All of them seem to want to be our girlfriend as they can clearly see how happy we are whenever we say we are each other’s girlfriends. I’m not sure our little local café was quite ready for their uncompromising happiness about their queer family, but it certainly made us proud! Hooray for happiness and free reign chocolate!