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Discipline is a Piece of Cake

As your child rounds the corner from babyhood into toddlerhood, you must be prepared for her specific, long-term memory to lock in at any moment, which means that it's time to practice what you preach. You are running out of the days when you can smoke a foot-long cigar and say "Look, Sweetheart, Daddy's eating a loaf of wheat bread!"

You must start modeling good eating habits. This is tougher than you might think. Remember, as an adult you have earned the right to cram an entire bag of grease-infused, salt 'n vinegar flavored kettle chips down your sorry trap at the slightest hint of frustration, whereas babies enjoy no such liberties. Don't rub it in. Do the responsible thing: hide the chips, and gorge yourself behind a locked door.

This raises the larger question of sweets; specifically, should you allow sweets to be a part of your baby's diet, and if you do, what size crowbar should you use to pry the seventh consecutive Twinkie from her hand?

I visited some a web site with facts and figures about candy and chocolate, and, thanks to the candy manufacturers and distributors who sponsored it, was pleasantly surprised to learn that candy is a part of a sensible diet, and that chocolate is not habit-forming. Now here's the big shocker: It turns out that moderation is the key, which is like saying guns are perfectly safe as long as they never get pointed at anyone.

Which is precisely the problem when it comes to toddlers. They have as much sense of restraint as Genghis Khan. An adult has the maturity to stop eating ice cream when the half gallon is gone, while a toddler will demand that you produce another one right now, front and center.

As the only non-adult at a birthday party the other night, Emma was cruising along until the sudden, unexplained appearance of a German Chocolate Cake. As she watched six adults worship it as though it were an intelligent being from another galaxy before lining up obediently for slices, Emma understood that she was in the presence of a holy object. She would not be denied her sample.

The difficulty came after she had consumed perhaps one third of her body weight in cake while showing no signs of slowing down. We put it away but she suspected it was still somewhere on the property and asked for more. It did not make any sense to her that fellow humans would choose to put a stop to the Good Thing.

At eighteen months of age, she knows quite a few words, and "cake" is certainly among them. She put her face an inch from mine and spoke as though trying to make herself understood to an exceptionally dense person with eighty, maybe ninety percent hearing loss. "Cake! ... Cake!" Mildly irritated amusement, giving way to wild-eyed exasperation, trying to get it through my thick skull. "What part of 'CAKE' don't you understand?"

Later, after she fell asleep, I tried not to feel like a lying, treacherous pig as I had seconds.

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© Todd Pinsky 1998-2002. All rights reserved.