We take Friday’s seriously in our house. Friday is my favorite day of the week and I love to celebrate it. One of the ways we celebrate is through food! My family has developed a number of Friday food traditions that help us get ready for the weekend.
Our Happy Friday Food Traditions
Our Friday food traditions start off at breakfast where I serve cold cereal to my kids for breakfast. This is such a time saver for me and my kids love it. For lunch, we look to pack easier, quicker, funner meals for my boys – with my one child frequently choosing a thermos of Ramen and my other son – in LOVE with snack packs.
Finally, we make it to the end of the work/school day – where I give my kids their $5 (which is in the new edition to our Friday tradition) and we go to the store.
Finally, I aim to make a Friday dinner that is quick and easy. The other week we had nachos or sometimes we have leftovers.
But this Friday it was pancakes.
How giving my kids allowance has changed candy Friday
Before I get too much into the pancakes, let me take a quick detour to give you an update of how allowance has impacted Candy Friday.
As I previously mentioned, Saturday’s Candy is a tradition in Sweden where kids use their own money to buy sweets once per week. This was an initiative started by the government to help reduce cavities. They found that kids who eat all their candy on one day a week as opposed to small amounts every day had fewer cavities.
But the difference between this tradition and our tradition of Candy Friday, was that I was using my money as opposed to letting my kids use their money.
So I decided to switch it up and a bit and move my kids over at an allowance system to help them start learning about money WHILE they eat candy.
What did they chose?
My kids happily came home Friday after school and collected their allowance. They wanted to go to the store themselves, but I needed to pick up some gift certificates for a weekend birthday, so they allowed me to tag along.
As my boys have decided that this is now something they do on their own, I wanted to give them the space to claim this independence, so I got my gift certificates and let them pick out what they wanted.
They both chose 750mL of soda (1 coca-cola, 1 sprite) for $4.20 each. Leaving them both with 80 cents remaining.
OK – so are you totally flabbergasted at the thought of children purchasing 750mL of soda-pop for Candy Friday?
My own answer – kind of.
Isn’t that too much sugar? Isn’t that bad for them? Couldn’t they have chosen a smaller bottle? Are they going to eat anything for dinner? Or are they just going to fill up on pop and then be hungry at midnight?
Why I didn’t stop them from buying the pop
Because I was at the store I could have stopped them from the pop or made them to get a smaller bottle, but I didn’t. And here’s why – Natural Consequences:
- If my kids drink all that pop and get a stomachache or skip dinner and then get hungry later this gives them a chance to learn from this experience and hopefully avoid it in future. Humans tend to be experiential learners and often learn a lesson better if they learn it for themselves.
- If my kids don’t have much money left over because they spend their entire allowance on candy – then I will ensure I make a note of it for them next time we are at the store and they ask for something. My plan will be – you can buy it if you use your own money. Do you have any?
I also want my kids to start learning how their choices make them feel. It’s that time in their lives for them to hone their abilities to make food choices on their own. If I don’t allow them to make some “mistakes” now when I am around to support them through it, I worry it will be harder for them when they are older and I am not there to talk it through (I am thinking teen-age years!)
I also know that I still have a high degree of control over their food environments and can modify what gets offered the rest of the weekend/week to make up for the high sugar load. So did my kids get offered any other sugary drinks or high sugar foods this weekend. Nope! They got their sugar fix in on Friday.
How much pop did they drink?
I also want to make a note that while they both bought the large pop – not all the pop got drank (for my one kid! – oh how I would love to tell you for both! – but that would be a lie!).
My one child had the whole thing drank before we had dinner. My other child sipped his through Friday night and put it in the fridge then promptly forgot about it. He probably about drank about 200mL.
Did drinking all the pop spoil their dinner?
Nope! They both ate so many pancakes that I only got three. Here is the table – you can see that I made:
- Dollar Pancakes
- Berry sauce – frozen berries added to pot with a splash of water and then cooked down to make a sauce, I add a little cornstarch at the end to thicken it up
- Bananas
- (The 750mL Cola!)
So what?
Did I like what my kids chose for themselves this Candy Friday? No.
Did I stop them from making that choice? No.
Why not? I want them to learn to listen to their bodies and if they drink or eat too much of something then I think its ok if they experience the natural consequences of that choice. I also can modify the rest of the food environment to ensure they eat plenty of healthy foods too.
Did drinking all that pop spoil their dinner? No. In fact they ate more pancakes than they usually do.
