[lucrum]

Our child has a pretty normal varied diet, always has. He's not all powered up on sugar, as he until recently was offered fruit only as an alternative to candy. He's getting older though, so to keep him from feeling like an outsider he gets to pick something for himself once a week, as a weekend snack. Mostly he picks out some sort of cookie/cracker type of snack, rarely eats it all in one go. He has a couple of neighbour boys that have candy going around pretty much all day, every day. We've at least tried to enforce a rule on them giving him candy outside the set timeframe. Deal has become, if he choose to take their offer, to say thank you and save it for the weekend. Hard to tell if he follows it, but he will get regular reminders.

As for drinks he's mostly on water, tap water. We live in an area with pretty good tap water. He gets some juice occationally, mostly apple juice. He also gets milk to go with breakfast and bedtime meal, but this is not so much on my accord as it is on his mothers. I'm not his biological dad, but in my heart I am as real a dad to him as I can get.

The result, we have a very calm, caring and intelligent boy. He has his quirks, as do we all, but nothing too big to handle.
Can I claim this to be his diet? Nah, I won't go that far. It's plausible, but it is quite frankly very hard to prove unless we were to change his diet into the opposite (which we clearly won't do)

However, would the same diet and treatment we give our boy be the recipe for every child? Personally, I don't think so. Children are individuals, as grownups or semi-grownups we all hate it when someone is trying to push a way of doing things, down our throat.

Every child has a way, the challenge is to discover it. When you are able to read your child, sense its needs, this is when you truly do the right thing.

My only advice on parenting, is to let all stereotype "do's and dont's" vanish and listen to your own heart. I firmly believe MANY parents out there feels overwhelmed with everyone that wants to have a saying on how they should raise their child. We all know what happens when you get overwhelmed, you say "pass" and leave it be.

People a thousand years ago and more, could raise a child perfectly well...without any kind of self proclaimed experts on the matter, I think the secret was that they had full "permission" to know their child.