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Recently I overheard a man lamenting the fact that his four-year-old had several cavities. He went on to explain it, almost helplessly, as “Well, he loves his juice, what can you do?”.

Uh…not give him so much damn juice!

There are two aspects of this overheard dirge that frost my giblet:

1. Who’s in charge here?
2. Just because something is “natural” doesn’t mean copious amounts of it are good.

Unless it’s water. My father-in-law has this theory that whenever a kid acts up, it’s because she’s dehydrated and you should give her some water. I like that – could it be my excuse too? (Well, officer, I was thirsty…)

Back to the first frosting: who’s in charge here anyway? You’re the parent! I’m not advocating the brick-wall approach, but my children would eat Twizzlers night and day if there weren’t a benevolent dictator standing over them with a couple of toothbrushes and a glass of water. I’m a dictator, yes – but at least I pretend to be offering a choice: do you want to put on the pink pajamas or the red pajamas?  (Either way, those pajamas are going on!)

Second frosting: yes, I gave up sugar, and consequently, I don’t drink juice. My kids eat sugar. They drink juice. But it’s not in the house. That, I insist on. Juice is a restaurant treat – like Mai Tais for toddlers. But as refreshment? Yikes….once I learned that juice has as much sugar as a glass of Coke I banned it from the fridge. My friend’s three-year-old, Natalie stayed with us for a week and went home to tell her family that, “Vancouver is nice. They don’t have juice.”

When you live in a place where you can turn on a tap and drink what comes out of it – it is so shockingly lovely, that there’s every reason to keep doing that and forget about juice entirely.