What's Valentine's Day without candy?
Some kids are finding out, as schools extend bans on classroom sweets to holiday celebrations out of concern for students' health.
A Massachusetts school's has drawn national and international attention and criticism, as well as praise.
Parents in Minneapolis, where a policy to promote better student health started last year, see messages like:
"Students can bring valentines, but as you are shopping for valentines, please DO NOT purchase valentines with candy or send candy to school for the party."
Our 11-year-old broke the news to me a few days ago: The general ban on sugary snacks at her school applies to Valentine's Day. "It's ridiculous," she said. "Fruit snacks are about as close as you can get."
That sent her brother, 17, into a reverie about what used to be—candy hearts, pixie sticks, Hershey's bars. Sweets, he remembered, were "the whole point. It's small candy but it adds up. We had pretty big class sizes."
Our daughter explained that from a kid's perspective, Valentine's Day is the one holiday celebrated more at school than it is at home. "It's really fun," she said, lapsing into the present tense. "It's just 45 minutes of walking around and eating candy."
She'll still get a list of kids in her class and spend the weekend cutting out hearts or shopping for paper cards. And my wife gets the kids small boxes of chocolates—a tradition firmly instituted one year when they wondered why only we parents were exchanging heart-shaped presents at home.
So Valentine's Day will survive. But it won't be the same.
In fact, said my daughter, "It's absolutely horrible."
PS - Not sure about all this obesity talk being relevant. A lot of V-Day candy is fat free. High in sugar? Of course. But I don't think V-Day candy hearts and the like necessarily contribute to an obesity epidemic. There are other gatherings (i.e. Super Bowl parties) that have much fattier foods.
How about instead schools can take the opportunity to have some healthy treats - fruit, etc... and maybe kids can see that they don't have to have Candy at every possible opportunity. When I pick my grade school child up, it is pretty shocking how many (sorry to say it) fat and really fat kids there are in grade school. I dug out my old grade school class photos and we all looked like "famine" victims compared to what I too often see when I pick my child up.
Patterning our children's brains to link sweet with happy is not a good idea for future health.
Plus, I really think the parents that freak out about sugar in kids, usually are feeding THEIR kids well.. (You know, a fairly healthy..balanced diet with fruit and veggies and proteins) So why not let them have a sweet treat or five or ten at school? The parents that don't supervise their kids sugar intake or 'let them' have large amounts of candy or whatever all the time, probably don't even think about valentines day as a big deal. But at the same time, they probably don't feed themselves well so why would they feed their kids any better? I guess what I am trying to say is, you are the parent. If you educate your kid about food and feed them the right things, Valentines/Halloween isn't going to make your kid gain 20 lbs overnight. And if you REALLY don't want your kid to participate, pull them out of school. It's been a few years since I have been in the school district, but it was crazy to see how many parents would pull their kids out of school for vacations (before spring break). If candy is really such a big deal, just skip the day and tell them how much you love them instead. :p
I don't think this is new? I started at Highlands 15 years ago and there were strict rules in place regarding bringing in food.. for teachers and parents. No homemade food was allowed, basically everything had to be prepackaged and store bought. (If it was to be shared with the class of course) Personal food and snack obviously is different.
The point of a party is to reinforce class community, and candy really doesn't have to be a part of that.
For some of the children, it was their favorite party. Not all kids gave candy. Many just gave cards (the best were homemade). Some added a pencil or tattoo. Our Valentine's Day parties were led by parents, funded by parents and the PTA. It was a wonderful way for parents to meet other parents, working together to plan and run the parties. The kids LOVED these parties. As far as the obesity epidemic, it’s not caused by the kids having a treat at school. It’s the day-to-day lousy eating habits many people now have. Fast food too often, white bread, white rice, pre-packaged foods, etc. If anything at school contributes to it, it would be the horrendous school lunches and the cuts to Phy Ed.