Coke in a sippy cup !!

[Tracey]

I dont drink Coke as a drink (only a mixer with Scotch when I do drink).
I am not into fizzy drinks & we rarely have any in the house & if it is Coke in the fridge it's used for Mixers as I said... So Maddy knows it isnt hers, at age 8 at friends houses etc I'm certain she has had soft drinks & other stuff we dont have at home & at age 8, I am happy for her to make her own choice's when I'm not around. If we get Macca's she may get Fanta as she isnt keen on coke, but usually she gets a Thick Shake....

She will have a sip of those Blue Pop Top drinks enough to make her tongue blue but she never finishes the whole popper!
She gets healthy snacks & food for school, but I know she gets home from school & her & my Dad have an ice cream almost daily! She is really thin & must just get her Genes from her Dad... Coz he can eat & drink whatever & never gain weight!

I dont encourage Junk food as treats, I work for a large Confectionery Co & she knows the cupboard is always full of stuff, but she usually eats my passionfruit, poeaches, apricots & nectarines before she has anything from the cupboard!

Maybe coz it is there in the cupboard fer her it isnt so exciting (I dont buy it, it's freebies so it kinda builds up, then I give it away!)

Maddy is the kinda kid that has a stack of party bags from Parties she's been too, all on thebench for months, until I chuck them out, she only ever wants the balloons!

[Violet Star]

Can't find it now, but I read an article on how a child had to have all their teeth removed as the mother thought it was the normal thing to give their child a bottle of coke of an evening with some teaspoons of sugar added.

Not only does the sugar worry me, but what about the caffiene that would be running throught that poor child's system.

I know of a yound child about 2-3 years old who had to have all their teeth removed as she always had coke in the sippy cup. She had all the teeth removed and another work mate asked how the child was going and if she was meant to be eating lollies? and the mother replied yes good, the doctor said she would know when it was ok to eat again and she is wanting to eat. :eek: doctors need to be really clear with some people/parents I think as not all of them understand and I guess others just choose to ignore it all.

As a educator I always set a good example of what I eat in front of the kids (what i might have behind closed doors is another thing:P ) Kids do take notice..when they comment you have had a apple each day this week etc. There are parents who are just do damn lazy. Sending a 5 year old with 5 packets of snack chips for recess it not healthy.

[caddie]

My 2yr old gets water and milk when she asks for it.As a treat i will flavour the water or gets a thickshake now and then.She has a lifetime to drink all that fizzy stuff so the less the better!

[poppet]

i think the point here is the child is 23 months - not the right age to introduce coke, fanta or any soft drink. I agree with Caddie, they have a lifetime to try these things out......23 months isnt in my opinion a time to introduce coke.

[Astrolady]

My kids have soft drink (no not an everyday occurance), they have the watered down mcdonalds/Hj's coke once a week when we go out food shopping and buy tea at the shops. Very rarely do they have proper coke and when they do it is a sip of mine. We buy cans of soft drink so they just can't help themselves as they don't know how to open up cans... (yet) But they are well aware that cans are mummy and daddy's drinks as there is also cans of beer in fridge.

If we are out to a restaurant/pub (once every 2 mths) I will buy 1 small bottle of lemonade (where we go do the small glass bottles) and ask for 2 glasses and the boys will share that.

They rarely have juice, and rarer still have cordial. Both the boys prefer milk/milo or water to anything else.

Love

[Trish]

DP's niece had to have her top front teeth removed as the came through and went rotten. Nope, they weren't feeding her on Coke, it was Ribena!! I don't know how many times I would tell them that the stuff is full of sugar and that they really shouldn't give it to her but she constantly had a bottle in her mouth full of the stuff.

Now at the age a 5 she is a big girl. Dp's mother has weight issues as did dp's brother who passed away early this year from an aneruysm. It saddens me when I see this child being fed so much food, yes she is 6 months older than Noah but she is a good head shorter than him and weighs atleast 10-15 kgs more than he does. Her mother is Thai and a fantastic cook and I know that generally she feds the girls healthy foods. But she is still giving her 4 year old a bottle too, and she is more than capable of eating. Thankfully she is not as big as her sister, yet.

The 5 year old has troubles keeping up with Noah when playing in the yard, she gets puffed easy and can not do basic things like ride a bike properly. I went out an dgot the girls a trampoline for last years Christmas present, hoping that it would encourage them to exercise more.

MIL knows that I dont agree with her size (5 year olds) and will often say, oh look don't you think she's loosing weight etc. For her birthday we were told to buy size 7's. Noah is still in a 4 in pants as they fall off him.

Ok, I think I have strayed way too much OT. As you can see it gets my goat when people do this to their children. As a parent you are the one who is responsible in installing healthy eating habits into your children. IMO parents who overfeed their children and turn them into obese little people are abusing their children. I know that may sound harsh, but so is giving your child life long health issues like Juvenile Diabetes

[Kirsty77]

Got to agree with neverplan. You don't know the situation and it could have been a 'one off' special treat thing. Yep coke is very bad for kids, but don't we occasionally have something that is bad for us!? Each to their own I say.

[MantaRay]

I wouldn't give my boys any soft drink or juice even as an occassional thing. Tom is too young now of course, but Jack is nearly two and has only ever had milk and water. He doesn't want anything else as he doesn't know any different. I would worry if he had it occassionally that he would get to like sweet drinks and then it would be harder to say no.

As Trish said, I think many people are unaware that juice is bad for kids so think they are doing the right thing. Everyone I know gives their kids juice so I wondered if I was wrong, but luckily I have friend whose a dietician and she said definitely no juice. Even the no added sugar ones are too high in sugar and too concentrated. She said best to give the child a piece of fruit and a drink of water. This is what I was doing anyway, but it's nice to know it's the right thing!

I do think it's sad that kids pay for their parents mistakes. I'm sure we all make mistakes, we just have to hope they are minor ones LOL!!

[AngelPunks]

I was having a girlie natter to a girlfriend of mine the other day, she has a 10 month old gorgeous girl, she's a nurse. We were discussing kids (as you do) and I was telling her of the news article that I'd seen about how doctors/nurses will be doing teeth checks of children when they come in for vaccinations due to the increase of parents giving children sweet drinks (like coke).

About 2 days later, I was at the local iga getting eggs & milk to make breakfast (I think it was about 7am) when I saw a mother hand her toddler an icypole type iceblock, this child would have been less than 2. I was horrified!

I know that I used to get rosehip in water on occasions, I also know my SIL used to give her 4 horrors, lots of water, milk, very watered down juice and icecreams/iceblocks were homemade AND a treat!

I know with my kids (when/if I have them) that I'm going to be careful about what is fed to them.

[melbel]

I totally agree with everything being said, but the educator in me just has to correct a small error. Trish sugar and too much food will NOT EVER cause juvenile diabetes. Juvenile diabetes ( an old term, now called type 1 Diabetes) is a genetic disorder pure and simple. If you're gonna get you're gonna get it, what you eat won't make an iota of difference. What you are referring two is type 2 Diabetes, the major cause (but not total) cause of which is bad eating habits and weight issues. And yes Type 2 Diabetes is becoming a HUGE (pardon the pun) issue in our young, in a world first a three year old obese child was diagnosed with it recently...it is at epidemic proportions in our country and we have have one of the highest rates of both obesity and type 2 Diabetes in the world....horrifying and embarrasing statistics.
Sorry to sound pedantic about the classification but us type ones who were diagnosed as kids through no fault of our own constanty batlle this sort of misinformation and people we term "food nazis" who make ilinformed comments about how we must have had too much sugar as a child and how bad ourparents must have been etc. Kind of a touchy subject for us type ones but having said that I totally agree, Coke and other sugary and processed foods should be used with caution in children and given as a treat not as an everyday thing. I coiuld tell you some horror stories about young people with type 2 who have continued their unhealthy ways and have lost limbs due to gangrene, gone blind due to vascular disease and died early due to heart and kidney failure. I am only 37 and I have personally buried 5 type 2 friends in the past two years from this, all of whom were younger than me.

[Elektra]

I agree with neverplan.
I never think you should judge someone by something you saw on one particular day.
My daughter is 21 months and will have the occassional sip of softdrink (including coke) out of my glass. If I was having a particularly bad day and she was whinging for it, I probably would put a tiny bit in her sippy cup for her to have a minute of peace. On the odd occassion, I don't really see anything wrong with that.
She also has a pop top drink every day and cordial with no added sugar.

[Trillian]

Ok, what bothers me is that regardles of how often the child in question got the soft drink, on that particular day, they wree outside at a BBQ, it was hot and all the child had was soft drink, why couldn't they alternate it with water?

[barbie-up]

Hey - at Mcdonalds with the happy meals, you can ask for juice or water instead of fizzy drink.

The 6yo boy across the road used to sleep with a bottle of milk - all of his front baby teeth are rotten and he has a speech issue, which may or may not be related to the fact he has no top teeth.

My cousins boys are 2 and 6 and all I have ever seen them drink is coke, refilled often in a toddler cup.

I have no trouble telling my Cait that if she's thirsty she can have milk or water. I keep some of those pop top drink bottles in the fridge with water so she can help herself.

[lilprecious75]

I am in total agreement with Sheri here! The child was outside at a BBQ - in warm weather I'm guessing - and most likely eating foods high in salt. Therefore, the child needed SOME water to counter balance the effects of the sugar, the caffeine, the heat, and possibly salty foods (though I wasn't there and so don't know what the child was eating).

If I have it my way (and thankfully DH is in agreement with me here) our son will be 5 yo before he has anything like soft drink or cordial. Unfortunately you have to watch out for what other people do - including family members. I had two ladies at church feed my son a finger full of chocolate cake the day he turned 6 months (I had JUST started solids two days before that so up to that point he had only had breast milk and rice cereal). My SIL wanted to give DS some chocolate cake over Christmas as well and I told her he could wait another 6 weeks until his first birthday.

I just really want to set a good example and get a good basis of nutrition for my son in the early days. There are too many health issues in DH's family to take many risks and he'll have plenty of time when he is MUCH older and can make his own decisions, to eat all the sugary junk.

Right now I'm thrilled that he prefers his veggies (even over fruit - though he is getting better with fruit) and that he guzzles the water down at his solid meals.

And I think the parents who ROUTINELY give their children junk food and drink (I'm not talking about the odd treat here and there) are lazy. They don't want to take the time and effort to teach their child proper nutrition and they also don't want to deal with the tantrums and struggles that come up when they tell their child no.

I'm disgusted with the child obesity level in the US (I moved here in June 2000) and unfortunately Australia will follow in America's footsteps if we aren't careful.

[{sarah}]

While I agree with most of you that having 4 sippy cups of coke is a bit much I have to disagree with some of the other comments about junk food. It is possible for children to have not enough fat in their diets & need things like hot chips on occasion to counteract the issues caused by an over active intestinal tract. I would hate for people to see me at the shops & think that I am a lazy mother because I am feeding my son chips or something similar under our paediatrician's advice.

Of course everything in moderation, but I think you need to know the full circumstances.

[tash]

as a baby/todler my parents gave me that blackbery cordial(ribena i think), as a result i had most of my baby teeth pulled out at 4.

[katkins]

I have to admitt, my kids get a little of everything, but watered down so much it's really not worth it. It just lets them think they are having what we have if we have soft drink. I add a touch of coke to a heap of water. They also get very weak cordial because they won't drink water. Mind you this too is so weak it is pretty much just water. My sisters are both dental nurses and they agree. My older sis has two kids and she does the same thing so they don't feel left out of celebrations or treats. We try not to give them coke, we'd prefer something with less caffiene, but since they end up getting so little of it....it really doesn't matter very much....

[Rouge]

Yeah I think I probably have double standards in that my kids won't be stopped from having all junk food, I think moderation is fine and as a result my kids prefer other foods over junk (sushi, yum cha etc) but the reason I think I have a fear of coke is all the experiments we did at school where we used it to remove tarnish from coins. But I do cringe when I see children drinking coke. Its not just about the sugar its about the caffeine too I wouldn't give my kids coffee either! BUT I don't want anyone to feel attacked for the choices they make either. Everyone is always going to have differing opinions of things...

*hugs*
Cailin