Punk’d

This is a post about sibling squabbles.  And low blood sugar.

They are not two separate things.

First, I think all parents need a class on nutrition before they’re allowed to take their babies home from the hospital.  I remember being completely ignorant about protein and its role in stabilizing blood sugar and satisfying hunger long-term.  It wasn’t until Ethan’s toddlerhood, when a friend loaned me the practical little handbook Child of Mine: Feeding with Love and Good Sense ,that I finally understood the role of a balanced diet and its connection to a child’s disposition and needs.

Simply put, most kids aren’t bad.  They’re just hungry.  And that hunger can occur even in a fed child, if the feeding consists completely of simple carbohydrate.

We have this blood-sugar problem everyday during school pickup.  One minute, they’re smiling goodbye to their teacher, the term”cherub” bubbling up in a comic word balloon over their heads as they walk out the door to the swelling sounds of harp music.  It’s the moment where I look like a competent mother of well-behaved children.

…The next minute they’re in my van, hissing, slapping, kicking, shoving, and all but cussing (only because they don’t know those words, except for Ethan, who has picked a few up).

It used to really rattle me.  Now, I just ignore it and turn NPR up as loud as it will go.  It drives them battier than they already are.

Low blood sugar.  So it was no surprise what happened last Friday.

The girls had had a day off from school.  They were tooling around the yard in their little Barbie Jeep as I pulled in the driveway with Ethan at half past three o’clock.  My command to “go wash your hands and get a snack” died on my lips when I realized he must have jumped out of the car while it was still rolling up the drive, for he was nowhere to be found.

Point being: I allowed a child with low blood sugar to go out into the world.

What then occurred was this: Ethan went to the shed to pull out his four-wheeler in order to tear around after the girls and terrorize them.  In frustration, they abandoned their Jeep and stood on the porch complaining to their daddy via multiple rings on the doorbell.  (Daddy was on the couch napping.  I’m sure he loved the doorbell).

Ethan seized the opportunity to “punk” his sisters.  If you’re an American and you’ve been living under a rock, you don’t know that “Punk’d” is today’s version of the more wholesome “Candid Camera” from the 8o’s.  Those days, people smiled abashedly when they realized they were being scammed for laughs.   “Punk’d” is designed to make people really, really mad.  Of course, that was Ethan’s intention.

Seeing the girls occupied, he thought it would be funny to quickly drive their Barbie Jeep into hiding by parking it underneath the trampoline.  But when he was just about there, he turned around and saw Emily getting on his four-wheeler and flashing him a smug smile.  In his words, “I got so distracted, I stopped paying attention to my driving, and the next thing I knew, WHAM!”

Wham is right.  He drove his face (not his Jeep, but his face)directly into the trampoline support pole.

This is where I come in.  This child staggers into the house, dazed and bawling, holding his face.  And all I can think is, Low blood sugar strikes again.

“You should have had a snack,” I said lamely.

Pay attention to your children’s diets.  Then you won’t have to take them to their ballgame looking like you’ve already used their heads for batting practice.