Valentine's Day too sugary sweet for one Winnipeg mom

Valentine's Day is becoming more and more about sugary treats than it is about the sentiment of love.

Yesterday, my four-year-old came home from her preschool Valentine's Day party with a haul of cards, stickers and candy. There was so much candy.

On Facebook this morning, a friend of mine asked when Valentine's became Halloween 2.0. Because the fact of the matter is that it has.

Between my two daughters and their various classes and care arrangements, they have four Valentine's Day parties between the two of them.

Today's Valentine's Day parties are no longer limited to simply making red and pink mailboxes from repurposed Kleenex boxes and sending cute “I Ch-Ch-Choose You” cards to their friends.

No, today's Valentine's Day parties are full of cookies, brownies and juice, and kids receive cards specially adapted to hold suckers, candies and chocolates.

This trend of sweet treats extends beyond Valentine's Day. It seems that everything my kids do ends with some sort of sugar. Last skating class? Here is a sucker. Playing Timbits soccer at the local community centre? Pop in to Timmies for chocolate milk and treats after the game. And on and on it goes.

For the record, I understand that I am the one parenting my kids and so I am ultimately responsible, and often contributing, to the sweet-treat kid culture. But my point is that more and more, it seems, the day-to-day lives of our kids revolve around sweets and sweet-based reward.

When we consider the obesity epidemic in our country and the rise of lifestyle diseases, I don't think we are doing ourselves or our kids any favours.

Earlier this week, while many of my mom friends where commiserating online about how hard it was to motivated our children to write their Valentine's Day cards and how, in some cases, tears were being shed by both children and mothers, a friend commented that her child's school didn't allow Valentine's Day cards.

My initial reaction was a bit shocked. Really? I thought, Valentine's Day is just a nice little holiday to show our friends how much they mean to us. There's nothing wrong with that.

But after the first of the V-Day party haul came home last night, and with more expected after parties today, I am fully on board. We do not need to encourage our children that love, feelings or friendship are linked with food, sugar and treats.

So today, in protest of this overly indulgent trend that Valentine's Day is taking for kids, I sent my four-year-old daughter empty-handed to her second Valentine's party of the season. There is not a one card, treat or note in her backpack.

(Note: By protest, I mean that we were both emotionally spent the other night after writing out the 20 cards she needed for her first party that neither of us had the emotional wherewithal to write any more.)