Make a Child's Easter Great Without so Much Sugar

If sugar isn't one of the first things that pop into your mind when you think about Easter, what macrobiotic vegan purist planet have you been living on? Many parents now find it difficult to conceive how they can make their child's easter great without so much sugar involved. After all, for decades now, the holiday has become almost synonymous with brightly colored marshmallow chicks, chocolate eggs stuffed with everything, including more chocolate, and every other type of vividly colored confection you can imagine, plus a few you likely have not.

A few studies have recently estimated that Easter easily rivals Halloween and Christmas for copious candy consumption among kids, with the average Easter basket packing a whopping 4,000 calories or more in sugar alone. Yet, if you tell your child that he or she can have a great Easter without so much sugar - a delight they're accustomed to getting - be prepared for a revolt. It can seem like you've just told the kid that terrorists have kidnapped the Easter Bunny and eaten him - or is it a her? - for dinner.

Perhaps the very first thing you need to do here is not tell Jonny or Janie you plan to cut down on the amount of sugar. Don't tell them they're going to get things that are good for them either; kids sense that "good for them" invariably means they'll hate it even though that is hardly the case.

But making a child's Easter great without so much sugar does not have to mean candy-free. Instead, you want to cut the sugar consumption down to reasonable levels that won't have the kids bouncing off the walls or creating new cavities for the dentist to fill. For example:

- substitute a huge solid-filled chocolate bunny with a more moderate sized hollow bunny
- don't include a whole bag of jelly beans but a handful or two
- give a bit of variety with candy while you avoid a large volume
- shop around for low sugar snacks although you probably want to avoid those that use artificial sweeteners since evidence suggests these may be worse on the body - especially a young one - than sugar itself

Also think about non-candy treats you can put in the basket, like a book, a hand-held game or card game, and such. Colored pencils or chalk or new crayons, a drawing pad, comic books, and little fun rubber stamps with a stamp pad can be wonderful additions. Remember, Easter isn't Christmas and you don't have to spend a lot of money to make your kids happy. Your objective is to make your child's Easter great without so much sugar, and you don't need to break the bank to do just that. A little imagination allows you to fill the basket without lots of candy or expense.

Here's another idea that some kids actually enjoy and which can help considering the sugar you do give them. Add a fun new toothbrush - they come in a number of specialty shapes and sizes, some battery powered and with animated parts within - and a tube of one of the really creatively packaged or cool flavored toothpastes to the Easter basket. While this sounds like one guaranteed to make some kids groan, I used to add these to the baskets I made for my niece and nephews and discovered they actually raced to brush their teeth after eating the chocolate bunny or other sugary treats. Sometimes, you can even find neat dental floss in different colors and even flavors that your kids might enjoy.