SON GETS SNEAKY TRIPS TO McDONALD’S
FlAVIA GRAY, 45, owns a luxury travel company. She is single and lives in Chertsey, Surrey, with her daughter lucy, 18, and son Joshua, four this month. her mum is Marion, 73, a retired nhS medical secretary who lives nearby.
FLAVIA SAYS:
WHEN Joshua arrived home with my mum the other day clutching a toy, I asked him where he’d got it. ‘McDonald’s!’ he chirped trumphantly.
I couldn’t contain my fury. ‘You took him to McDonald’s?’ I hissed at her. ‘You didn’t even ask me!’
Mum was defensive, pleading that it ‘was only a few chicken nuggets, what harm would it do?’
I then felt horribly guilty because she looks after Joshua most days after nursery so that I can run my business — help that is priceless.
Still, I now insist that she asks my permission to take him to McDonald’s. I often say no, particularly as I recently discovered — after Joshua threw a
tantrum when I gave him a glass of fruit juice — that she has also been buying him chocolate milkshakes from the McDonald’s drive-thru.
It’s no better when she does cook for him — if you can call frozen pizza, fishfingers and ice cream cooking. It’s a long way from the fresh fish, meat, pasta and vegetables I cook.
Mum’s problem is that she solves every problem with food. There were no restrictions on what my brother and I could eat as children.
I remember being upset one day when she picked me up from school so she bought a three-pack of chocolate ice cream lollies and let me devour the lot. No wonder I’ve been left with a mouthful of fillings.
I’ve always excused her behaviour because she was a war-time baby who spent her childhood on rations.
Unfortunately, Mum also sabotages my efforts to ensure that Joshua eats as little processed sugar as possible. His father was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes aged five, so that’s always in the back of my mind, and Joshua’s boisterous enough without sugar.
If he needs something sweet, I’d rather he had a few grapes, but Mum refuses in case he chokes.
To her credit, she has just coaxed Joshua into eating corn on the cob, and on the very rare occasions when she cooks spaghetti bolognese or shepherd’s pie, he loves them.
But I feel guilty, too — about sniping at Mum, to whom I am so grateful, and also because I’m not around to cook more.
MARION SAYS:
FLAVIA may not think so, but I am conscious of whether Joshua is eating healthily. I’m just more concerned that he isn’t hungry.
I was born in 1943 and grew up in the post-war years of austerity so I didn’t taste a banana till I was ten and my memories of childhood are of being horribly hungry. If Joshua is hungry, my instinctive reaction is that I need him to eat immediately and that’s when I’ll take him to McDonald’s. Yes, I could give him breadsticks and hummus like Flavia does, but that won’t fill him up.
That empty feeling in your stomach is horrible, and Joshua is young and active. I’d rather he was full and happy than weak and miserable.
My other problem is that when I was a girl, the only sugar in our food was what we sprinkled on it. I forget that so many foods now are loaded with sugar.
Flavia and I have friendly fights about it and she is always right, there’s no doubt. She also knows that I’ve got Joshua’s best interests at heart, but in a different way.
Still, I can’t deny that I got pleasure from seeing the delight on his little face when I bought him that first chocolate milkshake!