Kids and caffeine

The Super Bowl. It brings so many memories. Some great, some awful, and a lot of them awfully blurry. Last night's was definitely blurry for one child at the party I went to. The kid is about 2 years old I would say. Full of life, promise, and boat-loads of caffeine last night. I've met this kid. He's a typical two-year-old with a typical bad diet. Rambunctious at times but who isn't. Last night, he was in heaven. Smiling from ear to ear as he ran and jumped on one person's lap. Barking orders at them for about 5 seconds. Listened to 2 seconds of rebuttal, and quickly jumped off their lap and hauled it around the corner. Yes, sounds like your typical hopped up little kid. But here's where it got interesting.He had a cup (Mountain Dew by the way), he had another, and was cut off. At that moment is when the temper tantrum came on. Yelling that he wanted more. Which did not come his way. He eventually forgot he wanted more and ran off to cause more terror. Happy as a clown and just unfocused. Later, as it was wearing off. He got sleepy. But instead of going to bed, he ate almost half a box of munchkins. I was amazed. So here's my question. How can we expect kids as young as 5 and as old as 18 to act calm and focus in school when we are allowing them to be hopped up on caffeine? I see kids just about every day drinking soda in my class. I drank soda a lot when I was younger too and look back saying what was I thinking? I wasn't thinking. I just needed my next fix. It's no wonder people get addicted so easily to any substance. We are training them from a young age to do so.Before I end, I'd like to say I was in Starbucks the other day having a meeting, though neither of us bought anything, and saw what had to be kids around age 12-14 buying venti coffees. How is this legal? How has caffeine not been regulated to an extent yet? These are questions that we should be looking at if we are trying to breed a generation that will be better than us, not weaker.
Posted by Aaron Mittica 1 comments