Sugar and Attention

By Bobby Neal Winters

I will be turning 60 soon.  Very soon. I’ve learned a few things. Among these is that there are some things--and maybe most things-where it is not about all or nothing.  It is about finding the right measure. Right measure is not even right.  It is about finding the right path.  As examples, let’s take sugar and attention.

Sugar and attention are a lot alike.  They both should be treated like controlled substances.  They are addictive and once you get hooked...

Well, trouble can follow.

I will begin with a confession that I am a sugar addict.  I have a sweet tooth as big as Texas.  The simile would be better if Texas were made of chocolate, but then I would probably have been found dead a long time ago with Fort Worth dribbling down my cheek.

Nutritionally, sugar is complicated.  You don’t actually have to eat sugar to live.  It does occur naturally in some foods, like fruit, for instance, but you don’t have to eat sugar.

But--and here is where the word complicated is justified--your body has to have it.  That may confuse you because I just said you don’t have to EAT it.  You do have to HAVE it. Sugar is your source of energy.  Your body makes sugar.  Your liver does it. Your liver makes it for you from the other foods you eat.

But you don’t have to eat it directly.  When you do eat it directly, you get a quick boost.  I don’t need science to tell me this.  I learned it on my own. Eating candy while I drive will keep me awake better than caffeine. Caramel M&Ms are perfect for this.  They are like crack cocaine to me, though I don’t know that for sure.

Since I began my weight loss program last year, my consumption of sugar has gone way, way down.  I don’t remember the last time I even put sugar in my tea. I’ve begun to use it more like medicine.  Last week I was falling to sleep at the wheel as I drove back from Oklahoma, so I stopped for Caramel M&Ms and they perked me right up.

But this is a slippery slope because the addition is real. It’s been a week and the Caramel M&Ms have been calling to me ever since.

As I said above, attention is a lot like sugar: We have to HAVE it, but the way we receive it is important.

This following example may sound brutal, so consider this as a trigger warning.  When I was a little kid, I was with a group where there was a group of younger children playing along with the adults looking on.  One of the kids fell down and did the equivalent of scraping his knee.  My grandfather, my dear Grampa Sam, told the rest of the adults present: “Don’t pay attention to him or he will cry.”  They didn’t pay attention to him, and he didn’t cry. 

I’ve been in similar situations where the child has begun to cry and the adults pretended not to see, and the child quieted himself.

This might not be strange to you, but I’ve been living in a social circle where every boo-boo is immediately kissed and every tear is immediately dried. This has an effect, and time will tell us what it is.

Clearly there are times when we must immediately pay attention to our children’s pain--a bone sticking out of a leg is a pretty good clue--but if you give more attention than a “boo-boo” is worth, then that is a net reward. We get more of whatever we reward.  

One could call the amount of crying that is beyond what is warranted by the name “drama.”  If you reward drama, you get drama.

There are things we should reward with attention. When my daughters were younger, they took part in music for a short time. (They were fired by their teacher, but let’s not go there.) We went to music contests.  The children played their pieces; stood and took their bows; received their applause.

It occurred to me that for a talented young person, this would become an entitlement. It then occurred to me that the same thing happens to academics. Work hard, do good on a test: Get rewarded with attention. Work hard, write a good essay: Get rewarded with attention.

Work hard and perform well: Get attention.  

In the right measure, this is good.  You should be rewarded in the learning process...in the beginning.  But there has to be a time of transition to something more mature. You have to transition from working hard to become excellent so you can receive the reward for the excellence to the point where the excellence is the reward itself.

My model for this comes from the movie “Babe.”  After a remarkable performance, the trainer says, “That’ll do, Pig.”

Addiction to sugar can lead to obesity and diabetes.  Addiction to attention can lead to narcissism and all other weird quirks of human behavior that I don’t have space to go into.  Those of us in academic administration like to call it “job security.”

I am dealing with my own sugar addiction by giving myself rules for when I can eat sugar.  I can eat one cookie in the church parlor right after church, for example.  I can eat one regular-sized bag of Caramel M&Ms if I am falling asleep at the wheel while driving.

The attention thing is harder.  The “that’ll do, Pig” level of attention is not for everyone.  It is an area where I’ve more questions than answers, but I can at least share my ignorance with you.

Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like'' the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. Search for him by name on YouTube. )