It is my professional opinion that everyone experiences important health benefits when consuming dark chocolate. Those benefits apply to both physical and mental health, from improving blood flow and helping with lowering blood pressure, providing some important minerals, to enhancing cognitive brain functions and improving moods. In other words, chocolate is an all-around good option to have on hand for those moments when life feels maybe a bit much on your shoulders.
Of course, chocolate also is simply a tasty treat and we indulge in it regularly here; the health benefits just happen to be an added bonus for us (and I’ll take them).
As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, our typical breakfasts and dinners here involve bacon, sausage links, hash browns, and homemade buttermilk waffles drizzled with melted dark chocolate. Without fail, one of my teenagers will wander into the kitchen at some point as I am getting all the burners going and foods started and dip her hand into the bag of Ghiradelli dark chocolate chips we keep on the counter to steal one or three chips as a breakfast appetizer. If not the Ghirardelli chips, they may instead indulge in a milk chocolate Hershey’s kiss (a bowl of which we keep on our dining room table). For the youngest teenager, one of these chocolate treats helps her take her chewable multivitamin—it’s like the Mary Poppins’ song, just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.
Again, I’m good with this approach. Chocolate provides benefits and those may look different sometimes, but I don’t begrudge them whatever they involve. Difficult day? Chocolate. Need a small emotional boost? Chocolate. Want a bit of something sweet? Chocolate.
And here’s the thing. Being around my teenagers often is like a shot of chocolate. Sure, sometimes they are the motivation for my chocolate intake, but more, they are the parts of my day I tend to appreciate for the sweetness as well as the other benefits. Like dark chocolate, they can provide a boost to my mood—with their silliness or their wittiness. They can lower my blood pressure when I am feeling stressed—they check on me and suggest ways I might relax or at least treat myself to a bath or some time with a book or a movie. They can enhance my brain functioning—they are good at checking in to see if I’m doing okay and offering assistance where they can.
So often I hear parents complain about the ways their teenagers stress them out or inspire frustration or they lament how often they butt heads or clash over ideas or plans. In our family structure we have carefully cultivated connections that move beyond parents as the authorities and teens as the adherers to authority. Instead, we have worked toward a mutual respect, providing plenty of options for them to disappear into their rooms alone, but also creating opportunities to come together and actually enjoy one another’s company, whether we’re watching a movie, doing a read aloud, being creative in the shared living space, or hearing what they want to share.
I don’t know, maybe relationships with our teenagers are a bit like enjoying dark chocolate. Too much of anything, time with our teenagers (or them spending time with us, because it goes both ways, my friends), or eating chocolate, eventually can feel less like a treat and therefore lose its benefits. While we drizzle dark chocolate on the waffles, and while they steal a small number of chocolate chips before their main course, we don’t feed our teenagers only chocolate. Similarly, they don’t always do everything perfectly or the way we want them to.
But we have created the necessary balance and it works for us. And, for me, watching my girls enjoy those stolen bits of chocolate serve as an important reminder for who they are becoming as well as who they are. Like dark chocolate, they bring the perfect and complex blend of bitter sweetness to my life. They remind me to pause. They invite me to indulge in a chocolate chip or three with them. And always, they bring a just-right sweetness to my life I wouldn’t trade for anything, not even chocolate.