You Can Comfort and Reward Yourself without Food (Prediabetes)

The comfort value of food is taught to children at a very young age. When they fall and start to cry, they are offered a cookie. When they do something especially noteworthy, they are rewarded with an ice cream cone. When they do something bad or don’t eat their vegetables, their dessert is withheld. The powerful message this sends is that sweet, high carbohydrate food is the biggest reward and is associated with positive feelings connecting the parent and the child.
This connection between good actions and high carb food rewards should never be established. Early on, you should decide on other non-food rewards like spending extra time with your child, putting a quarter into a piggy bank,
or buying a present appropriate to the value of the deed. Rewards are important motivators, but food rewards are counterproductive.
If your child earns a significant amount of money from doing the right thing, let him use it any way he wants so that he feels the effort was worth his trouble. If you choose how to spend it, he may not feel the reward was his.