SAMA HOOLE: Between birth and twenty, a body builds everything it will ever have. The brain triples in size in three years and is mostly fat. Nine tenths of the bone a person will own is laid down before they are twenty, and the window does not reopen.

Let kids be kids is the sentence that lets a parent off the hook at the exact moment the child cannot afford it. A friend said it to me last week, handing a four-year-old a pouch of something purple at half past three because he was whining. The whining stopped. The pouch went in the bin. Everyone relaxed. That is the deal, and it is a good one for the adult. The child is the one paying. Between birth and twenty, a body builds everything it will ever have. The brain triples in size in three years and is mostly fat. Nine tenths of the bone a person will own is laid down before they are twenty, and the window does not reopen. Every brick comes off a plate, and a four-year-old does not fill his own plate. He also does not choose what he gets used to. That is done for him, before he can read. A child who grows up on pouches, squash and cereal bars learns that food is sweet, soft, instant and arrives when he makes a noise. His tongue is calibrated to it. His afternoon is built around it. By seven it is a habit. By seventeen it is a craving. By thirty it has a prescription. Nobody kicks a food habit at thirty that was laid down at four. Ask anyone who has tried. You would never say let kids be kids about the seatbelt, the sun cream, the swimming lessons or the reading. Only about the one thing with a deadline the body never extends. Letting them be kids is giving them the egg, the butter, the mince, the milk and the lamb chop while the bones and the brain are still being poured, and letting the sugar wait at the door until the tongue is grown up enough to ignore it. The pouch at half past three was never for him. It was for you. He is the one who gets to keep it.

— Sama Hoole (@SamaHoole) November 1, 2026

Let kids be kids is the sentence that lets a parent off the hook at the exact moment the child cannot afford it. A friend said it to me last week, handing a four-year-old a pouch of something purple at half past three because he was whining. The whining stopped. The pouch went in the bin. Everyone relaxed. That is the deal, and it is a good one for the adult. The child is the one paying. Between birth and twenty, a body builds everything it will ever have. The brain triples in size in three years and is mostly fat. Nine tenths of the bone a person will own is laid down before they are twenty, and the window does not reopen. Every brick comes off a plate, and a four-year-old does not fill his own plate. He also does not choose what he gets used to. That is done for him, before he can read. A child who grows up on pouches, squash and cereal bars learns that food is sweet, soft, instant and arrives when he makes a noise. His tongue is calibrated to it. His afternoon is built around it. By seven it is a habit. By seventeen it is a craving. By thirty it has a prescription. Nobody kicks a food habit at thirty that was laid down at four. Ask anyone who has tried. You would never say let kids be kids about the seatbelt, the sun cream, the swimming lessons or the reading. Only about the one thing with a deadline the body never extends. Letting them be kids is giving them the egg, the butter, the mince, the milk and the lamb chop while the bones and the brain are still being poured, and letting the sugar wait at the door until the tongue is grown up enough to ignore it.

The pouch at half past three was never for him. It was for you. He is the one who gets to keep it.