When Julia was a toddler, she ate everything I put in front of her without question. Now that she’s approaching eight, she questions – a lot. Every single day. Some days, every single hour (or maybe it just feels that way).

“Julia the big kid” is a lot more cognizant of what everyone around her eats, and she is also acutely aware of those situations in which she finds herself deprived of a treat.

Now, it’s not like Julia eats only dandelion greens for breakfast, lunch and dinner. There are plenty of treats in my child’s life, but those treats are “clean,” not full of food dyes or corn syrup or artificial chemicals designed to keep them edible for centuries to come.

I walk through my local natural grocer and am amazed at how I can find a healthier version of almost every conventional product in conventional grocery stores. Why would I feed her sugary Fruit Loops loaded with food dyes and BHT (a substance that was originally manufactured as a rubber hardener) when I can give her organic Fruitful-O’s that have 20% less sugar and are colored naturally with things like elderberry juice?

I can even find all natural corn dogs – a rare treat for Julia – so that after a day of “no, no, no” at the annual county fair, it’s nice to come home and tell her, “yes, yes, yes.” Biggest surprise yet: organic cotton candy in a bag on the shelf at my local Whole Foods. I was a superhero that day! For once, I didn’t care as much about the sugar content as I did about the smile that stretched across my child’s face from ear to ear.

It can’t be easy for our organic kiddos to see other kids drinking neon beverages and eating rainbows of gummy bears without wanting some themselves. It’s only natural. Unfortunately, the bad stuff is anything but natural, and it should have no place in anyone’s diet.

Feeding your child right is all about balance. Not just balancing fruits and veggies, proteins and starches. Balancing the no’s with the yes’s so that your child doesn’t feel deprived. I won’t stop at Smoothie King on the way home from school, but I will make Julia a healthy, delicious smoothie that she loves equally as much. Even better when we have leftover smoothie we can turn into healthy popsicles. Instead of buying pizza out, we have pizza night at home (and the mess and memories that go with it).

Julia is old enough to understand why we feed her the way that we do; she is also mature enough to have a strong opinion on the matter. But for the most part, she gets it. She understands the correlation between what she eats and the state of her health. During cold/flu season last year when her friends were sniffling and sneezing and missing school, Julia commented that she didn’t get sick once.

For organic parents, balance is the key to having a healthy, organic child who is also emotionally and mentally healthy. You’ve got to balance “no” with “yes”, while always educating your child to the reasons behind your decision. They may not like it, but they will respect you for it.

And then there are the victories, those little moments when you know that your efforts have paid off. Recently, while eating a huge bowl of freshly baked kale chips that she helped make, Julia exclaimed, “This is better than candy!”

In this balancing act, that statement definitely tipped the scales.