conuly

If I have children, I will very much try to discourage gum chewing. Part of that is that migraines run in my family and my kids would be at high risk, and excessive chewing is one of my triggers. That doesn't apply for most people, but I don't expect a child to be able to connect the chewing now with the agonizing pain later enough to stop doing it, but it's not a punishment I can prevent if chewing is a trigger for a child of mine too. Also, chewing gum is just plain bad for you. It gets the stomach ready to digest food, but then no food comes. It's not horribly bad for you, but it's not good. And I'd rather avoid gum chewing if I can. Plus, if you let kids have gum, you have to carefully monitor what they do with it to prevent them littering really obnoxiously with it.