To think banning a kid from having ANY sweets at all ever by the age of five

Calorie dense options are preferred the world over by all humans.

No one is genetically predisposed to crave salad. We crave things that give us energy, ie fat and sugar.

Sweets is another word for desserts / pudding.

We didn’t have it in the house but would happily let them have sweets as a treat at grandparents or parties etc. You’re asking for trouble if it becomes a forbidden fruit.

My kids are older now but for a long time I didn’t buy crisps or biscuits because when I’m tired or in a rush that was my go to! I decided not having them in the house would help me. Sadly that meant my children were embarrassingly obsessed with them when they did have access at parties or friends houses. They’ve grown out of that behaviour and I’ve learnt to use my grown up self control 🤣

I don’t think banning sweets completely helps: in fact, it makes kids more obsessed with them. I have a friend who does this, and her 4 year old goes absolutely wild whenever they see sweets.

For me, the issue isn’t sweets themselves, it’s the ultra-processed stuff. Those shop bought chocolates, cakes, and lollies are packed with sugar, artificial colors, seed oils, and other additives that make kids react like it’s a drug.

That’s why I focused on homemade. Until my daughter was 2, dessert was just fruit or plain yogurt. If I baked, it was without sugar; sometimes adding a little honey after she turned 1. She had her first store bought chocolate at 3, but by then she was already used to homemade ice cream, cookies, and cakes. She likes chocolate, but doesn’t go crazy for it. At kids’ parties, she won’t even touch the shop bought sweets and cakes, saying they taste “yucky.”

It’s about balance. She can have a little bit of shop chocolate once a week (a small piece, not a big bar), but most of the time her desserts are still fruit or homemade treats. She’s grown up with real food, so even now she would choose fruit over chocolate.

Huge mistake! We did this with our first. Of course, as soon as she discovered seeeties, she was hooked. Far more relaxed with our second, 9 years later. Even as a tot, he could eat a bit of chocolate and say “I’ve had enough now”.
Don’t ban foods.

Cake and ice cream are not sweets. They are sweet things, but they are not sweets and they are not usually eaten in the same way as sweets. You can have them for pudding as part of a balanced meal, it's not airways just snacking for snacking's sake.

I would classify chocolate as sweets, for the same reason.

I don't think it would be unreasonable not to have sweets/chocolate at home but I wouldn't be too draconian about not allowing them when someone else is giving them out (other than strangers of course). No-one wants to be the one with the weird overprotective parents.

I think never buying them is fine and only having sugar if at a party, or the ridiculous amount you get from school. Don't make a thing of it.

We avoided all cereal with sugar in, and never bought sweets, ice cream or chocolates as a rule.

As they got older it was impossible to police. One of them has a sweet tooth but the other two would choose savoury over sweet everytime.

I think the issue is is if you bang on about it and be weird if they have sugar at parties etc.

Sadly lots of their friends had terrible diets as small kids and are now voverweight teens/young adults.

I'm happy with our decison but think if we were militant about it, it would have been an issue.

Yes I have seen this twice with people close to me. The kids binge on sugar when they get the opportunity and their eating becomes quite disordered. One became anorexic.

My DF was a dentist and brought me up eating a healthy diet. Sweets weren’t banned but also weren’t encouraged. unnecessary use of sugar such as in hot drinks or on cereals never happened. To this day I can’t understand how people can drink sweet tea or put sugar on cornflakes. It tastes awful.

I bring my DS up using a similar approach to sugar. Nothing is explicitly banned but also no sugar is unnecessarily introduced to his diet. He’ll eat a bit of chocolate every now and then but rarely asks for it. He does like a bit of cake but never eats anything like Haribos when they are offered at parties he just leaves them.

In my experience it’s relatively easy to develop good lifelong habits with sugar. Like any addictive product it’s easy to resist if you’re not addicted.

Spice is another word for sweets, used in parts of Yorkshire. Spegs is another one.

A friend wouldn't even let her kids have fruit as she deemed it too sugary. When the poor girl was staying at her aunts house she got up in the night and absolutely guzzled the entire fruit bowl and made herself quite sick.

There is also a technique to get children to eat healthily from the start. You positively affirm the healthy choice within earshot, for example “ DS loves broccoli” and negatively affirm the foods you want to restrict. So if someone offers them biscuits or cake you just say “Oh he doesn’t like cakes or biscuits”, from a very early stage children take cues from you as to what is safe to eat and what is not, if they’ve never had a biscuit they have no idea if they like them so tend to go with the flow. Any new food you introduce you can affirm and they will eventually try it. You have to remember that they often take cues visually so if it’s something you don’t like you often pull a face while feeding them.

As a dentist I didn’t encourage DS to eat refined carbs, sweets, biscuits or cakes, when he was young. We didn’t have a lot as children and didn’t end up with any undesirable habits. As a result DS hasn’t got a sweet tooth, rarely eats sugar heavy foods preferring savoury foods and prefers white meat. He eats chocolate occasionally, although when he was going through main growth spurt he could demolish a large bar of cadburys dairy mild in under a minute. I think it was the instant carb hit rather than it being chocolate though. I can’t remember the last time he ate chocolate since he hit adult size, he’s now 20 so has a protein based diet. He gets his carbs from beer like most 20 yr olds.
I wasn’t overly prescriptive about his diet when he was young. I just didn’t fill the cupboards with snacks. I don’t think it’s about banning certain foods but more likely that you don’t develop an addiction if you don’t use them as a diet staple.

Unusual to buy only one? They normally come in packs. And relative to vegetables expensive. That 49p * 5 = £2.45 - that is carrots/cabbage/perhaps another veg for the week. So relatively expensive. And wrapped biscuits/ sweets even more. I knew my in laws were on a tight budget. We treated them when we could, but let them treat the GDC when they felt able to do so. Sweet goods are a luxury for many.

No, I mean chocolate and sweets. That’s what this thread is about, no? I’m talking about the 80s and that’s what both my Dad and my Grandparents called chocolate and sweets. Both from the East Ridings of Yorkshire.

Yes I totally agree. We’re not big on sweets, never banned them but never bought much either. To this day my daughter does not care about chocolate or pure sugar sweets. And she doesn’t like soda. We have a huge halloween celebration in our neighborhood and she never gets through her candy, says she ‘doesn’t care’ about it, she just likes dressing up. I do think when parents make a big deal about certain foods, they become a big deal.

Do you mean until the age of five?

Haha when my DS was 2 he was at a birthday party and he got some haribo and said 'what's this?' and I said 'oh those are just yucky sweeties' and he was already in the fussy toddler stage of rejecting the unfamiliar so he didn't want them. He's now four and he still calls them yucky sweeties, which is ace but means I can't bloody well get him to eat the multivitamin gummy things.

What are they called?

well, yes, but I wasn't thinking of allergies. There are disorders of sugar metabolism that need very careful control. My cousins son died of one of these, after eating not enough sugar, which sounds like the opposite! But the dead child's siblings have sugar in a very controlled fashion, measured and timed very exactly, and could never eat any sweets ever.

Oh and grandparents wouldn’t give sweets. They are the same as us that we just wouldn’t have them around in the house and they wouldn’t buy them for him.

So far parties haven’t really had any sweets. Just party food and cake I guess for the sweet treat. He’s never had any sweets from nursery apart from that one time when a child was leaving and they brought haribo in for everyone. I’m not anti all sweets - happy for him to have the haribo and not be left out but just hardly ever really had them given to him so far.
Can definetly see as he gets older he will get them more at parties etc which is totally fine. But we still probably won’t have them at home or buy them regularly for him I don’t think.

Well obviously if someone has an allergy but in general their isn't such thing as bad food and banned food. Moderation everytime