To tell PIL NO SWEETS

OP it is up to youg a healthy life. and DH how you parent not grandparents. If they take offence that’s them. Let them! Most people are aware todaythat there is an obesity epidemic and lots of children with poor dental health. You are trying to instil good habits into your children and getting a sweet tooth will not serve them in having good health.

Decide what you are happy with eg one smallchoc bar once a week and communicate clearly and cheerfully that you and DH would like that for your own children.

My DD told us no sugar at all for DGS and it’s fine there are plenty of ways to make time with Dgc good.

I don’t think you are being unreasonable at all OP. I have a great number of grandchildren, and I never bought them any sweets or chocolate. Fruit, yes. Books, yes. Outings, yes.
I felt that spending time with them was a privilege, and I did my darnedest to only spoil them with time and love.

Don't send a message, if you aren't going to see them until you walk in next time, then call them and talk to them about taking the choking risk ones out of any sweet bags they are given. If she bought in a 'huge' bag of sweets, then don't you think if you ask her to change to chocolates, she'd probably walk in with a bumper bar of chocolate for them? Which would be just as bad?

I'd let her bring in the bag of sweets but take some little pots for the kids, and pre-warn them they can only choose 3/5/10 (whatever) sweets each from the big bag they are given to have before dinner, make sure you are there when they are given the bag to re-enforce what you have previously told them, then take the bag away from them.

I meant if you didn't want to have the conversation on person. Sending a message means it's hard to get the right tone.

A child going on and on about the sweets is poor behaviour I would also be putting my foot down to stop that.

Honestly I think you need to step up here and put them into the cupboard. If they complain or create a fuss then so be it. If you don't want to have the difficult conversation then this is the best approach.

Cruel as it sounds, I found the best antidote was letting the PIL see the meltdown, and in fact low key blaming them for it.

Mine didn't respond to direction, and painted me as hysterical, which I didn't have any control over.

What I did have control over, was taking things off the kids."oh no, silly granny didn't realise how dangerous those hardboiled sweets / toys with loose button batteries / chewing gum are. Let's give them back to granny for her house." Que hysterical tears from my then 1 Yr old obviously. No one likes sitting through that, especially the people causing it. Only takes 1-2 times before they learn.

I don’t know why you’re tiptoeing around the pil’s.
My dd would, quite rightly, rip into me if I walked in and handed sweets to the dgc without checking first.
I tend to take socks or a cotton handkerchief to hand over immediately and give the sweets to dd for later.
My 3 year old dgs loves a cotton handkerchief.

They've clearly got no sense of they're giving skittles to a 2 year old so you're going to have to spell it out for them.

"Hi MIL, lovely to see you at the weekend. In future if you want to buy treats for the kids, please stick with chocolate buttons. Haribo and skittles etc are not suitable for 2yo and there's a danger of choking x"

So you would rather children run the risk of choking ?

I used to have this issue and it was worsened by the fact that the GM had 2 morbidly obese adult children, both with type 2 diabetes, one of whom was my partner,a partner who died in his 50's due to heart disease and diabetes.
It's difficult to watch your children being fed blue lemonade and all the sweets and crisps they could eat in those circumstances.Nothing changed and the general attitude from everyone was that grand parents should be allowed to spoil their GC.
I think you need to make a stand on this.

YANBU. I hate all those type of hard sweets and lollipops.
Nothing wrong with a bag of magic stars or buttons.

Yabu

The sweets you describe are not suitable for such young children. They could choke on them. Ask GPs to buy some Kinder chocolate bars they are small and soft.

I’m surprised by how many people think you should just let it go. If you don’t want your children to have sweets then it should be the end of it. Just because grandparents look after your children it doesn’t mean the only way they can treat them is with sweets and chocolates. I was pretty strict with those when my children were little as they loved healthy food, they’d eat so much fruit I didn’t see the need to give them garbage when they didn’t know any different. If I’m ever a grandmother I’ll do as I’m told (within reason)because they are not my children, I don’t get to override my children’s decisions on how they parent!

I’m with you op.

There is absolutely no need to give such young children sticky sweets. Yes they will probably have them eventually but absolutely no need to encourage it.

If they must give a sugary treat then a pack of buttons or a little fairy cake would be much more suitable.

Unfortunately I had this with my in laws. My dc actually has hyper-mineralisation so I asked in laws please don’t give him sweets.

My stupid fil bought him a big bag of ‘healthy’ haribos and told me they were fine. They argued the toss with my that coke was a suitable drink for a 5 year old. I was told by Fil that I was worse for giving dc baked beans as they are full of sugar.

The final straw was when I found out Fil had been giving dc energy drinks.

I went low contact in the end because I was sick of it amongst many other things.

They are your children OP and the sweets sound dangerous and really unsuitable. I'd ask DH to send the message so it's not on you, but I'd want him to be v clear - please don't bring sweets for the children as we don't want them to eat things like that at this age. A small chocolate treat is fine.

Yeah that would make more sense to tell them not to give them straight to the kids, rather than not give them at all, ever.

Huge bag, you are fine to ask for this to stop. One or two (non choking) sweets when they visit on occasion is ok yeah? I guess even that it depends on how many times they visit. If they stay a couple times a week, no way!

Many different types of treats to buy them, not all of them edible.

@arainytrip totally agree that sweets are awful. I can’t understand posters saying it’s fine and choose which hill to die on etc. No real advice, sorry, but completely agree with you sweets are not good for lots of reasons at that age!

It definitely hurts if they’re in popper gun things! Who the hell invents these things. DD choked and it was terrifying, if you can’t get it out then there’s nothing you can do really. Not worth the risk!

OP YANBU even without the guns imo