How do you balance sweets at home and whilst out, for children?

[Nosweetie]

How do you raise children to have a healthy relationship with sweets? How do you find balance with (what seems to me like) an endless supply of sweets from children's parties, other special occasions (that seem to happen quite frequently!), etc?

I'm a nurse and do worry about the prevalence of sugar in absolutely everything these days. But, I also have zero interest in sweets (I'm much more likely to eat an entire packet of crisps in one go, whilst a chocolate bar will sit in my cupboard for months) so I don't really keep them in our home. However, whenever we're out the children are often quite happy to have sweets. We're just back from holiday and almost every day was an ice cream, a sweet waffle for lunch, etc.

I don't want them to think it's punishment that they don't get sweets at home (they seem to get more than enough when we're out), but sometimes the amount of sweets coming in feels excessive. How do you find balance? I currently try to limit it to 1-2 sweets on a particular occasion. But DH believes if the children get a party bag filled with smarties and Haribo, they should be able to eat it all in one go. Am I being too strict or setting them up for disordered eating?

Children are 4 and 7, both physically active and a healthy weight, if it matters.

Mine have something sweet every day. It doesn't concern me at all and I find the attitudes on here really weird to be honest.

When they get them let them eat them if they want

carry on not buying stuff
how many parties are they going to?!

most people eat a whole bag of crisps on one go - that’s such an off thing to say

Its better to have sugar in one go than to have 1 or 2 sweets every day.
We try to keep sweets for 1 weekly, but then they can eat the whole packet.

When our DC were children we did Sweet Sunday & Wicked Wednesday where they got to go to the shop & choose a sweet.
They did still occasionally get treats on other days, especially in the holidays but this was a good way of controlling sweets if we thought it was getting out of hand.
They are adults now & don't actually eat many sweet things, I wish I could say the same about me 😂

I make ice lollys out of literally just yoghurt or mash bababa so that’s his treat at home

Better for teeth yes but not better for body

I feel the same OP. I don’t keep sweets at home. My husband is more okay with it and he would have our children eating them every day (age 1, 3, 5). He’s also shite at brushing their teeth.

when we get them from parties they get to eat one eg packet of small haribo. The rest go in the cupboard and rationed out. Me and husband both ‘tax’ the cupboard and eat the worst offenders and sometimes throw the boiled sweet lollies away. Same with halloweeen. We ate about a third of our 5 year olds sweets. He got to eat all the chocolate hit some maowams went

My children are the same age as yours. I don’t really feel like we have an endless supply of sweets from parties. But I generally let them eat the stuff from their party bags - I don’t allow choking hazard lollies for my 4 year old though.

But I don’t buy sweets for home (are we using the word sweets to mean like sweeties, or to mean any kind of sweet food or dessert?). It’s not “banned” as a punishment, but I don’t eat sweeties and they’re expensive crap so I just don’t buy them. We bake a lot so I’m not particularly restrictive about sweet food. Although I don’t allow them to eat as much as they like, so according to some on MN I’m setting them up for food issues!

Like a PP I find your comment about eating a packet of crisps “in one go” oddly worded. Do you view that as particularly excessive of you?

I don’t have high sugar stuff at home and try my best to avoid it when out and it’s just us - but then if we’re with friends who are having an ice cream/party bags/visit my grandma who loves to treat them etc I pretty much allow them to have whatever

We keep it simple, if you want a pudding/dessert after a meal that’s fine, but it’s either fruit or yoghurt. One day at the weekend we do a “real” pudding, think ice cream sundae, cake etc.

I don’t buy tonnes of snacks for the house, that really helps, but we keep the fruit bowl stocked, veggies & cheese prepped in the fridge and some “healthy ish” yoghurts/bars.

If they’re at a friends party they can go wild & we just suffer the consequence.

Out and about it really depends, soft plays, zoo, beaches, the cinema they can have an ice cream/treat.

My children are a similar age. We don't really ever buy sweets, or take the kids to shops so sweets have been a real rarity in our house. However since last autumn there's been a steady trickle due to Halloween, Christmas, parties, school discos etc. Decided to give them a 'jar' each and let them police their own consumption and have been amazed at the restraint tbh. They last aaaaaaages and they like to share them with friends when we have guests.

Wish they were as self policing with screen time. But then I'm a lot stricter with that so perhaps there's something in this forbidden fruit lark....

We just try not to make it systematic. He has sweets and treats without rhyme or reason, occasionally, and loves his fruit, so grapes are just as much of a treat as chocolate.

The only thing that is strictly rationed is prunes/apricots because otherwise all his food goes through him, and he was begging me for a second prune yesterday 😂

It mildly irks me that my ILs always gives him biscuits and chocolate milk. My parents give him nothing of the sort, but he loves them just as much! If I send out a snack bag with MIL the fruit always comes back and things like cake bars are always given first.

We don’t really track it or monitor it, we just go with the flow and it evens out. Having sweets regularly means he isn’t obsessed like a lot of children I know who are heavily restricted. They’re part of a balanced diet.

He has a dessert after dinner every night but sometimes it’s a lolly or a cake and sometimes it’s a yoghurt or fruit. We don’t really give him any other treats (savoury or sweet) at home. If he gets a pack from school or a party, he has one (or a few, depending on what they are) a day until they’re gone. At a party, he can eat whatever he likes. On a day out, we’ll probably get him an ice cream in summer.

My 5 and 3 year olds have a sweet pot each. They put all their sweets in their respective pot and occasionally will get to chose something from there as a treat. It is essentially a large jar each (think homepride size) because that is what we had kicking about when I started it. They've only just finished their Halloween sweets! They still have Christmas and Easter to start. Any party bag sweets they put away too. I think they like checking how empty/full their pots are as I don't even have to ask them, they ask to put them in their pots! We generally choose 1 item when we watch a film maybe once or couple of times a month. The only things they receive that don't get put in their pots are lollipops or hard sweets, because I don't let them eat them full stop.

Their sweet pots are out of reach but they never actually ask for anything unless we're watching a film.

Surely she means a big bag of crisps not a single serving pack?!

anyway my rules are sweets from party bags etc are fair game to eat right away. If lying around for days, they go in the kids’ individual sweet buckets, which are Halloween buckets. The sweet buckets come out after swimming for weekly ration of sweets (three items unlesss large). on Halloween itself they can have what they like. Last year DS ate too much, was sick, and had little choice in his sweet buckets thereafter (I did too it up so he had something for swimming day!). Maybe he will learn, maybe not.

my sister and I as kids were very restricted on sweets and chocolate. Sister went mad for it as soon as she was at secondary school unsupervised. I am still not interested in sweets but love a whole bag of crisps :-) which we were allowed twice a days as kids. I conclude parental control of these foods is not as important in the long run as a person’s actual tastes. I’m not too fat, just could do with losing 5kg like most of us.

My daughter chooses 5 items on a Saturday e.g. mini bag of Haribo, handful of chocolate buttons, an ice cream, and puts them in a box for the week (fridge/freezer items represented by a token). She can then choose when to have them with meals during the week (usually she has them straight away rather than spacing them out). When she's run out then it's fruit if she wants a pudding.

If we go to a party we generally let her have whatever at the party and something out of the party bag then anything else goes in the stash for her to choose for the box. On holiday we don't do the box and she's allowed ice creams etc. within reason.

This approach might not work for all children but DD benefits from the certainty of having a set routine with the box most of the time and understands that extras are usually for parties and holidays.

This

I give my nephew (8) sweets (Nerds usually) and if they’re a bigger pack his dad takes them off him and doles them out at treat time. Then he’s not deprived of them. I did give them a pack of Tangtastics that a colleague of mine gave me and I didn’t want and similar, goes into treat cupboard.

Sweet stuff like ice creams they have their own home made with cornets and also have it with fruit too. Usually once a day. In fact the other day nephew was out with them at park cafe, was offered two treats by mum and he (nephew) wanted both but his mum said no only one, nephew refused that so had no treat!

We just didn't have them at home, and didn't make any fuss about them out of the home.

Nephew who’s 2.5 doesn’t get sweets but gets occasional chocolate and ice cream but he usually only eats half the ice cream.

My parents rationed sweets, so of course as soon as I was old enough off I went with my pocket money and spent it all on sweets. I didn’t want that to happen to our DCs. So we didn’t buy sweets ourselves apart from for Christmas stockings, Easter etc or the occasional pack on days out, but didn’t make any attempt to ration them, call them treats or restrict them in any way otherwise. If there were a lot given eg for a birthday they’d get put in a cupboard and eaten over the coming days, never had any issues of them finding them and eating them all at once. Anything they were given at parties they could do what they liked with, eat them or save them for another day.

Pudding has always been fruit or yogurt or both, maybe ice-cream, then a traditional pudding maybe about once a month but again just randomly not as a special treat. They are adults now and don’t eat sweets or sweet things to excess, healthy weight, healthy teeth etc.

I go with the flow. Holidays are more relaxed though. I have the mini bags of biscuits/ sweets to dole out as required. If they're finished, there's no more until we next shop.

If I say 'no', I say when. E.g. 'when we get back from the park'.

I don't make an issue of any food- my youngest took a cucumber out the fridge the other day and ate most of it. 🤣🤣 It was next to the sweets.

I struggle with this. I know I should probably try and be more relaxed as I don’t want to create issues around food, but I really struggle to let them eat crap.

Mine are quite young (5, 3 and 1). I would never give them sweets or biscuits or similar at home. Eldest had had chocolate and some sweets at birthday parties. I’m happy to let them have home baked goods occasionally, or a desert if we go out for a meal, or an ice cream for the eldest on a hot day. But not regularly.

I take care not to talk about treats or forbidden foods. They are just used to having fruit or nuts or natural yoghurt at home so I don’t think it would occur to them to ask for sweets. Yet!

@Toenailedit we were a bit like you, DC never had any sweets until after age two. Then very slowly introduced an ice cream in a hot summer day, a piece of cake at a birthday party, or something homemade on a special occasion (I actually quite love to bake!)

but I find that once they are school age, it’s a different picture, there are constantly sweets from all directions it seems (end of year party, birthdays, holidays, etc) and they’ve now become aware of sweets and are quite keen on them!

We also do yoghurt (plain or fruit) or fruit for pudding. They both enjoy fruits and fresh veg and get good utritions, I think.

My kids are allowed to eat all the sweets and cake in the party bag if they want in one go. Also have the odd film night with sweets and popcorn, and have a pudding each night if they eat their dinner. Usually yoghurt.

They can have 1 or two sweet treats a day like pudding at school and a biscuit or small packet of sweets.

Both are very active, have great teeth and eat a wide range of food. They also have an off switch so stop when they’re full.

Since sweets aren’t a novelty I can trust them ….they never help themselves without asking. I’ve had restrictive friends who rarely let their kids eat sweets. They are the ones with sneaky kids who stuff their faces with sweets at every opportunity when the parents aren’t looking!!