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.

Well, yes, and we kind of thought we’d got away with not taking them to fast food joints through primary school age thinking they wouldn’t get in the habit (we didn’t ban them, just didn’t go there, didn’t mention them, there aren’t any in our town). Till a very indignant year 5 DD said one day “how come I’ve never been to McDonald's, everyone else goes all the time” and that was that. But again, as adults, they don’t go there often and when they do they eat sensible amounts of the food less than me.

Mine are 14/17. I just never bought any. They ate what they got from patties / Halloween etc but that was it.
neither bother at all now

If they grow up thinking that a few sweets now and then are a pleasant but trivial part of everyday life, they are far less likely to gorge themselves silly the minute they get their hands on them.

Bit like introducing alcohol to teenagers really.😂

Wow. Party time. 🎉

I took it to mean a sharer/family bag of crisps

We have loads given to us, we had to limit it to one sweet thing a day because mine really doesn’t have an off switch. We are out a lot so sometimes thats a small scoop of ice cream or if it’s a dessert we usually share one.

Just let them eat them in one go then they’re all gone 🤷‍♀️

We don't buy them, but they have a pot each left from events, birthdays etc. They have them occasionally, sometimes once a week, sometimes they might go for a month or two without them, as they forget to ask - I don't think they're actually that bothered about them.

Our main rule is that they eat them at meal times, which our dentist has always been very clear about. We'll try and get them to eat a carrot or something similarly crunchy afterwards as they get so stuck in the teeth (same with raisins, crackers, breadsticks etc)

It's the constant grazing, one here and there, a breadstick, half an hour later some raisins, 45 mins later a rice cake etc etc which is the main cause of the dental problems they see. The teeth don't have a chance to recover.