because judging by the reaction of the old 'dears' around me, I fear that maybe I am ...

[plonker]

Ok, so let me set the scene

Me and the 3 dc shopping in ...no, I'm not telling you where in case it clouds judgement

We are at the end of the 'big' shop and have loaded the shopping on the belt. Dd's have some sweeties (unopened btw, just clarifying) and have sat down on the seats opposite the till whilst I load the shopping.

Dd2 (7yo) and dd3 (3yo) have an, ahem, altercation, resulting in my angelic 3yo pinching her sister whilst mt equally angelic 7yo boots her in the shins in retaliation. Juuuust your typical shopping trip

Anyway, I took the sweets straight off the girls (obviously) whilst they protested their innocence. They were told quite clearly that fighting children do not deserve treats. The children apologised after a few minutes and apologised to each other giving each other a hug. All going well, yes?

So (and here is the part where I think I must have committed some huge faux pas), I accepted the girls' apologies and gave them back their sweets

Dear me, the tutting that ensued from an elderly couple behind me because that "never happened in their day ...naughty children shouldn't get rewards ..."

Was it really so bad to give the girls the sweets?

Was I unreasonable?

Go on, give it to me, I can take it

I wouldn't have given them their sweets back until considerably later. Definitely not just because they apologised (although that would be they would get them back earlier).

As for the tutting, it is just plain rude. I would have been very irritated by that!

lolol @ proper shit your luck with me

Sadly there does seem to be a large number of elderly people who are either just very rude or think that their age allows them to be rude with impunity.
I have had just this conversation with a friend already today although not involving supermarkets.
Regardless of whether the OP is U or not its very rude to make comments that people can hear. I make all sorts of judgements in the supermarket as I'm sure lots of do but I've only twice actually said something out loud and each time it was to the person rather than about them.
YANBU

I am heading quickly towards 'elderly'... If I am shopping with either dh or one of my teenagers and we witness a tantrum or some other 'outrage' my first response id 'Thank God that isn't my child'. Supermarket scenes are really difficult; I'd have been likely to hand over the sweets to try and make everyone happy again. An apology sounds lovely, well done on that.

Not commenting on whether sweets should have been given back - there are obv. pros and cons and you made the decision you thought best. But, as someone older than most MNs, I'd guess, (though, I hope, not 'elderly'), was disgusted to read of the rudeness of the couple behind you who, though the incident hadn't affected them, thought it was OK to interfere. Age is no excuse for rudeness. If they'd commented like that to me, would have found it very hard not to be rude myself and tell them where to go.

"Oh why do people have to go on about old people doing stuff like this? The age of the rude person is completely irrelevant!"

Seeker - I mentioned the 'old' couple because of their "in my day" comment. So yes, their age was relevant.

at "proper shit your luck with me"

Oh I so wish I'd have said that!!!!

I really don't understand the argument that there is no bad food, that chocolate and broccoli are the same. If I believed that, I would eat chocolate all the time and not bother to cook. I would give my dcs all the juice and chips and sweets they demand from me and make my life a lot easier. And the dcs would happily eat cake all day long and nothing else because, unlike me, they don't understand the difference between cake and a proper meal.

I honestly don't think I use food to reward myself but I do use it to reward ds - in fact the only way to make him poo on the toilet is to bribe him with a marshmallow. It's not really how I want to parent but it works.

As for the OP, I probably wouldn't have given the sweets, but don't think it's so terrible to have given them. Certainly not worth fussing about.

I didn't say that chocolate and broccoli were the same. I said that you no more "deserve" chocolate than you "deserve" broccoli. With this philosophy, food is not earned or deserved, so much as something that is provided as fuel.

Okay, so anyone with half an ounce of nutritional knowledge knows that they are not the same in terms of nutrition, and in time children will learn this too. In the meantime they wont care, and that is why it is up to us as parents to provide food to them in the quantities and amounts and ratios and choices that we deem appropriate.

But this has no bearing on reward or punishment either. It is a completely separate thing. How they behave before, during or after meals does not change what they get given. This does not mean that they have any more chocolate than any other children - in fact as a general observation, I suspect my children probably have less. (This goes for sweets, McDonalds, juice, whatever you consider "treat" food is as well)

Broccoli will never be the same as chocolate either nutritionally, or in taste. But as far as my kids are concerned, its all food, it comes from the fridge/cupboard, is lovingly prepared by me, and nothing they do or dont do effects whether they get it or not and what it is that they have.

Also to add, it doesn't mean they get it just because they have requested it or asked for it either.

It is up to me whether they can have it or not. But if I turn down a request for chocolate, its never because "you were naughty before" or "if you pick your toys up" and if I grant a request for chocolate, its never "because you were so nice to Grandma" or "because you've had a bad day at school and it will make you feel better".

Its either a "yes" or a "no, sorry"

But how do you explain to your children that they can't have another piece of choc? I don't mean to be rude, I just don't quite understand the reasoning. For me, I won't eat as much as want because I don't want to put on weight. I won't let the kids eat as much as they want because it means they won't eat the 'good' food I want them to eat.

x-post. Actually I won't refuse chocolate or sweets on those ground either (only marshmallows, which are specifically to discourage pooey pants). But I will say, 'it is not good for you to eat too much'.

If my children wanted to eat more chocolate than I had served out for them, I might say "no, not now, we'll save the rest for another day" or "maybe we'll have some more tomorrow". If its a snack, I might say "we have to save our tummy rumbles for dinner and it will use up too many tummy rumbles"

Its not that I will never teach them the differences in the nutritional benefits of each - but at this stage they are a little to young to get bogged down in that (or care, probably!) They tend to learn a bit at school these days anyway, having seen threads from others about how the school is choosing to teach what is "good" and "bad" etc this does sometimes make me a bit but it depends how they go about it really.

Its more about it not being linked to actual behaviour. You wouldn't give them a piece of broccoli and apple and say "I'm giving this to you because you were a precocious little madam at the playpark before and this is your punishment" - its the same kind of thing, but the other end of the spectrum.

Its easy to do - I see it so much - a child asks for some sweets or chocolate, the parent can see how desperate they are for it, so thinks, what's in it for me? "Okay, but only if you pick your toys up" and then it becomes all tangled up and linked into behaviours and earning it and points. And its so far removed from apples and broccoli because these foods never seem to get all linked up in behaviours.

You are probably not going to believe me when I say that when I go to a friends house and there are cakes and crisps on the table and a fruit bowl, my children are just as likely to choose a piece of fruit as they are a biscuit or a cake. But I kid you not.

Not everyone agrees with or chooses this approach - and that's fine. Its up to the individual parent how they present food in the house both nutritionally, emotionally, and behaviourally (if applicable)

Bear in mind also I dont have an endless supply of the stuff in the house anyway. So I might buy a couple of packets of treat sized buttons, or a little bag of those caramel nibble things (god they are nice)

So if we eat them and they are finished, that's that - sorry, they are all gone but they were yummy weren't they?

The other day I'd made a big spanish omlette thing for our dinner (just the kids and me, DH was working) and I served it out and we ate it and DS particularly enjoyed it and asked for more. Having eaten mine, I didnt' actually have any more so I said the same as I would for any other food - sorry, none left, we ate it all, but that was yummy, wasn't it?

Same reaction for lean protein packed with veg as an empty packet of chocolate buttons.

Food = fuel

Tutting is for cunts.

Sloany - how old are your kids? What do you say to them if they ask for something like cake for lunch (not with or after lunch) but for lunch. I guess what I am getting at is how do you avoid some foods being 'a treat/special/occasional' and being 'healthy' etc (assuming they know you do have cake).

Sweets were irrelevant. They stopped and said sorry. That was enough. For many of the older generation child-rearing was all about teaching self-denial and misery

I can see what you mean Sloany and I agree. My DCs are a bit old now to be asking for cake for lunch but if they had I would have explained that different foods are eaten in different circumstances and at different meals. You can do that easily without getting into a good/bad/reward food culture.

Its a bit of a pet peeve of mine that children are given the idea that vegetables are awful and have to be eaten as some kind of punishment - I just don't get it.

Orm - tell me again when it is your are going to your parents??

(Not a reflection on Orms post btw nor her parents parenting!!)

If they asked for cake for lunch, well it depends on a few factors. If I didn't have any cake, I'd say, sorry, I dont have any, we are having sandwiches. If I had a stonking great big cake sitting there winking at them, I'd say - yes - we are going to have some cake after our sandwiches. I'm pretty savvy like that though because I wouldn't have it sitting there on display necessarily if I wanted them to eat a "proper" lunch first - unless it was someone's birthday or something, in which case I'd be pretty relaxed about things anyway.

Or - shock horror - if they'd had fruit and yogurt for breakfast, and the last week or more had gone by with them eating good amounts of fresh, healthy food, I might just cut them a slice of cake without making a big deal out of it or attaching any conditions to it, and I'd also perhaps prepare some strawberries, put them on a bowl in the middle of the table, and some cubes of cheese, and some apple slices, and some almonds, etc. So yes, they'd eat their cake, but they'd also eat a bit of everything else, and if you analysed the contents of their stomachs afterwards, it wouldn't look much different to a child who had been "made" to eat a "proper" lunch first and then allowed cake - except they may have consumed more food and gotten fuller, depending how much they were incentivised to eat before they were allowed the cake.

And then dinner would not involve any cake.

Over the course of the day and the week, the cake becomes almost insignificant and doesn't particualrly stand out in their minds because there were no conditions attached, no emotions intertwined, etc.

As children get older they might say "why can't we have cake for lunch every day" or "what happens if you eat cake all the time" or "my friend Billy eats cakes all the time and he is really fat, is this why" and that's a great time to discuss how some foods have more energy than they have nutrition and dont make you feel full all that long and how this can happen. I wouldn't intentionally shield them from nutritional facts about foods if they come up naturally and spontaneously, and if it does come up I probably wouldn't at this stage use words like "junk" or "rubbish" or even "unhealthy" necessarily because the focus regardless of age for me will always be enjoying things in moderation as part of an otherwise balanced diet.

Rather than never mentioning the value of certain foods, nutrition, etc its more a case of not making it too much of a focus in day to day decisions, which they dont have to make anyway. It will come up more if they start to question or challenge my decisions and that's fine, that's the right time to learn about nutrition. But its never about actual behaviour.

Because allowing chocolate because you've been good is nothing to do with nutrition either. In fact, you could argue a slight conflict between telling a child chocolate is "not healthy" yet giving it when you've been "a good girl" ...

I wish I hadn't read that because I now want cake and I haven't got a cake .

Ohhhh chipping, beleive me it's going to be hard. Very hard. Lots of gritting of teeth I think.

stleger

Sloany (do tell me when you have really had enough of this conversation!!) How old are your children? What do you say to them when they say, but 'I don't want sandwiches first, I just want cake' (and you don't want them to just have cake either - you want them to eat something more nutricious). As they get older how do you stop them just wanting the stuff that is 'nice'? I know what you said about them often choosing fruit if it's there, but it's not always like that...

I've gone completely off of the food for reward discusion, as I already try really, really, really hard not to do that.

What I struggle more with is the 'No, you can't have pudding/cake/sweets until you have eaten some 'real' food'.

I wouldn't have returned the sweets, having told them that they were being removed for fighting.

Children are expert at flaring up and then apologising very quickly, and need to learn that just saying sorry doesn't 'cancel out' the wrongdoing.

But I agree the old couple were very rude.