to give my daughter chocolate?

[SpiraelingSnowflakes]

Ok, a brief bit of background first!

DD is a week shy of 6 months old. She is a bottomless pit hungry baby and enjoys 10+ long BF's per day alongside 3 healthy meals of porridge/fruit/vegetables/yoghurt/etc. Spoon fed currently, but I'm planning on doing a combo with BLW imminently.

For Christmas, we are going down to visit my parents (weather permitting). A few weeks ago my Mum suggested letting my DD have her first taste of chocolate on Christmas Day. She proposed some chocolate buttons.

I countered this with suggesting just one chocolate button, melted (and allowed to cool!) into some baby porridge. As a one-off special treat for Christmas, rather than becoming a regular meal-!

AIBU to allow chocolate at all?

Sorry notnow if I took it as sarky when it wasn't! :)

No worries

I don't see the need to give a 6 month old chocolate and already it is being talked about as a treat when food should be fuel really.

I was very strict when my were small and didn't have chocolate or sweets at all until they were about 4. They are older now and have no problem regulating their intake if given sweets or chocolate.

It's a food, just like any other. It's also one that it's best to have in moderation. One button on Xmas day sounds to me like moderation!

I gave mine chocolate (not much) whenever she wanted it, made no big deal of it. Now she is the only one who doesn't gorge herself on bowls of chocolate, will have a couple of sucks on a lolly and put it back for later, but loves nuts and cooked meat as a treat.

don't know if its what I did or her taste buds, but it goes to show all this po faced oh they don't need sweet stuff, your just teaching them etc is a load of bollocks.

teach her about different tastes, don't forbid anything and dont turn yourself into one of those PFB mums who thinks a sweetened rice cake is a risque treat.

calm down and enjoy xmas!

I don't understand the "if you don't let them have chocolate now they will gorge later" theory. After all, most of us didn't taste alcohol until we were teenagers, and we don't gorge now, do we?

But chocoalte isn't really food is it, it's simply a treat.

It is not something I would have thought about in advance - it isn't something I would plan to do at 6/7 months, but if on Christmas Day Grandma wanted to give her one I doubt it would bother me that much as she is already on a fair bit of food.

Ok, thanks all! I'll probably go ahead with giving her a small taste. I'm not planning to make chocolate a regular thing, but I don't want to ban it either and end up in a tempting 'forbidden fruit' situation. A relaxed attitude towards foods was best, I felt.

My Mum was just making a friendly suggestion with the chocolate, not insisting on it or anything. So the final decision does lie with me. :)

Those suggesting just giving her the button and not mixing it with porridge... Would that be a choking hazard for a 6 month old that's only had lumpy purees so far? Would it help or hinder if I broke the button into smaller pieces..?

I read on here somewhere that someone suggested they gave their baby a chocolate finger biscuit when they said their baby couldn't manage lumps.

A chocolate button in a hot little hand will soon be a splodgy mess, I wouldn't worry about choking

choccyp - but it would be different if at 4 years old you saw others having alcohol but realised specifically you were not allowed it. Or you had it very occasionally...and then saw others drinking it around you...

And there is some evidence to suggest teenagers who grow up with alcohol being normal, the odd glass of wine etc, do have healthier attitudes towards it.

And most 18 year olds do go out and spend a few years drinking far too much before the novelty wears off

choc button will be fine.

but take a picture as just ONE button can cause a heap of mess lol

You can't possibly choke on a chocolate button, it's liquid in no time flat.
Agree with people who say that bf babies are fed ultra sweet stuff from birth, so weaning is much too late to worry about their taste buds. My two were weaned on exactly the same principles - one is horribly obsessed with sweets and one will go around nicking the left over sprouts from Christmas dinner, so there's a limit to parental influence.

whos more annoying, OP or MSKLO

cant decide.....

Bollocks! It's Christmas. Give her sherry trifle.

IME chocolate buttons manage not to upset the gag reflex of the gaggiest child in the world. Strange that.

Both my DSs were introduced to the odd choc button when they were 6/7 months as a treat and they are now strapping healthy 9/12 years who eat a fantastic balanced diet and if they ask me for a chocolate bar they ask "can I have a treat mum?",

Its a fact of nature, if you deny someone something they will want it even more.

Of course you should go for it!

Yabu. Simply because I dont see the point in giving chocolate at 6 month. She wouldnt see it as a treat or realise she's being given in because its christmas it will be just something else she's being introduced to iyswim. Its all about weaning and introducing to a varied and healthy tastes at that age. ANd I am talking as something who has a 3 year old boy who is chocolate mad!!! Especially chocolate buttons!

I think setting binaries for "good" and "bad" food is a hiding to nothing. DS has always been allowed whatever we eat. We don't usually have pudding, but when we do, he is offered some. The exception is obviously alcohol, but other than that he can eat what we do ever since he was weaned.

His favourite foods are fruit, vegetables and cheese. He disliked chocolate until recently (he is 2). He hates cake and prefers really sharp sorbet to ice cream. So casually offering the occasional sweet item doesn't seem to have turned him into a junk food junkie.

There is research that shows kids with cystic fibrosis, who have to eat high fat diets, crave salad because it's restricted. If you want to develop a sweet tooth then banning sweets or making them heavily restricted is probably a good start.

If you eat a healthy and balanced diet, then chocolate as an occasional part of that is IMO absolutely fine. I think a relaxed and open attitude to food is the way to bring kids up to have a healthy relationship with it. I really don't think a smidgeon of chocolate at Christmas is a big deal, if you aren't a family that lives on crisps and snickers bars. In fact I think a neurotic obsession with only allowing kids "healthy" food is likely to engender cravings for the forbidden.

Should say wont realise she's being given it because its christmas

Oh sweet lord, this is serious?

YABU.
I am actually quite relaxed about food, but chocolate shouldn't be given to 6 months old babies, simply because their digestive system is not mature enough for stuff like chocolate, or salame or things that are difficult to digest.

What makes you think chocolate is difficult to digest? Good quality milk chocolate is cocoa fat, cocoa solids, milk, and sugar. Nothing indigestible at all. (Agree on sulphate preserved meats. We don't eat a lot ourselves, tasty as they are.)