To want my children to stop eating sweets biscuits and other rubbish!

[toddlerdays]

My children are aged 3 and 4. We eat 3 balanced meals a day, and I make sure they get their 5 portions of fruit and veg every day. I mean proper portions, not including fruit juices in this.

We have fish 4 times a week (not fish fingers!), and almost everything is home cooked from scratch. I hope this doesn't sound like a 'well done me' so far, I'm just trying to paint a picture.

Now we also have McDonalds maybe once a fortnight, and maybe once a fortnight dinner is spaghetti hoops on toast because it's been one of those days.

For snacks the kids have something about 4 o'clock, a packet of mini cheddars, couple of choc biscuits, an ice cream. They do get treats and are not deprived of sugar by any means. When they go to a party (which is almost a weekly occurance with all their nursery friends), I just let them eat biscuits and grapes if that's all they want to eat.

Why oh why do they behave as though they haven't eaten for a week when someone offers them a biscuit, sweet, chocolate or crisps? I mean they literally would finish the packet given the opportunity. And if I ever try and remove a biscuit or sweet from them the reaction is a full on melt down.

I don't get it. Other children seem happy with 1 or 2. Or they're not interested at all. My children will finish their sweets at a party then look for someone else's to eat!

I really want to change this. Do I stop giving them treats altogether so they lose the taste for it? Or carry on as I am giving them 1 treat a day, maybe 2 at the week end? I've been working on the premise that if they never have junk food they'll want it more.

And those parents with children that can say no to sweets, how do you do that!?

I don't think I could be bothered to waste so much of my time thinking about food OP. it all sounds a bit obsessive tedious worthy. We just eat reasonably well and healthy and spend our time thinking about more interesting things. If people want a biscuit they have one.

I thought children's parties are exactly when children should be allowed to eat crap whatever they want?

Do parents really obsess so much about every mouthful their child eats? How is this a good attitude to demonstrate to your children?

I'd just continue how you are and accept they will scoff sweets when given the opportunity! Sounds similar to how I was brought up (healthy balanced diet, few snacks, chocolates/sweets allowed weekend evenings only).

I've grown up with a healthy attitude to food, and a healthy bmi (same as the rest of my family). I don't worry at all what the dc eat at parties and wouldn't dream of feeding them first.

My DS is obsessed by biscuits and cake. He quite often has them as pudding, so they are not forbidden fruit, he just loves them. But so do I, so no great mystery really.

If he's at a group or somebody's house he has been known to hang around the plate like a circling seagull until it is removed. Also loves ice cream and any fruit and breadsticks. Put a plate of profiteroles in a room
And I'd probably do the same, it's whatever floats your boat- I just make sure he eats well on the whole.

I don't like him having lots of salt and junk with food colourings in. Much more of a problem than sugar and homemade stuff IMHO.

angry, why?

angry, why?
Irritated then.
Mothers who control.
Anorexia, Bullimia, excessive eating have a lot to do with a person taking back the control of their lives.
IMHO

oh fir enough (my quesyion was a huge x post btw :))
But it is our job as parents to regulate and control what our DC do and eating is part of that, handing over the reins slowly, surely?
Not sure where I stand on this btw, willing to admit I am wrong

I have a seriously fucked up relationship with food, mainly because of my mum projecting her own thoughts about food onto me - I have never known my mum not to be on the diet / fallen off a diet treadmill.

I am absolutely determined that DD will not have that relationship with food, so nothing is off limits (within reason). She is completely unlike me already - she has what she wants then stops, refuses biscuits and sweets sometimes, and is the least "greedy" amongst her friends. I never make her eat up all her meal, either.

I really hope she continues this relationship with food as she grows up, which will be difficult with the constant pressures surrounding girls and food.

There is a difference between controlling what they have and dictating that certain foods are good and others are bad and shouldn't be eaten, or only eaten as a reward though.

I control what Ds eats overall, but if he wants an ice cream then that's fine, if he wants a pear that's fine. If he wants 5 ice creams, or 5 pears that's not.

I actually wish my parents had been less laid back about food and taught me the importance of saying no even when, yes, I could cram another chocolate in.

The main thing is to eat a balanced diet yourself. Food is social and enjoyable and so it is perfectly OK to discuss it in terms of growing things, new flavours, recipes etc - but you don't want to discuss it in terms of weight and being bad etc. Of course people like treats why not? If someone gave me a rice cake and described it as a treat I would probably throw it at them! How can they appreciate good food if you expect them to eat something so tasteless for any other reason than filling them up.
I never had a problem with mine hovering around biscuits etc- they were always more interested in other things. I don't recall ever saying they can only have one biscuit- I would only ever have one so they would take it as normal I suppose.
You appear to be giving them the balanced diet- just relax about it.

For all those who are saying if you only relax they will learn to self-regulat, I think there is a small minority of children who do not learn to self-regulate naturally.

One of my brothers (but only one and there were 4 of us!) is of this kind: he will go on eating relentlessly and if someone offers him a second dinner after he's had his first he will sit down and have it.

My parents did nothing differently with him, they were always pleasantly relaxed about food, none of the rest of us are like this, he obviously needs a totally different way of dealing with food from normal people and as far as I can make out he was probably born that way. If you have one like that, then fair enough, you probably do need to actively teach them to eat (my db was overweight by his early teens and is still struggling with weight issues in his fifties which has affected his health).

But I am convinced that people like him are in a minority and for most parents it is safer to assume that their children will be of the more normal kind.

Note that in my db's case, it is not just about a balanced diet: he can manage to stay overweight on a healthy diet because of the quantities.

Ds1 used to do this at parties. I let him get on with it, he threw up a few times. He now understands that a whole packet of jelly babies is a bad idea. plus me looking me him in the eye and saying if you eat that 8th piece of cake and are sick I will have no sympathy.

I don't think he is greedy, he just has a very sweet tooth and loves all things sugar.

So my advice would be just let them get on with it they'll learn the hard way (just stand well back).

OP, this reminds me of my best friend's . She's v health conscious and never buys sweets, chocolate, biscuits etc. This means when they go to parties they go mad and stuff themselves. Last December DF decided to get them a choc advent calendar and was horrified to find her DD binging on all 24 chocs on 1st December!
My youngest tends to be a sweetaholic too if given the chance but the fact that nothing's forbidden completely means she manages to restrain herself a lot more a parties etc!

We have twins. As far as is possible we have treated them the same over food. We try to provide balanced meals and offer "treat" food roughly every other day. One twin has some of the treat but rarely finishes. The other eats as much as she can. I don't think there are fall proof methods for producing the sort of ideal relationship with food we are sold as a goal. There are somethings which are known to be more effective than others, but you seem to be following most of those. As they get older you will be able to reason and educate them more formally in how to deliberately make good choices.

Our children are the same. We don't have biscuits or sweets in the house, their great-grandfather willingly supplies them with those goodies. It doesn't bother me, they will grow up with fond memories of pigging out at his place.

I think it is just how some kids are.

To all those people who say that depriving your children of these things makes them want it more, I say it doesn't necessarily work that way. When I was a child my parents were very poor and all treat type foods like crisps, cake, biscuits etc were a rarely seen thing in our house, not even once a month, never mind once a week. I couldn't have given a monkeys at the time, ate them if they were there but didn't fall on them like a starved-thing, I never missed them and to this day can take them or leave them.

I think knowing your child and doing what you think is right is all you can do, as for whether it is the right thing to do, you will only know that with hindsight when the kids are older and able to express how the frequent/withheld treats made them want them more/less.

So relax and try not to let it bother you while you manage in the way which you see fit.

p.s

My friend as a child on the other hand, had treats regularly and always went wild for them while I looked on in bemusement - she thought I was odd - I thought she was odd (over sweets). So the give/don't give thing is not the driving force as suchprospects says.

stealth: But it is our job as parents to regulate and control what our DC do and eating is part of that, handing over the reins slowly, surely?
Yes I agree with that but there is a certain type of parent who restricts/ obsesses/ controls and projects onto their DC. Not just with food but with other things. They then wonder why their DC rebel!!
It's extreme but I have a friend who does this. Her DCs seem suffocated by it.
On the other side is a parent who gives the child free choice too early, a chocolate bar for breakfast for example.

when mine were little treats were things like dries apricots and raisins, i wanted them to be healthy and we never really buy cakes and biscuits anyway so wasn't going to start just for the boys. they never really bothered, enjoyed cakes at parties and we indulged them on hols and at xmas and stuff, grandparents over indulged them as they got older. Now both late teens they are slim, fit and hopefully healthy, both know what a healthy diet is and enjoy sweets etc in moderation, both seem to have a good attitude to food and seem to know when there bodies tell them they are overdoing it and get back to their five a day. Lucky? possibly but we did what we felt was right and never made a big fuss over food, gave them lots of different stuff when they were young and today they eat almost anything.

You fight it as long as you can.

Then they start going out on their own and they eat buckets and buckets of shite.

You just hope that the early training and messages are ingrained enough to triumph in their twenties...

It's that, or the gastric band..

The whole point is that it isn't a fight! You have to get them self regulating early on because you can't control when you are not there and if you are very controlling they are very secretive.
It is only food-we all need it and it shouldn't be an issue.

Well my 9 year old won't touch sweets, chocolate, biscuits or cake because she thinks they will make her fat (yes, I realise this is my fault)

My 5 year old will eat them but doesn't stay still long enough to eat much of anything. Nor does she seem to like very many foods.

I'd quite like to have to stop them eating too much junk! You sound like you have a wonderful balance in your family.

And I love the rice cakes for the treat jar comment!