To think party mum should have checked before giving out inappropriate prizes

[SoonToBeSix]

Genuinely don't know if I am being unreasonable. I was at a birthday party today with three year old ds and he won musical bumps. He was swiftly handed a packet of haribo . I tried to encourage him to " save" them for later ie I would put them in by bag and through them away but he was so upset I let him have them.
I do not give my dc sweets ever with the exception of a small amount of chocolate at Easter from well meaning relatives. Most eggs get given away.
I really feel she should have checked first before handing them out.

Wow. Actually I think it's better to give children sweets as a treat so they develop a healthy relationship with all food before they get old enough to realise what they have been missing and binge on them.
Anyway a little bag of sweets can bring so much pleasure, my 2 year old loves going to our local shop with me and choosing himself 10p of penny sweets.

Yabu. Please don't be "that" parent, it's hard enough to organise a kids party without having to cater to ridiculous fussiness.

If he was diabetic I could perhaps understand your frustration a tiny bit, but unfortunately you would have to get used to bringing an alternative with you to such situations, and negotiating saying "only a few for now" with your lo. It's perhaps a bit unfair yes, but this is how kids parties have been for years and I can't see that changing any time soon.

This is perfect fodder for the 'Sanctimomy' Facebook group. Priceless

I think you should have approached the Mother and said your child isn't allowed sweets, rather than expect her to check with you. I personally wouldn't give out bags of sweets at a party of three year olds, I would give books or something like that.

I can understand why you wouldn't want your child to have sweets. I don't think you are being unreasonable, but I do think if you are "the odd one out", you should approach other people. It's clear from other Mum's on the thread the Mother at the party may not have even thought to ask if sweets are okay.

A friend of mine whose only ds is now in his 20s was like OP when he was little.
He wasn't allowed any sweets, chocolate, unhealthy food of any kind (even as a treat). She was extremely controlling about what he ate and managed to keep it up until he went to secondary school, by which time sweets and sugar were like some kind of holy grail, and he would sneak around, and lie to her about what he was eating.

Now at 25, he has an appalling diet of mainly sweets, chocolate and take aways.
His mum admits the level of control she exercised over his diet is probably contributory to his poor choices now and would do things differently if she could do it again. Basically she would allow sweets etc so her ds didn't see them as this holy grail of amazing forbidden stuff.

I adopt the same approach to alcohol. My dd1 (21) has been allowed small amounts of alcohol at home since her mid teens. She knows her limits and what she likes. She has friends that have literally gone wild since going to uni because their parents are no longer micromanaging their diets. (inc one friend who had her stomach pumped at A&E- this was the girl who had the humiliation of her mother walking back into a party she had just dropped her dd off at, and pulling her 17 year old dd out in front of everyone, because she had seen a six pack of lager going in. This was a 6th form party in a private house- all the kids were 17 or 18. )

It's a standard party thing. The odd sweet won't hurt him. I eat healthily but have the odd drink and cake. Balance.

Before school became over the top with healthy eating haribos were the only sweets parents were allowed to send in for a child to give out to classmates when it was their birthday presumably because it was vegetarian had no nuts etc and yes yabu ffs a small packet of sweets ?!

My DS is two and had a piñata at his birthday and you can guess it wasn't filled with apple slices and bananas!

It's a birthday party!! Unless your going to be the mum that goes up to everyone else and make sure your dc's are the only ones giving raisins whilst everyone else is having fun with there haribo you need to let it go!

YbVVu

What are the particular chemical horrors of Haribo?

OP, I think YABU but you've been given a hard time on this thread. When my children were very young, we were careful to keep them away from sweets, because we wanted to avoid them insisting on them.

At times, we felt we were fighting off a deluge of sweets, particularly from adults who seemed to assume that it was cruel not to allow kids lots of them.

Now I don't really care, because my kids have developed healthy eating habits: a bit of shite at parties is neither here nor there really.

Britain = lots of sweets for kids. It is partly a cultural thing.

OP: At least you are not quite as bad as a couple I know who provided a sugar-free birthday cake at their son's birthday party.

DC3's little friend had her 3rd birthday party recently. She has never been allowed sweets, or in fact a whole load of other things (her mother has a very complicated system of what she is allowed, even outlawing certain combinations of foods which she is allowed separately - for example she is allowed small amounts of organic milk and fruit, but not together, so no home made milk shake/ smoothy ...)

Little friend had begged her mum to be allowed a chocolate cake for her birthday, mother eventually decided this was OK, just for her birthday, as she had got to 3 - cake was handed 'round, eaten, enjoyed - there weren't many other kids at the party, but my DC2 and 3 both turned down more cake (which they are allowed relatively often) in favour of going into the garden to play - party girl asked, nagged and whined for more, was not allowed and was found shortly after with her hands in the remaining cake eating it off the serving plate ...

My mother was controlling about food too - the first time I encountered white bread and shop bought choc biscuits at a friend's house, aged about 7, I thought I had stumbled into heaven :o All my siblings have odd relationships with food, in one case an eating disorder that nearly killed her.

I helped out at my DN's party many years ago and there were siblings who were never allowed sweets and chocolate at home. However the parents never enforced this at parties with the adults, so for that hour these kids would go mad.

It's a difficult image to forget watching a 5 year old pushing one mini roll after another lengthways into his mouth with one eye on the church hall doors.

At DS's last party I did the usual sweets as prizes for the party games (chocolate money or medals), but the rules were you had to put them straight into your party bags for later, because I didn't want them filling up before the birthday tea that I'd sweated over.

If you think mini bags of Haribo are bad, don't move to the European mainland OP, I am amazed at the level of undigestable blue jelly glowing crap DS comes home with, and they bag it by the metric ton here.

I think YABU, but I do understand where you are coming from. I really don't like mine having nutritionally worthless sweets, but I've come to accept that it's an inevitable part of parties and visits from PIL.

At one of my DSs non-UK nurseries, when he was around 2-3, the practice was for each child who had a birthday to send in a party bag for all of the other children. Because there wasn't much else available where we were, these were stuffed full of rubbishy sweets. He got a party bag approximately every 3 weeks. I took it upon myself to eat most of the sweets in the car on the way home, to save him from them.

Haribo wouldn't be my first choice of sweets for a 3 year olds party pass the parcel, purely because they are very chewy and difficult for small children to eat. I would probably choose the small boxes of smarties or chocolate buttons.

However, you are BU to not expect there to be sweets at a children's party, and the mother had no reason to check with other parents.

This thread is nuts. The fact you tried to take the sweets away and he got upset tells me that maybe he doesn't like you giving away his easter eggs. I wonder how many any times you've snatched something out if his hands or given away what he's been given if he was upset.

You're going to be 'that' parent people give the slide eye to as you walk past.

If you were so worried you should have told the mother. Ds2 had certain food intolerances and i always made sure the party host's mum were told................

If I were to give out prizes (pass the parcel etc), I would not give out anything to be eaten. Who knows who has what allergy? As for sweets or chocolate, what about diabetes? Cake - gluten, dairy, egg?

Small books, pens, pencils, notebooks from me as party prizes.

I had a small boy (7) round for tea with my DS once, I knew he was diabetic so asked what I could give him for tea. I did not assume that he could eat anything.

*asked his mother

Yabu. Everything you eat has "chemicals" in! I think your attitude is in fact very unhealthy. This kind of attitude at children's parties is really annoying and precious. It is not going to harm your child to eat some sweets once in a blue moon. I know several children who were never allowed to do so and as they grew up it became hugely embarrassing and isolating for them. You need a more balanced view.

Yabvvu their sweets not drugs. It's a party, children have party food like this. Hope your not going to be this controlling when your ds is older, could backfire on you!

Haven't read all the posts, but I don't see a problem with giving out sweets and a children's party.

I'm disappointed. I thought the prizes were going to be penknives, porn and alcohol.

Actually I'm with you OP, I wouldn't have been happy with it for a 3 year old. My littlest is almost 4 and has never had haribo - don't really see that that's a problem. She has occasional cake, chocolate etc but very occasional. I don't think I'm insanely strict on things like this but do know from my peer group of parents that my kids have sweets/chocs far far less than others do - again I'm fine with this! IME if you don't give them these things at an early age, firstly they don't miss them because they've never had them and secondly it helps them avoid developing a sweet tooth. I don't think having limited sweets makes them go mad for them later on either - yesterday I chucked out the last of our Halloween sweets/chocs because my older ones just never got around to eating them.

I opened this thread to read incase it was about me. I made CDs as gifts for my ds disco party and unbeknown to me managed to download an explicit version of a song.
Should have stuck to Haribo.