DH buys loads of sweets

[candyhandy]

I have always viewed sweets and chocolate as a treat. Or a little something sneakily bought every few months; never something that would be part of the weekly grocery shopping. I’ve been slim my whole life but I also had an eating disorder; I eat normally these days.

DH is fit and healthy too, but every shopping trip (maybe 2x per week) he buys about 3-5 big packets of things like skittles, haribo, starburst ando Cadbury 100g bars. The kids see it as snack food, but they will have healthy things instead if I am there, if I offer to prepare it, AND given them a lecture. My kitchen has no hiding spaces, so I can’t hide it. I’ve asked DH to stop buying but he refuses, saying I am too critical.

The DC are healthy and with normal weight and ok teeth but I’ve found myself reeling off the reasons to them for having sweets from rotten teeth, to chemicals from E numbers, to getting fat. Their little faces look so scared, like how can something that’s there, in the safety of the kitchen, that daddy buys, be so bad.

YANBU- one parent needs to be sensible; sweets are a treat only, not a snack
YABU- everyone is healthy and having 3 healthy meals a day; sweet treats daily is ok. Your perception of it all is abnormal because you had an eating disorder for twenty years.

Well we are like your husband and we always buy the treats weekly. Neither of my kids are overweight and are very active.

you are using the language of disordered eating around your children. I think you really need to find ways of not labelling these foods as bad, scary and dangerous. It's not really any wonder they look scared when you're trying to scare them.

Sweets and chocolate are fine in moderation as part of a balanced diet. Try to talk about food in a morally neutral way which focuses on what different foods do rather than labelling them as good or bad. Something like 'different foods do different jobs in our bodies. If we only ate one kind of food our bodies would get sick. Chocolate tastes good and gives us a quick burst of energy. As well as chocolate we need to eat protein for growth, vegetables for fibre and vitamins, etc. You can have this portion of chocolate now. For tea we're having soup and sandwiches.'

It's fine for you to portion chocolate and sweets and only offer certain amounts at certain times, but do so without talking about calories, fat, treats, bad foods, sneaking or anything like that because it's all eating disorder fodder and won't stop your kids wanting them anyway.

If he keeps buying them the stash will mount up. Binning them might get the message across.

Irrespective of what you do or say, genetically, your children are more likely to develop an eating disorder than their peers. Don’t add to that risk by projecting

So he buys up to ten big bags of sweets each week??

That’s insane. Doesn’t anyone else think that’s an insane amount of shit food?

To the people who say all this scaremongering will give the children eating disorders: how do you explain it to children then that excessive amount of sugar will rot their teeth and is not healthy? I heard the scaremongering too when I was a kid and I have no eating disorder!
If your children drink excessive amount of fizzy stuff like coke because daddy buys shit tons of it, do you keep quiet and let them drink all that crap, otherwise, heaven forbid, the little darlings might become anorexic?When do you plan to enlighten your children then about the dangers of all that junk? When they are 16? When they are hooked on it already? Pray tell…

We had sweets at the weekend bought with our own pocket money. Mother would buy Pop from the Corona man in hot weather.

Our three children had sweets at the weekend but not haribo type bags. More mini mars and chocolate biscuits. Dentist said better for teeth to pig out one day a week than spread out over the week. The one with teeth issues did buy big bags of haribo when older with his own money. The other two never bothered.

I grew up with a grandmother (I lived with her) like you and she gave me an ED. Anything like sweets/chocolate/cakes was “bad”
I was the only one of my 5 siblings to live with her, and the only one to have an ED and have spent a lot of my life overweight. I still feel guilt now around food.
There’s always sweets and chocolate in the house, there is also cheese, fruit, crackers, olives, pickles (my 5 year old loves them!) and the kids can choose whatever they want, whenever they want because there is no way they are growing up with issues around food like me.
My OH can get through a few bags of sweets a night and that’s his choice. I would never ever label food as good or bad and certainly not scare my children.

We don't have sweets or soda in our house unless they've come in from parties or halloween, but I don't enjoy them myself so I guess that's easier.

I don't believe in stigmatising food though and try very hard to talk to my children about balance. We have a treat food every day, and they can pick from what we have in. Something like a chocolate mousse or cookies or an ice cream/ lolly from the freezer. Today we had a bagel for breakfast, salad for lunch, fruit salad for snack and they are munching down on an ice cream each.

They talk about making healthy choices themselves- sometimes when we get a meal deal they'll tell me they are picking the fruit option for the snack as they had crisps earlier and it's not even coming from me anymore (day out days I don't even object to the extra treat foods!). We don't focus on the 'will make you fat' angle but how they nutritionally don't contain much that their bodies need.

We are certainly not perfect but we have two healthy/ slim children and I hope they will continue to make good choices for themselves when they are on their own.

I don't think its right to scare kids about anything that is a normal part of a healthy childhood for many.

It sounds like a lot, but I eat something sweet every day (often twice or more) and I’m not overweight. My teeth are also fine.

I just tell my children they need to get the balance between eating and exercise right and include plenty of healthy food.

Chocolate is something I feel very good about.

I think you need to get someone to talk to about this OP, because your kids being frightened when you talk about sweets indicates that you have quite a serious problem you are going to pass onto them unless you sort it out. Buying any food sneakily is disordered, so please get on top of this.

Get something to keep the sweets in, portioned out for the kids. If your DP is buying too many, this will become obvious as they mount up in the cupboard. I don’t understand how you have no cupboard space for them - either get a container or make room for them with the rest of the store cupboard food.

I think given OP thinks a bag of sweets should be bought “sneakily every few months” I’m going to go out on a limb and say 10 bags a week is an exaggeration.

The language you use around food is v typical for someone who has had anorexia. No food is inherently bad and demonising food in this way is very damaging.

Anorexia is strongly genetic and your language around food is setting your kids up to develop an unhealthy relationship with food.

Tabith Farrah has written some excellent books on recovering from EDs, one is called ‘Fear of weight gain’ which I think would be helpful to you.

Oh OP.
I see you can recognise the kids look scared, but it sounds to me like You ARE scared.
Maybe, is it mostly scared of losing control? (Over them or yourself).

Is there something else you can say instead (you might need to practice) and bit less intense about it?

'Maybe later/tomorrow, I'll do some fruit for now'
And make sure there is a later a couple of times a week or whatever you and DH can agree on between you.

You and DH as adults can decide what you do and dont eat.
I think its a bit unfair of DH to bring quite so much stuff into the house. It might be much harder for the kids to resist, especially if DH is role modelling eating chocolate and sweets everyday.

Also, we dont have anywhere we hide stuff in the kitchen, but equally the kids dont help themselves without asking either (mine are 6 and 11).

I agree, plus, told as a grown up man that you cannot buy sweets will provoke the opposite reaction.

It is sweets NOT cigarettes/alcohol etc.

Stop this controlling behaviour over your family now.

It would show the children to be wasteful

People are idiots - this food is crap and bad for your kids - chuck it

YANBU - my perspective as someone with an ED history and a husband who has a ridiculously sweet tooth and often buys extra sweets, ice cream and chocolate (extra to the already generous contribution I add to the grocery shop).

Difference is, my husband doesn’t treat these extras as for the whole house - they are his and we’re both clear with the children that his choices aren’t healthy and he has too many of them. Sweets and chocolate are treats and not snacks - I’m clear on that and so is DH. Anyone with a healthy intelligence knows they’re not good for your body and having lots of them isn’t a healthy choice. My children have plenty of treats but there is a boundary and they know these are treats and not healthy.

We don’t talk about fat - only what is good for your body and useful to fuel you to live a great life.

Please don't speak to your children like that

You’re right. Sweets make you fat and rot your teeth. Once a week is enough for children.

I am with you OP and I think the same. These all sweets you mentioned are pure rubbish and you're right to ask DH to not buy them.

DD (16) eats Chia seeds, greek yogurt and is obsessed with sport and her gut biome, eating well and fibre. She never stops eating. No sweets. (Like most teens atm)

She was always given free access to sweets as a child. They were never stigmatised.

Yes some of them are

How can you co-parent if you overrule your partner like that? Plus, the OP has had an eating disorder which she has clearly not left entirely behind. A certain amount of play food is not a problem for anyone with a healthy attitude to food.

news flash! every single thing in the known universe, including us is made from chemicals!

Too many things are not seen as treats anymore.
When mine were younger, I kept no juice, crisps, biscuits or fizzy drinks in the house. As they got older they used to get 50p to spend on sweets for Saturday night tv.
As they become young teens and going to school independently then of course it becomes more difficult to control.