To think banning a kid from having ANY sweets at all ever by the age of five

[Fragmentedbrain]

Is just asking to make them into a future sensation seeking crack addict?

Or is this normal now?

Sis is going to let him eat birthday cake and so on when he starts hoing to birthday parties at about 5. He's 3 now. Why give him junk when he doesn't know what he's missing? I've eaten sweets in front of him and he doesn't ask for any he just ignores them. He doesn't know what they are.
Sugar kills millions of people every year and causes vast obesity and dental problems. Why would we give that to young children when they are perfectly happy without them?
It isn't cruel, it's giving them the best possible start in life.

My mum and dad never really did treats out for GC - many reasons. At home would be pudding, ice cream, cake but once, not all day. And the other GPs - my ex-in laws. Ice cream out, pudding at home, but not the constant snacking eg pack of crisps, sweets, doughnuts , cakes all day. They couldn't afford it actually. So occasionally fine. That type of food is so expensive.

Mine only had the odd Milky Way until they were about 5 . I thought surgery boiled sweets and lollipops would be in their mouth longer so do more damage .
as children they didn’t need much in the way of dental work but my 50year old daughter still blames me for her hatred of Milky Ways now 😂.

My children, 10 and 7 rarely ever have sweets (occasional packets of haribo from school) because they can't cope with the sugar reaction. My DH and rarely have sweets either, so they don't see them around and aren't that bothered....

My son used to choose fruit over cake/sweets until he started school. He was once offered a plate of fairy cakes or a bag of apples at the end of a school fete and he picked the apples. Now he's learnt from school that sweets/cake/chocolate is ALWAYS best 🤣 I much prefer fresh fruit over sweets and chocolate but I will STILL gorge on crap and regret it. It's a complicated relationship about "treating myself". But I agree that salad has never beaten cake. Only apples.

No it isn't? A doughnut is like 49p (at least the kind I would give a kid is, I'd get myself a luxury one)

Milky ways got a lot worse imo

My mum never did any sugar in anything think even rhubarb pie, I didn't with my DC either, there is absolutely no need to give a child sugar in tea, coffee. etc. when they start to drink these things. And if you don't get used to getting sugar in everything it is easy to not start to have a lot. OK other things ice cream, cakes, etc, but those are treats not every day.

There’s no need to give a child tea or coffee either, yet here we are.

Well obviously if someone has an allergy but in general their isn't such thing as bad food and banned food. Moderation everytime

So far parties haven’t really had any sweets. Just party food and cake I guess for the sweet treat. He’s never had any sweets from nursery apart from that one time when a child was leaving and they brought haribo in for everyone. I’m not anti all sweets - happy for him to have the haribo and not be left out but just hardly ever really had them given to him so far.
Can definetly see as he gets older he will get them more at parties etc which is totally fine. But we still probably won’t have them at home or buy them regularly for him I don’t think.

Oh and grandparents wouldn’t give sweets. They are the same as us that we just wouldn’t have them around in the house and they wouldn’t buy them for him.

well, yes, but I wasn't thinking of allergies. There are disorders of sugar metabolism that need very careful control. My cousins son died of one of these, after eating not enough sugar, which sounds like the opposite! But the dead child's siblings have sugar in a very controlled fashion, measured and timed very exactly, and could never eat any sweets ever.

What are they called?

Haha when my DS was 2 he was at a birthday party and he got some haribo and said 'what's this?' and I said 'oh those are just yucky sweeties' and he was already in the fussy toddler stage of rejecting the unfamiliar so he didn't want them. He's now four and he still calls them yucky sweeties, which is ace but means I can't bloody well get him to eat the multivitamin gummy things.

Do you mean until the age of five?

Yes I totally agree. We’re not big on sweets, never banned them but never bought much either. To this day my daughter does not care about chocolate or pure sugar sweets. And she doesn’t like soda. We have a huge halloween celebration in our neighborhood and she never gets through her candy, says she ‘doesn’t care’ about it, she just likes dressing up. I do think when parents make a big deal about certain foods, they become a big deal.

No, I mean chocolate and sweets. That’s what this thread is about, no? I’m talking about the 80s and that’s what both my Dad and my Grandparents called chocolate and sweets. Both from the East Ridings of Yorkshire.

Unusual to buy only one? They normally come in packs. And relative to vegetables expensive. That 49p * 5 = £2.45 - that is carrots/cabbage/perhaps another veg for the week. So relatively expensive. And wrapped biscuits/ sweets even more. I knew my in laws were on a tight budget. We treated them when we could, but let them treat the GDC when they felt able to do so. Sweet goods are a luxury for many.

As a dentist I didn’t encourage DS to eat refined carbs, sweets, biscuits or cakes, when he was young. We didn’t have a lot as children and didn’t end up with any undesirable habits. As a result DS hasn’t got a sweet tooth, rarely eats sugar heavy foods preferring savoury foods and prefers white meat. He eats chocolate occasionally, although when he was going through main growth spurt he could demolish a large bar of cadburys dairy mild in under a minute. I think it was the instant carb hit rather than it being chocolate though. I can’t remember the last time he ate chocolate since he hit adult size, he’s now 20 so has a protein based diet. He gets his carbs from beer like most 20 yr olds.
I wasn’t overly prescriptive about his diet when he was young. I just didn’t fill the cupboards with snacks. I don’t think it’s about banning certain foods but more likely that you don’t develop an addiction if you don’t use them as a diet staple.

There is also a technique to get children to eat healthily from the start. You positively affirm the healthy choice within earshot, for example “ DS loves broccoli” and negatively affirm the foods you want to restrict. So if someone offers them biscuits or cake you just say “Oh he doesn’t like cakes or biscuits”, from a very early stage children take cues from you as to what is safe to eat and what is not, if they’ve never had a biscuit they have no idea if they like them so tend to go with the flow. Any new food you introduce you can affirm and they will eventually try it. You have to remember that they often take cues visually so if it’s something you don’t like you often pull a face while feeding them.

A friend wouldn't even let her kids have fruit as she deemed it too sugary. When the poor girl was staying at her aunts house she got up in the night and absolutely guzzled the entire fruit bowl and made herself quite sick.

Spice is another word for sweets, used in parts of Yorkshire. Spegs is another one.

My DF was a dentist and brought me up eating a healthy diet. Sweets weren’t banned but also weren’t encouraged. unnecessary use of sugar such as in hot drinks or on cereals never happened. To this day I can’t understand how people can drink sweet tea or put sugar on cornflakes. It tastes awful.

I bring my DS up using a similar approach to sugar. Nothing is explicitly banned but also no sugar is unnecessarily introduced to his diet. He’ll eat a bit of chocolate every now and then but rarely asks for it. He does like a bit of cake but never eats anything like Haribos when they are offered at parties he just leaves them.

In my experience it’s relatively easy to develop good lifelong habits with sugar. Like any addictive product it’s easy to resist if you’re not addicted.

Yes I have seen this twice with people close to me. The kids binge on sugar when they get the opportunity and their eating becomes quite disordered. One became anorexic.