Baby eating chocolate?

[Frasersmummy2014]

Hi, I have a nearly 5 month old boy. He's not on solids yet. My family keep saying give him a chocolate button to suck on, but I don't want to introduce him to chocolate or any junk food till he's over one year old. Now I feel I can't leave him with a family member coz they might give him chocs and sweets. No one seems to respect my wishes. Saying I'm tight, he doesn't know chocolate exists so how am I being tight? He's only going to eat homemade food, all natural stuff. But people look at me in horror.

I am totally with you as it happens. No junk or sugary treets till older than 1y.
I think u will have a tougher time convincing other relatives though if they are as adamant as u say!
Especially if it's grandparents we r talking about.

Some may say that it's a gp's purpose to give the child naughtier treats that they wouldn't get at home, so once in a while it really wouldn't do any harm.

... So not allowing them to look after your child ever is rather extreme.

All you can do is express your wishes and hope 4 the best!

Try the "He is 5 months old, he is my child and I am the one who decides how and what he eats, and that DOESN'T include chocolate. If you can't respect my wishes, then you will not ever have the chance to have him on your own. Your call."

Home cooking everything? My DD doesn't like my cooking so I can't get away with that. She preferred those disgusting cow and gate jars

As pp has said, all you can do is stress that you don't want your LO to have any sweets or chocolate.

I don't give DD juice but she sometimes has it at her gran's house. I'm not going to say anything to her because it happens very rarely and I know that at home she doesn't happen, so it really is only a tiny amount.

It does get my back up though when I see various pictures on Facebook throughout the day of DD with chocolate biscuits in each hand

I would doubt the common sense and judgement of someone who thought that a chocolate button was a suitable choice of food for a 5 month old baby who hadn't even started wearing yet. I wouldn't let them look after him if you can't trust them to make reasonable choices (not perfect choices, just reasonable).

Quite honestly, anyone who thinks that 1. It is appropriate to feed chocolate to a 5 month old ( seriously, 5 months old!!); 2. They don't respect my wishes re the diet of my 5 month old (5 months!)...

is not someone I would be happy to leave my baby with.

As for comments that "all you can do is express your wishes a day hope for the best". I disagree with. This is a five month old, not a five year old. Utterly and completely defenceless and dependant. At that age I am like a tiger protecting my cubs. I relax as the years go on a bit

Thanks for all your replies. They think coz they did with their babies, I should do it with mine. My family have stopped saying it now coz they know how strongly I feel about it. But my partners sister is obsessed with giving him chocolate, even got him a selection box for xmas. So I don't think I'll ever trust her to have him.

I'm assuming your SIL doesn't have children, otherwise that's just plain odd behaviour.

Oh this brings back memories. We were not sweet or cake eaters and my family thought I was the cruellest mother in the world for not buying sweet treats for the children. I stuck with it until they were older and started socialising.

My eldest was a prem baby and had a very delicate stomach, right up until his teens. Every time he went to my parents he would tell me he had been sick. So inevitably I stopped letting them stay over.

I would not trust them not to feed your child junk. They probably get a perverse pleasure out of going against your wishes.

I think grandparents feed kids chocolates and sweets as a bribe so the kids want to see the grandparents and be the favourite grandparent. No my sister in law as two of her own, always got chocolate round their mouths.

My MIL was exactly like this and even though ours are older (7 and 4) we don't like her to spend too much time with them because our stance on food is completely at odds with hers.

To be clear, we do not embargo treats: all in moderation. However, to MIL, food is love. She also has no concept of portion control. She will give the dc slabs of cake thst most adults couldn't manage, and then when they fail to finish (they have effective 'off' buttons) give them biscuits because they "haven't had very much". Poor dd1 nearly threw up at her house because MIL wouldn't listen when she said she was full and dd was very worried about wasting food .

So we limit the time she spends alone with them. DD2 in particular doesn't really like cake/ice cream lots of sweeties which MIL gets extraordinarily stressed out with. Christmas Day saw MIL trying get to get jelly into DD2 who was pleading for grapes.

I worry about my niece with whom she lives. At 16 mo, she still eats mainly jar food, very little in the way of finger food and once had a piece of cucumber forcibly removed from her (which she was loving) and cake shoved instead.

IMHO, you do need to lay the foundations now.

For now you could point out that current advice is to wean at 6 months, and if you wean before that to only give vegetables and fruit - and that even if it's different to what they did, you're going with current advice so please don't feed him anything yet!
When he is eating food, perhaps you could big up something that he does like but that isn't so bad as sweets/chocolate - 'she loves babybels!' said once to my mil has meant a fridge full of them every time we visit. My mil still however thrusts a huge sack of Haribo into 3yo dd's hands as soon as she comes through the door, it's a pain but I know she does it out of love, we do gently tease her about it and she has got a bit better.

Some of my family were similar - I just put my foot down. Just be firm.