5 year old ate my Mother's Day chocs

[fishstiks]

Just found DD has sneakily been getting my Mother's Day box of chocolates from my bedside drawer and has eaten 3 out of the box. We only allow sweets once a week and never have dessert. Obviously the temptation was too much! A few weeks ago she found a large bar of chocolate belonging to DH and ate more than half! When we found it she owned up straight away and we banned all sweet treats and chocolate for a week (no chocolate spread, no sweets or chocolate, no biscuits and no milkshakes)

Should I punish her for the latest chocolate stealing? Are we too strict overall with sweet stuff?

She's a really picky eater she survives on crumpets with sugar free chocolate spread (we only introduced the chocolate spread as she won't eat butter and then will eat no toast or crumpets etc) berries, tofu, rice, pasta and cucumber mostly.

Any advice on the picky eater stuff or appropriate discipline would be appreciated

Poor kid.

Everything in moderation OP, including sweet treats. Teaches kids that they are not a big deal but also not something you’d eat to excess for health reasons.

Also; the fact that the choc spread at breakfast is sugar free isn’t better. In fact it’s arguably worse. Sugar free foods packed with artificial sweeteners have lots of effects on the body, including causing us to crave more sweet food.
if she likes berries will she have them with toast/wrap/porridge etc?

Dessert on the weekends is a good compromise; ease up on the rules a little and aim to cut out the sugar free instead; even if it means a little more sugar.

Yeah we used to do this like have proper pudding a few times a week and had at least something small that was really yummy after dinner times until she started refusing all food at dinner time, or eating one spoon of rice and then requesting her dessert

She used to eat toast or crumpets or hot cross buns with butter but then started refusing them as she went off butter. She had Nutella at her Nannie's house so then we would offer her a crumpet with Nutella on and then switched to sugar free stuff as Nutella has so much sugar in. Without her being no able to eat something on toast / crumpet the only thing she will have is pasta or rice and then that takes so much longer to prepare we had no options for something for a quick snack or when we were in a rush. Plus the ONLY thing she would accept in a sandwich for her school lunch was chocolate spread.

She's actually stopped eating sandwiches all together now and on more than once occasion she eats nothing in her lunch box at school at all.

I don't have any limits on sweets etc for my dd. She loves them and knows she can have them pretty much whenever; so she doesn't actually have them pften. She's still got a big bowl of sweets from halloween in her bedroom and pretty sure we still have Easter eggs left from last year.

She used to eat toast or crumpets or hot cross buns with butter but then started refusing them as she went off butter

You can eat hot cross buns with nothing on them as they are sweet enough on their own. You have to eat them cold.

Oh and you shouldn't be storing any food or drink in the bedroom. Store it at the back of a high cupboard/hard to get into cupboard if you don't want other people to immediately see it. Two of my nephews, different parents, have made it clear where they expect food to be stored and that isn't in bedrooms unless you are hiding an addiction/eating disorder.

Banning foods is just going to fuel her desire for them. You sound far too strict. My DD is 7 now, used to eat a fair amount of sweet stuff but now knows more about being healthy and knows that there needs to be a balance. She’s still quite young. You should never use food as a punishment. You need to start finding a balance.

Sugar free chocolate spread sounds revolting and will be a lot worse for her than high sugar stuff. It's also undermining your 'no sugar/no dessert' rule as a 3 year old doesn't know it's sugar free!

I agree she needs to learn balance, her diet started off really healthy and she got choosier and choosier with foods basically eliminating anything that wasn't sweet. And that was when we were still freely having sweets and desserts, now she will have cereal with extra honey for breakfast, her lunch box is crisps, a plain tortilla wrap, an oat bar, pot of raspberries and cucumber, after school snack is a crumpet with chocolate spread and then dinner she is offered rice, pasta, tofu, berries, broccoli, halloumi on rotation alongside whatever we are having, she never tries anything we are eating and she doesn't eat her pasta with any sauce or flavor or butter of cheese nothing. I have gone through stages of forcing her to try new things which resulted in her one evening me forcing her to try a chip, her retching and then vomiting on herself at the dinner table. That's when I stopped forcing her to try things although we always offer.

My son (5) pretty much ate my box of Lindt before I’d had a sniff of them! That’s life!

My parents never let us have sweets / chocolate / biscuits / cake / ice cream when I was a child. Both me and my brother struggle with our weight as adults because we never learnt to self regulate.

No wonder she's groging on sweet snacks when you never let her have it.

Your setting her up for a future of eating disorders.

Sugar free chocolate spread is probably worse for you than sugar filled chocolate spread.

Your post has made me realise that I'm not that strict, so thank you.

You’re setting your child up for a lifetime of food issues. Way too strict.

If I let her freely eat wherever she wanted she would eat loads of chocolate biscuits right before dinner and then eat not a single things on her dinner plate and then request a bowl of ice cream after, should I just freely let her eat like that? This is how it was before when we were eating dessert

I'd love it if you could read my additional posts and understand how we got to where we currently are and then offer further advice as we haven't always been like this

So you have a box of chocolates, and your husband has his own chocolate bar, but your child is subjected to a strict sugar-free regime?

And you honestly don't see the problem here?

Your rules have produced a child with issues around food.

I thought from the title this was going to be a sweet, funny post rather than one about a 5yo "stealing" food and being punished for it.

Given that she's clearly quite distressed around food already I wouldn't make this into a big deal at all- if anything., I'd be reassuring her not punishing her.

Don't force her to eat anything. Just offer choices. If she eats plain pasta sometimes, that is absolutely fine. If you're having something sweet, it's fine for her to have some too.

I feel really sorry for your child. Of course she's going to be tempted, she's 5. Sounds torturous for a 5 year old to know there's forbidden chocolate around!

@fishstiks no obviously not, but one of the ways picky eater dieticians try and reintroduce 'normal' food associations is to present her tea and the pudding at the same time at the dinner table. To try and show her that there is no good or bad food. Just food.

You can control her intake for now but one day she’s going to be going out with her friends or walking to and from school without you and she’s likely to go crazy.
It’s fine not to have sweet things in the house but you were naive to think that she wouldn’t touch forbidden fruit when you haven’t actually said to her that if she asked then you would have given her a choc.

I have never limited sweet treats to that extreme, and now my kids will pick chocolate at the supermarket and not eat it for a week. But they know it's there if and when they want it so it's not a big deal at all.

You need to take your child to a doctor to get to the bottom of the food refusal.

This is an enormous problem, and I'm sorry to say, I suspect your rigid and controlling response up to now has contributed to it.

OP, clearly things have got to an awful stage regarding your daughter's diet and general emotionally well-being, which I don't doubt you never intended..... You can't go back and change the past, but you can and must try to resolve the situation now, by clearly and resolutely focusing on the actual massive problem, seeking help (not on an internet forum) and taking appropriate action - not some random plan you come up with yourself - you need the advice of an expert in pediatric behaviour and nutrition.

What disturbs be enormously (if your post is real) is that the problem you have decided to post about is this little girl taking some chocolates. Not her enormously restricted diet and the bizarre relationship she appears to have with food in general.

The fact she took your chocolates is no doubt caused in part by her issues, but it is in no sense the main or most important problem here. Why do you think it is?

What is your daughter like in general? Is she compliant? Is she happy? Is she generally well? How long has the extreme food restriction been happening? Is she over or under weight? And have you consulted health care professionals about it? If not please do as a matter of urgency.

Agree with every word of your post, @Ilovelurchers .