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how often does your child get candy? and do you serve 'dessert' after dinner every night?
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Anonymous
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We do not do dessert every night. We will sometimes walk down to B&R to get ice cream, and if we go to the pizza place at Eastern Market it is hard to get out of there without ordering a nutella calzone (also known as "chocolate pizza" in my family) although it has been known to happen.
We typically have fruit with dinner. That's not referred to as "dessert" per se, but is often my daughter's favorite part of the meal. In the immediate aftermath of Easter and Halloween, she is obsessed by the candy and is eager to have some as soon as she gets home (which is not allowed) and after dinner (which is). But after about 3 or 4 days she loses interest, even though we have plenty of candy left. The rest of the year, candy isn't a big deal -- if she's begging for a treat, it's more likely to be ice cream or chocolate milk. I don't do a lot of baking, and never buy cookies, so that's not a common request either. |
Anonymous
| My son gets "the candy of the day". This is some very small piece of candy. It makes him happy and then, when the big candy holidays come, he is used to the rule and knows that, even then, he only gets to eat one candy (except maybe 2-3 on the actual day of the holiday). |
Anonymous
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We do dessert every night, and it ranges from ice cream to cookies, candy, popsicles, whatever. My only requirements really are portion control and I don't buy commercial baked goods very often because I like to avoid trans fats and HFCS, plus I think they just taste yucky. I also let my kids drink real juice and the occasional Sprite at parties, school events and so forth. I believe almost everything is fine in moderation and I don't want any food battles in my house. We do discuss nutrition and calories, read labels when we shop, and that sort of thing, because I want my kids to be educated and learn how to make good decisions.
This strategy is working well for my kids. I notice that now that they are older (9 and 6), they self-regulate the sweets very well. For example, they will decline dessert sometimes if they are full, or they will say, "I already had juice when I came home from school so I'll have some water now." They much prefer the taste of homemade baked goods or things with natural ingredients (ie Briers ice cream over the fakey low fat stuff). They are still anti-vegetable (which kicked in after toddlerhood, sigh), but we make them available and encourage them to try them, and I see my oldest one particularly starting to come around. I find these posts where all these parents claim to strictly limit sugar so odd, because in real life, almost all of the parents I know allow their kids to consume sweets to some degree. |
Anonymous
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Candy (which basically means chocolate, as my kids don't like any other kind of candy) comes into the house at Halloween and Easter, and they are allowed to eat a reasonable amount after a good meal or for afternoon snack until it is gone (which usually takes two weeks or so). We make cookies at Christmas and sometimes make a batch at other random times. They get cake and ice cream at birthdays. Sometimes we will randomly go out for ice cream. We serve fruit after dinner (and breakfast, and lunch) most of the time, but it is not called dessert, it is just part of the meal. I do serve it at the end because unfortunately if I didn't my older DC would fill up on fruit and then not eat the meal.
My parents did not put any limits that I can recall on our intake of sweets or sodas (e.g. there were always cookies and hostess snack cakes in the house and they were always accessible to us) and I wish that they had. My mother berated me for being fat and told me no one would want to marry me if I was fat but obviously didn't see the role that she played in making that happen. FWIW I was not overweight as a teenager or as an adult at all, but only because I took it upon myself to learn about nutrition -- my parents provided no guidance, structure or limits whatsoever. So while I agree that parents can go too far in restricting sweets, they can also go too far in the other direction. I hope that the way I am approaching the issue with my kids provides a happy medium where sweets can be enjoyed in moderation but are not considered everyday fare. |
Anonymous
| MY DD is 21 months and recently discovered the joys of ice cream, and if she had a decent dinner, I'll let her have some. Before, it was the Paul Newman's chocolate cookie, which she won't touch now. She goes in spurts and I let her have it when she wants it because she's actually very good at self-regulating her sweets. She doesn't like much - just the cookies and now ice cream, hates cake, etc. - so I don't stress about it. She eats lots of good stuff too. |
Anonymous
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OP, haven't read all the responses....I feel same as you re candy. I think they have more than I like because their TEACHER and aides and friends hand it out. Drives me crazy.
Re dessert, once I started a "dessert on the weekend nights only" the battles stopped. And, they've usually been to a birthday party with sweets, so we don't even bother. |
Anonymous
| 10:52 here, forgot to add that if I do give them sweets I try to make it healthy as possible....Easter I splurged on dark chocolate bunnies at whole foods. For class birthday, I spent a fortune making cupcakes from box mix (didn't want to do from scratch) that didn't have hydrogenated oils. Etc. Then, I'm less likely to freak out about the really junky stuff they eat that's out of my control. |
Anonymous
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I'll probably get flamed for this, but I feel like even asking the OP's question is creating a problem where there needn't be one.
Last night I took my kids to McDonalds--gasp! And after the junky happy meal (including, gasp, chocolate milk), we all shared sundaes. And you know what? We had a happy, warm family time and not one of us is obese. And the night before at dinner, both kids were scooping up tofu cubes and blueberries as fast as I could serve them. They are balanced, healthy kids, physically and emotionally. I try not to let any particular "treat" (be it candy or TV or toys or whatever) become emotionally charged or forbidden or a power struggle. And it seems to work just fine for us. I would just rather focus my parenting worries on other issues. |
Anonymous
Thank you for a voice of reason! We don't do McDonald's simply because I don't like it...but when DD is older I am guessing we will go to other places (Wendy's or Chick-Fil-A) once in awhile. She is only 18 months now and we try to be thoughtful as to what we feed her NOW in order to establish good habits and tastes (she has never had chocolate, juice, french fries, anything fried, packaged "meals", pizza, you get the picture). However, she does ask for a "cookie" after dinner because that is what we call her small animal crackers. |
Anonymous
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We do sweet stuff - once or twice a week - or a junky snack (ice cream, popcicle). What really throws me off is the Easter Candy and the halloween candy. The Easter bunny showed restraint, but not Grandma. Then throw in b-day party grab bags and there is a constant stream of candy in our house. We tend to allow him to eat one a day, and then move it out of sight and out of mind. But it is hard. I may start having a "trade in your candy for a toy" trade. I feel bad just taking it.
What I try to avoid is "dessert". I don't like he concept of you eat until you are full and THEN you eat something else. So if my son is going to get a cookie that night, he has to eat a few bites of healthy food - then he can eat his cookie - and then he can eat more food |
Anonymous
| Dessert only on special occasions. Candy rarely. |
Anonymous
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After years of not taking candy without asking, our 6 yr old started to sneak candy. We would find candy wrappers in odd places. So she now gets a "candy allowance". On Sunday we put 7 pieces of "fun size" candy in a bowl that the dogs cannot reach, but she can. She can choose when she eats it. She can have all seven pieces when she wakes up Monday morning, or one piece every night after dinner. She gets to control that. It seems to be working OK. The focus on candy seems to be waning. And we are slowly working through the Halloween / Christmas / Easter / birthday party stash this way.
We don't have a regular dessert night. We will usually get desserts at restaurants or if we have friends over for dinner. But that is usually only once a week, at the most. And I don't like having too many sweets in the house b/c my waistline doesn't need them. And we do talk about how sweets taste good, but aren't good for us in large quantities. And then we talk about what foods are good for us (fruits, veggies, proteins, dairy). |
Anonymous
Wow! Logical responses. What are y'all doing on dcum? I can honestly say that this such a non-issue to me that I couldn't even tell you how often my kids eat dessert. They are all really good about eating healthy meals. As long as the snacks don't interfere with their meals, and as long as they are healthy (not overweight), I don't really care. |
Anonymous
I think you've missed the point. OP asked how often your kid eats candy/dessert. It's easy to say "I allow junk food in moderation," but it can be hard to figure out what moderation means. Is it McDonald's once a month? No fast food but ice cream twice a week? Baked goods every day but only if they're homemade? Candy on holidays? It's not always easy to figure out exactly how to keep your kids healthy and instill good habits while still allowing a certain amount of indulgence and keeping some consistency to hopefully avoid World War 3 because we went to McDonald's last night and why can't we go again tonight and EVERY NIGHT WHY WHY WHY I HATE VEGETABLES I WANT A HAPPY MEAL. |
Anonymous
Same. Snacks come and go. Sometimes they're healthy (fruit, veggies, cheese), sometimes they're not (cookies, fruit snacks, lollipop). But ouor philosophy is everything in moderation. Also, we don't always replace the non-healthy snacks as they get finished. Sometimes there just aren't any cookies or lollipops in the house, and sometimes there are. DD seems to accept this. FWIW, we don't have an actual course after dinner called "dessert". Most nights we finish our dinner , clear the dishes and that's that. Sometimes later we'll have a cookie or fruit or some other snack. And sometimes that snack is actually before dinner (gasp!) It really depends on the timing of it all. |