Am I expecting too much self-control from my 5 y.o.?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Am I the only person who thinks it's freaking mean as hell to deny kids of treats? In my house, the kids have a cookie with every dinner. A small oreo like cookie (the organic ones from MOMS, no artificial colors, etc.) The lunch boxes have one of those Annie's bunny fruit snacks. We have never had problems with stealing or lying about food. DDs are 6 and 4. No, we don't keep candy in the house.
You can deprive too much. You can CONTROL too much. She is reacting to you controlling her. Sorry OP, let go a little.

What's mean about it? What adult has desert every night? If you grow up knowing candy is a treat, you don't feel deprived when you don't have it on an ordinary day. If your kid has fastfood every day it might seem mean to them when you stop but that doesn't make it mean to only eat out once a week.

To call this controlling is like saying it is controlling if you won't let her stay up until 11 or skip school once a week.

Wow - I'm an adult who has dessert every night! A small dessert after dinner, as I'm sure we will let my 2 year old do when she gets older. We eat very healthy, whole foods that we make, we're active, and I tend to need to work to keep weight on, so I don't see a problem with it.

I get your point, but I don't think dessert needs to be a special, Halloween-only treat or something. We will bake cookies together, just like I did with my mom. It's all about moderation and not defining moderation too narrowly.

[Anonymous]

OP - I don't know what is "right" or what a child psychologist would suggest. But I'll share what happened in our house.

My not-quite 5 year old lied to me about sneaking candy (leftover from Halloween and Easter, we don't go through it very quickly!). I was furious that she would lie to me. I didn't care so much that it was candy, but that she was lying and sneaking around.

I told her that when she lies, it makes it difficult for us to believe her when she is telling the truth. That by lying she has broken the trust we have in her and that is a very serious thing. I don't know if she "gets it", but she seemed to understand that I was very disappointed in the behavior.

I threw out all the candy in the stash and told her that was her consequence for lying to me. No more candy in the house until the next holiday. Christmas and Easter have come and gone since then. She doesn't seem to have been sneaking candy, as the Easter basket and the candy bowl are still pretty full.

We don't have sweets on a regular basis. Sometimes she'll get Fig Newtons in her lunch. Sometimes I'll give her a small piece (chocolate egg or fun size bar) when she's helping with laundry. Just random fun surprises.

We do have dessert when we go out for dinner. Several times recently she has not finished her dessert b/c she was too full. I take that as a good sign that despite not having dessert regularly, she is able to moderate her intake of sweets.