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[quote=Anonymous]OP, one way to tell if you are too regimented is if your kids never say no when offered the food you are restricting. Believe it or not, many kids decline sweets and junk food because it’s just not that valuable to them. They know they can have a cookie tomorrow or ice cream over the weekend.

Another way to tell is if your kids continue to eat the restricted food even though they are already full. They will eat ice cream even if they are past the point of satiety.

I had pretty normal restrictions for my kids - no snacks right before dinner, make a best effort to eat fruits and veggies, no soda, but I let them have sweets and junk food without too many lectures. I offered a small dessert almost every day. Ice cream was available to them every day in the summer.

Today, they are teen boys and they refuse dessert, and junk food about 80% of the time it’s offered. They don’t drink soda. They eat candy about once a month at the movie theater. They decline dessert at home or at a restaurant because they feel full, which explains why we have 3 pints of ice cream that have been sitting in our freezer since May. Meanwhile, my friend who made her kids earn weekly dessert with behavior points and confiscated Halloween candy, said that her now 16 year old son always has a glove box full of candy wrappers and McDonald’s bags. He hides food from her. I think it will be fine as he gets used to having more freedom, but he cannot resist grabbing a candy bar at the gas station right now. My kids say that he keeps Mountain Dew in his locker at school. It doesn’t always turn out this way, for my kids or her kids, but there is a clear link between overly restrictive rules about food and disordered eating in kids.

https://www.openaccessjournals.com/articles/foodrelated-parenting-practices-and-child-and-adolescent-weight-and-weightrelated-behaviors.pdf[/quote]

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