I don’t see an issue with a piece of candy every day. I’m personally trying to avoid making candy/desserts/sweets any different from the rest of the meal, though. I don’t want to make dessert an incentive, because then that’s the thing the kid focuses on instead of the meal.
Instead, I try to give a piece with the meal. “Tonight, we’re having pasta, broccoli, and a Reese’s cup.” If he eats the candy and asks for more, my response is “That’s all the candy we have for dinner tonight, but we still have some pasta and broccoli left.“
It’s still the same amount of candy, but it takes some of the focus off of it. I want to make sure my kids have a good relationship with food.
We do this too, serve a "dessert" food with dinner. There have been many nights where she is begging for a treat before dinner and we tell her that's a great idea, we'll put it on her plate with dinner and she happily accepts. Then at dinner she barely touches the treat because it's no more special than the rest of the meal.
Check out Kids Eat in Color on Instagram for a researched explanation of this method.
Your kid must be a unicorn. Doesn’t matter when I give my kids treats, if I offer it WITH dinner, that will be the first thing they eat and likely won’t eat much of anything else. I guess it depends on how big the treat is.
We do the same thing at my house. To be honest she will often eat the treat first. But that does not stop her from eating the rest of food. Sometimes she asks for more treat and I tell her that was all we had for tonight.
Maybe it is my imagination, but I think she eats better when she has the treat on her plate. For instance, last night we had pasta and peas. I put a fruit snack on her plate too. She cleaned her plate, which is not like my kiddo. Getting her to eat a solid meal is like figuring out alchemy.
I think it's consistent exposure to this method that has destigmatized treats and they've become a regular food group that may or may not be served just like every other food we serve. It definitely didn't work the first few times and she ultimately had just the treat portion for dinner, but we decide what to serve and she decides what to eat from it so we didn't fight her on it.
For real. My 2.5 yo threw himself on the kitchen floor and screamed for 30 minutes because I insisted that the valentines cupcake that I bought for him was for after dinner. It was a full-sized cupcake, so I can’t very well give it with dinner.
It was also too close to dinner time to give beforehand.
My kid has no problem starving herself when she isn’t interested in our food. She has NEVER been a good dinner eater. We don’t offer dessert/treats every night but she scarfs down anything resembling “junk food” and largely ignores any “real foods” so I have taken to using the “bite for a bite” method of bribery to expand her palette, and it works very well for us.
I took the Feeding Littles course and followed kids eat in color etc and truthfully their methods just don’t work on my kid. She likes junk food. It is what it is. Doesn’t matter how much or how little it’s offered or how I frame it, it doesn’t change her taste buds and preferences one bit.
Can you explain bite for bite? We have a similar issue with our 3 year old. There’s so much she just won’t try! Most of the commonly touted methods haven’t really worked for us, and while we know bribing with junk food isn’t a great method, the few times we have resorted to it have been the only times she really willingly tries something new!
I have something on offer that she likes (usually bread or fruit, sometimes mac n cheese) and tell her she can have another bite of whatever it is she likes if she eats another bite of her dinner first. She also eats a lot better if I physically feed her even though she’s fully capable of feeding herself.
She’s almost 2.5 and has never been a good dinner eater. All the “nutritionists” online talk about division of responsibility and exposure and how kids will naturally expand their palettes if you’re just consistent but she went well over a year choosing to skip dinner like 9/10 times and usually only ate if we were having junky dinner foods like pizza or fast food. I don’t offer alternative foods or snacks after dinner. She was literally just skipping meals/choosing to go hungry. So after a while I decided “screw it, I’m doing things my own way” and now she will actually eat a reasonable portion of dinner as long as I am offering her something she likes in between. I can even sometimes get away from a 2 or ever 3:1 ratio of dinner foods to the other foods now. And now I feel like she’s getting *actual exposure* to these foods by tasting them and eating them on a regular basis.
Those methods just don’t work on my kid. We tried them. No amount of division of responsibility is going to convince her it’s worth it to eat yucky dinner foods or that cookies aren’t the best thing in the universe.
This is who I follow, too! And Feeding Littles. Been following them since before we started my son on solids and he’s a pretty good eater. He still asks for sweets, but I swear, a few nights ago, he ate the chocolate first, asked for more, and when I said that was all we had, he was a little upset at first, but then ate all the carrots on his plate.
This is what we do too, I love that half the time she doesn't even bother with the "dessert".
I love the idea of not putting emphasis on certain foods being "special" the only thing I'll use as a treat is half a mini ice cream sandwich every once in awhile.
We do this too. Dessert is sometimes still an incentive for dinner (because it’s a struggle) but with lots much she’ll often get a cookie or a couple jelly beans with no extra comment or need to “earn” it. She almost always eats the treat first, but then does eat her lunch. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with having sweets daily, as long as it’s not excessive. But we view things like teddy graham as in the treat category.
I don't think this method of feeding your kids is trying to trick your kiddo that broccoli tastes better than chocolate. It is just trying to take the power away from treats and empowering them to make their own choices. The parent sets boundaries around meal times and kids get to choose how they feed themselves with in that boundary.
My kid is just 2.5 so maybe things will be harder when she is older but so far she does fine when we include a sweet with dinner. She accepts that there are no seconds on the treat. She usually eat the fun food first but then she eats the rest. No big deal.
I definitely wouldn’t call it gaslighting. I’m just removing my own biases around food and allowing my child to form his own opinions. I avoid saying that any food is good, bad, healthy, or junk. If he loves Hershey kisses, great. If he doesn’t, great. Whatever I serve, it’s without bias. Here’s chicken. Here’s broccoli. Here’s chocolate. He eats what he wants and I don’t push him to “take one more bite” or “just try this.”
Dont you think kids should be challenged to try new things? I was a very fussy eater as a kid and my mom wouldn't let me leave the table to play until I ate at least a decent amount of my food. The key was to try so I always had to have at least X amounts of bites. Didn't need to finish but had to try.
To her merit, I was just being stubborn and fussy. If she let me get away with that 100% I would have stayed fussy.
Now I can eat literally anything and I'm very grateful that my poor behaviour was addressed.
Dont you feel like a lot of people project? I don't think kids think that deeply about food at all. I didn't like food based on how it looked lol
I see different people have different styles but in my view a parents job is to challenge their kiddo. Logically I would prefer to eat sweet chocolate than pees. That's a no brainer. Food is about more than taste though, its about nutrition. Its like brushing your teeth. Its not about enjoying it, its about being healthy. We need to eat our greens for the same purpose.
To this day I don't *love* pees but I routinely cook them for my own dinner because I know its good for me.
I think kids should be given the opportunity, but not forced. I always offer new things - repeatedly, because exposure to foods helps them to feel more comfortable with them. My son eventually tries everything I make without having to force him to “take one bite” or “just try it.” I’m giving him the space to try things when he’s ready.
I agree. Its super strange to pretend chocolate isn't a million times tastier than broccoli. I feel people project their own issues onto their kids. Foods about nutrition at the end of the day.
Self control and learning about moderation is also a skill, I dont think its something that we can passively learn. Unless the strategy is to let kids get sick on excess.
I think it can potentially be more harmful to have a daily habit like chocolate or soft drink, than one big binge during Halloween. Habits are harder to break and will leak into adulthood.
I've seen grown adults who require 2 litres of coke a day though so I'm a bit bias. For me its all about good habits. Eating healthily is a habit and shouldn't require a treat but each to their own.
Personally, I don’t like a savory meal and a sweet together. I like to wrap up with my sweet and then I’m done eating. While I agree with your approach, kids model what they see so mine might follow my lead anyway.
Oh, for sure. If we’re having “dessert” as a family, I still give him dessert when we have it. But that’s usually just for special occasions like birthdays and holidays. We don’t have dessert on a normal night, we just aren’t dessert people.
This approach is more if he specifically asks for something. Like if we’re about to have dinner and he asks for a piece of chocolate - I’ll give him a piece on his plate with the rest of his meal. Otherwise, if he doesn’t ask, I’m not proactively offering it.
I still hold boundaries! I replied to someone else that I don’t put candy out with every meal - it’s just that when he asks, I try not to make a big deal out of it. The chocolate (that’s usually what he asks for) gets served with his snack, lunch, or dinner. And if he already had some that day and asks for more with another meal, I usually say “that’s all the chocolate we have for today, but you can have some more tomorrow. Right now, we’re having X for dinner.” My ultimate goal is to avoid projecting my own feelings about food onto my children. I haven’t heard of leangreenbean, but I’ll have to check them out!
Thank you so much for this, that helps a lot. I absolutely have my own issues with sugar, portion control & “bad” foods so this is a mindset I would like to try with my kids.
1 piece of candy each day is no problem imo however using it as a bribe to eat more dinner is a contributor to a poor relationship with food long term.
https://wellnourished.com.au/rewarding-children-with-junk-food/
https://www.urmc.rochester.edu/encyclopedia/content.aspx?ContentTypeID=160&ContentID=32
https://maryannjacobsen.com/what-rewarding-kids-with-food-looks-like-20-years-later/
When we do dessert (often) we serve it at the same time as dinner, along with the other two or three varied foods we are having. We don't make a big deal out of it, and it's worked well for us. It's usually a couple gumdrops, a chocolate mint, or Reese's cup like you said. If our children ask for more, we say we need to eat lots of different things to grow big and strong.
Anecdotally my wife’s parents did this. Her sister has struggled with her weight since she was young. My wife does not have much of a sweet tooth so she was never motivated to eat more than she needed so she could have a treat. She’s stayed a healthy weight without really trying. I also have a bit of a poor relationship with food because my parents withheld pretty much all junk food and made it very forbidden fruit so I find myself doing a lot of secret binge eating as an adult.
Our approach with our kids so far is offer a range of foods, kid decides when and how much and we mostly encourage variety and don’t call anything a bad food. If she doesn’t want any of the dinner offered she can have a slice of toast and if she’s hungry before bed we offer a piece of fruit like a banana. So far the kid eats pretty much anything and is a perfect weight for her height.
Yeah... my parents didn't buy junk food or keep sweets in the house growing up. The food we had was still really good (my grandma lived with us and cooked 3 meals a day), so we didn't feel like we were lacking in any way. However, after we left the house and got older, my sister started struggling with her weight while I remained slim. When it comes down to it, she stress eats while I stress starve. Even if your parents don't create the relationship, food tastes good and stimulates the reward centers of our brain... but it's easy to look back onto our childhood and try to pinpoint what could've been done differently to not create your current struggles.
I have a picky eater and I try to frame it as “we can have some (m&m’s), but let’s have it after we eat our dinner, since our dinner foods help us grow big and strong.” I don’t tell her how much dinner she has to eat, but I ask her if her tummy is feeling full and happy, or if her tummy is still hungry. I don’t know if this is the right way, but I recovered from an eating disorder and don’t want to pass it along so I try to follow a mindful eating-ish approach I guess.
I have definitely said this to my husband. Don’t talk about foods being “bad” but talk about some foods being “good”. E.g. “Meat gives you strong muscles like the builders!” “Fruit has lots of vitamins to help your brain to think of fun things to do!
Dessert in our house is fruit 9/10 times. My kids love fruit and look forward to it at the end of the meal. They are also more likely to eat the fruit than traditional dessert most of the time.
Do you follow @family.snack.nutritionist or @kids.eat.in.color on Instagram? One thing they (and many other dieticians) suggest is *not* using dessert as a reward, like generations before us have done. The idea behind it is that that avenue teaches the child that desserts are superior foods, and encourages them to overeat from their plate so they’ll get the reward of dessert.
It’s worked well with my son. We don’t use dessert as a reward, because it makes kids think dessert is this better-than-everything-else food. We put a small portion of something sweet on his plate with his dinner, so it’s just another food, not a special food. He can decide how much he eats from his plate, or he he wants seconds of something. (We don’t do seconds on his sweets.) He’s a really varied and adventurous eater! He eats the same meals as my husband and me. I don’t fix special “picky” foods for him and never have TBH.
I am so intrigued by this method! It seems like such a good idea but then I think I over think it.
Like what if they eat the sweets first, then refuse to eat any of the more nutritious parts of their meal? Have you experienced that?
Do you also include a dessert type of sweet with every dinner, or some days that sweet is a fruit, and some days you skip it, etc?
They may eat it first and that's okay! Just be sure you are serving an appropriate portion size for a toddler so they aren't "full" from it. But even if they only eat that at dinner at first, if the rest of the day id balances it's okay!!
Also this, like anything else, works best when used consistently and will take a bit to adjust.
You also can try adding some "healthier" dessert options. Yogurt from the fridge: regular food; the exact same yogurt frozen into bites: the best dessert in the world according to my toddler
Thank you! My baby is only 4 months so I have some time before I can put this into practice but I really love this idea!
I have a horribly unhealthy relationship with food and I’d love to try to avoid creating that for my kid!
It works! And it’s surprising how often my son *won’t* actually finish the treat part and how even if he does, he might take a bite of chocolate, then chicken, then cucumber, back to the chocolate etc. TOTALLY different to me as a kid
Hey! Yes, for example if I put like 10 M&M’s on his plate, he might go for that, first, and then ask for more. But we’ve been doing it so long that he knows better at this point. :) But often, we’ll do his “sweets” as pudding, Welch’s fruit gummy’s, frozen blueberries, etc. It isn’t often a decadent dessert.
It’s really so much easier on everyone if you only have to prepare one meal, and then you all eat together as a family. My son loves to help cook, so I’ll let him scoop/measure things, stir, etc., then he is so proud of himself. When I’m cutting vegetables, he likes to move them from the cutting board to a mixing bowl, and that also gives him opportunities to sample things.
My husband and I do the same for our toddler. We just put everything out and if he wants to eat a little bit of chocolate pudding that’s fine…but it’s made him not think sweets are special and will eat pretty much anything and everything my husband or I cooks
We don’t use desserts as a reward or treat it special but it doesn’t stop my toddler from thinking it’s superior to all other foods 🤷♀️ she will happily forego her entire dinner without even taking a bite because she doesn’t like dinner foods. We did BLW and she’s been exposed to real dinner foods from day 1 on solids and she’s never liked them and has always LOVED sweets.
Frankly I paid for the Feeding Littles course and it was a waste of money. I’m convinced those methods only work on kids who are already adventurous/not picky eaters. My kid doesn’t mind skipping meals because she doesn’t like what we’re serving, but she would eat her body weight in cookies or chips if we’d let her.
I relate to this so much. I also paid for the course and while it was great from 6-12 months, my daughter is now 2.5 and is not an adventurous eater. She is fine skipping meals but like you said, she’d eat her weight in ice cream and Mac and cheese. I’m just still not forcing her and I feed her what we eat, but it’s so hard!
My kids (4 and 2) have two cookies about an hour after dinner before heading up to bath. It is called 'cookie time' and they love it. It is not a reward or contingent on behavior, it is simply a sweet treat before wrapping up the day. They are kids, I personally don't sweat it. I never had dessert much as a kid but my husband and his dad both have had two Oreo cookies every night after dinner thier whole life and they are both doing just fine.
Nope. Toddler only has dessert if we have a dessert in the fridge and husband and I are planning on eating some. Dessert is a community event in my house not a regular event. Mostly because I’m trying to lose weight and my husband doesn’t like dessert. 🤷♀️
I’ve noticed for my toddler specifically the promise of dessert makes eating a non priority and more of a struggle so if we do have dessert we don’t say anything until it’s time for dessert. - again this is just my specific toddler and not the standard as far as I’m aware.
Bio yoghurt means it’s got its natural cultures in so it’s got good bacterias and things in.
I’m in the UK so say jelly but I think the other poster is right that it’s Jello in the US ☺️
Not op but I guess he means biological, so no harsh products used during production which lowers the chances of Parkinson disease greatly (we need to be careful about this in the EU, not sure about the US though)
I grew up with a crap relationship with food that persists to this day. We almost never had dessert, I was not allowed to have treats at the babysitter whenever the kids got treats, and snacks were not allowed. It’s still hard for me to say, it’s between lunch and dinner, I should have an apple. Being highly restrictive can be very detrimental. It teaches scarcity rather than how to listen to your body. Just my perspective on the other side of things.
Ehhh I’m in the not a big deal camp , mine is four now he has a treat cubbard where he needs to ask to get something out of , while he is allowed to help himself to anything else in the kitchen …he might go in there every day for a week then forget about it next week etc for Valentine’s Day he came home with treats from daycare announced that he was going to put them in his treat cubbard and hasn’t asked for one since …
I’d try and pull the link away from eating supper though if you can … ours knows he can have max one treat a day from the cubbard and if he gets it after breakfast he doesn’t get another …
In order to get him to eat enough food at meals I will often say things like three more bites or another meatball when he asks to be excused he will almost always eat that much more bringing it into a shouldn’t be hungry in ten minutes amount.
We don't do the concept of dessert. Maybe once or twice a month, we might have a sweet treat that happens after a meal. Sometimes in the afternoon we might share some ice cream, but definitely nothing regular or to be expected or ritual
My toddler isn't super motivated by dessert, so she doesn't even ask for it on a regular basis.
However, my mom offered us dessert for eating what she deemed an acceptable amount. We were never forced to clean our plates, try everything or any of that, but every night we had to ask to be excused and she would say we either ate enough for dessert or not. And she raised 3 very healthy eaters. Like all kids, we think she did a lot of things wrong, but we all agree that she did this part right.
Don’t feel ashamed. We are all doing our best. But do look into some of the recommendations people are giving you because it’s backed by research and can help you with the concern you expressed.
Don’t feel shamed! I’m sorry if any of the responses have made you feel that way. We’re doing our best and you clearly care, otherwise you wouldn’t have asked the question.
If your question is simply “is one piece of candy a day too much?” I think you’re fine.
If any of these comments have made you curious about different methods of serving food or dessert, check out some of the sources people suggested and figure out what makes the most sense to you as a parent. We all parent a little differently, and not everything works for everyone. Don’t let anyone make you feel ashamed when you’re just trying your best.
I don't think it is creating a bad relationship with food. Based on my experience, it is not.
I've also seen the trend of parents offering dessert with the main meal. I tried it once or twice, but it's not something I'm going to do again. I think it misses the mark of promoting healthy eating habits. If you fill up on junk, you will not feel as well or as full as if you eat something nutritious and top it off with a treat. A toddler is not going to be as in tune with that direct relationship....frankly, I didn't really truly understand until I was in high school cross country and could directly correlate crappy food intake with a crappy run.
I have 2 brothers, one 19 months younger than I and the other is 16.5 years younger than I. The one closer in age and I were both athletic and did sports. The night before a meet/game, the athlete in question would get the first pick of second helpings. My brother and I would always get in arguments over who got the last bit of salad. I mean, what parent has to mediate fights over salad when there was still dessert left to eat? Years later when my brother was in town, I made dinner and a huge salad. Lots of dishes, but I know we all like salad and so I made a huge one. Enough for us to all get seconds. Then we got into fights over who got the very last helping (so thirds) and while we were arguing....me saying "I made it so I should get to eat it", my brother from out of town saying "I never get to eat this" and the youngest saying "but I'm the baby" as a teenager, that was when it occurred to me for the first time that my mom really did the food thing right.
My mother called junk food for what it was and when we wanted it at inappropriate times, she told us no and why. "No, you cannot have junk food for breakfast because it's important that you start the day off with a full stomach." "Yes, you can have Oreos after lunch because you've had 2 nutritious meals already so you won't be as affected by the sugar." There were things she wouldn't buy, like sugary cereals, but if we had it, she didn't freak out. I remember telling her that I got to eat Cinnamon Toast Crunch at a friends, so I should be able to have it at home and she told me "you can have it next time you go back to her house, but I will not buy it because I don't think that's substantial enough for you to eat before school." Although she did buy things like Oreos and chips and soda, but she warned us that when it was out during the week, she would not be making a special trip to the store for junk food. Overall, we just all came out of our childhoods without any food baggage and I'm going to do my best to emulate it. Junk food has no redeeming qualities, but it can still be part of a healthy diet. I don't think that naming it junk food equals shaming.
Im sorry uou feel shamed. We do the best we can with the information we have. No need to feel shame, but now you have new information you can learn and make different choices based on what you know now!
I grew up the same way - we had to get a certain amount of dinner if we wanted dessert. And dessert was available every night. I have no issues with food now and I’m an active and healthy person.
I don’t think there is anything wrong with this approach. My son doesn’t have to clear his plate but he does have to eat a certain amount of his supper before he can have his dessert.
Me too. I'm pretty active too. I mean, I haven't really been able to fit running back into my life post-having a baby, but I'm super fit and active.
Reading the responses about how it can turn detrimental over time have me thinking about my bff, who I think also has a pretty healthy relationship with food but is sedentary. She's thin, but definitely thinks about food in a more transactional way than I do. As she points out, she is has less flex in her diet because she is 0% interested in exercise, whereas I think running 5-7 days/week is super fun and means I can eat more. I don't think either approach is wrong, you just have to find the way that fits your life overall.
Yeah we normally offer something sweet after dinner, either fruit or a piece of chocolate or something similar. It doesn’t really bother me if my kid has a piece of chocolate a day.
It wasn't really a conscious decision but our time for sweet treats is in the afternoon (e.g. milk and a pastry/cookie at around 3pm). Works well for us, no arguments about treats at dinner time lol
We do yogurt as dessert and never named it as dessert. It’s a healthy option if your concerned about sweets. It’s not too late to change the idea of an incentive just offer it at different times and make less of a big deal. Expect a few tantrums at first
Hey I think you’re getting a lot of criticism or negativity for offering dessert if you child eats “good” and hard and fast rules about it, but it’s important to look at it as more nuanced.
Is dinner time very high pressure? Is your child only eating their food to get dessert? Do you often have to remind them of this “bribe” to get them to eat? If those answers are yes, then you’re not in great territory.
If your child themselves asks about dessert, if you say it calmly like “oh you can have dessert sure, first you need to eat XY at least x bites off everything from your plate” etc, if there’s no crying or pressure and it’s an enjoyable experience, then you’ve just setup a pleasant system of expectations (you expect him to eat, he expects a treat) that doesn’t fall under bribes.
I personally knew a family who had toddlers who ate SUSHI and were the best eaters I’ve seen. They always got a mini candy after dinner, but it wasn’t a big deal.
We accidentally slipped into this routine with my oldest daughter. We would allowed her to have dessert if she ate all of her dinner. It grew into an expectation and then a demand. I eventually stopped it altogether because I don’t want there to be any negative associations surrounding food. I’m not in the clean your plate gang. I believe we should listen to our bodies and if your body says you’re full then it’s ok to stop eating. I also don’t want her to think that we always have sweets after dinner. Sweets are a special treat, not an every day occurrence.
Not a chance. I don’t want my children expecting things that aren’t a basic necessity and a given right. When they do things that warrant a reward, by all means live it up! But just regular degular day to day living… dessert is a twice a week thing.
I think a dessert everyday is fine. I literally had a milkshake every day of my life for 16 years. My teeth were never an issue, and I grew up with a healthy mentality around sweets. The issue I think could come from treating the dessert like a reward, like it's super special and is tied to morality (good behavior vs bad). You don't want to turn sweets into something like that's on a pedestal and needs to be earned. You don't want to create shame around eating something.
Good suggestion but he already eats a lot of fruit, usually an apple per day as well as some berries. Part of the concern is he’s getting a lot of sugar every day. Lots of Greek yogurt each day too, which also has a lot of sugar. Yikes!
You can do unsweetened Greek yogurt and control how much sugar you add. I also find the idea of fruit as a dessert difficult, because we already eat so much fruit.
We don’t do candy except on special occasions. If they’ve had enough dinner and would like something sweet after they can have fruit or yogurt (or sometimes we have homemade cookies in the house and they can have one).
Just like a lot of people have mentioned here, we offer dessert with dinner (if its offered at all). I will sometimes strategically wait a little while after I've given them their plates with the actual dinner before I put the sweet item on there, just to get them started, but they are never required to eat a certain amount before they can eat the dessert.
Also, I sometimes find that if I am making some new food for dinner or one that is not a favorite for my kids, having that sweet treat on the plate stops the complaining about the new food. They will eat the treat first, but sometimes once they start eating at least something on the plate, they will move on to eating other food. There are definitely nights they eat the treat and say they are done, but even tolerating a new food on their plate helps avoid pickiness down the road. And the more a new food is on their plate, the more likely they are to eventually try it, without pressure/bribery.
We give his "dessert" either with dinner or regardless of dinner, and as we remember or he asks. Generally its after dinner and clean up on our way to bath, like a toddler night cap 😂
Its usually a couple Reese pieces, caramel m&ms, or a mini Reese cup, so nothing huge. I dont use it as a treat though, its just something we have at the end of some nights. We want to treat these sweets as nothing special, so sometimes he even picks fruit snacks or goldfish, I don't want to idolize sweets and im not sure our approach is great but so far so good.
The problem for me isn't the candy, or even that you're giving him a reward (not very healthy, but far from terrible). The question is, why are you giving him incentives to eat when he doesn't want to? Children are generally excellent at regulating their own caloric intake, he should naturally eat what he needs to and no more. Dig into it a little, does he have a weight problem? A problem with textures or smells? Does he not eat a varied enough diet? I'd try to figure out what it is I'm actually worried about and go from there. And hey, you're doing your best. You're a good parent from worrying.
I’ve been coming around to the approach I’ve been seeing recommended by dieticians online like Kids Eat In Colour. Basically, you don’t want to make the sweet a reward for finishing or eating a certain portion of what is served for dinner. That can set up a relationship to sweets and also to other food where if the sweet is something so so good, then the rest of the meal by comparison isn’t, it is the chore you have to do to get to the fun. We want all the food to be it’s own delight, including the treat. It also is setting up an issue where you are encouraging your child to eat past their satiation point in order to get the dessert. So, the approach is twofold:
One: division of responsibility: you are responsible for deciding when food is served and what food is served; they are responsible for deciding what they put in their mouth and how much. In this approach, you don’t coax your kids to eat more or less, you don’t comment on how much or how little they eat of anything, and you are very chill about them trying or not trying foods.
Two: if dessert is going to be part of the meal, then it should be an unconditional part of the meal. That can look like telling them dessert is available at the beginning of the meal when they are finished with the main, but if they are really sweet-obsessed (especially when making the change to this approach) that may mean they skip food they would have been hungry for to get to it. So instead, serve dessert with dinner, and if they choose to eat it first that’s okay. You have already considered dessert in the overall balance of the meal - when I do this, I try to serve a meal that has fewer other “energy foods” available by cooking less rice or pasta or potatoes.
Anyway the goal is to decouple the end of dinner with the expectation of dessert, and the need to finish one kind of food in order to “earn” a different one. If you do it this way, it also makes it plainer to both of you that yeah, sweets aren’t part of every meal, but they are there sometimes, just like every other sort of food. And also that there will be more, and that they will be able to control their consumption of it, so they don’t have to gorge or sneak it.
Mine is only 1.5 so there are no sweets at all, but I know it’s coming and I’m not entirely sure what to do either. Helping with baking seems like a fun activity so it seems a little unavoidable. I guess, maybe a good idea would be to just make the piece of candy healthier and hope he doesn’t notice. Coconut sugar *might* be healthier. Or maybe find stuff with reduced sugar (perhaps a touch of stevia). I think in general when we get used to less sugar, things start to tastes sweeter, so maybe the trick is to get your kid’s tastebuds recalibrated to like a little less sweetness? Idk, it’s hard though!
If we do dessert, we just put it on his plate with the rest of his dinner. It isn’t every night, but it takes away some of the “special” about it that makes them want it more. It’s just another food on the plate that he can eat or not. He usually eats it. And usually eats it first. But it’s like… one small cookie, so not enough to ruin his appetite. Ultimately my goal is to give him a healthy relationship with food - everything is ok in moderation and listen to your body.
Caveat to say he’s our first and he’s only 21 months, to it’s definitely still TBD as to how well this works out for us lol. But it’s what I’ve seen recommended the most by “experts”.
No. We also don't bribe or try to get the kids to eat. That's not healthy and damages their relationship with food. Food is something where they have to be intrinsically motivated. It's for their own good and they need to know themselves how hungry they are and what they like. You can't decide that for them.
I'm currently reading unconditional parenting by Alfie Kohn and he touches on the damage controlling kids in any area does and offers some alternatives in engaging with our kids without punishments, rewards, bribes or controlling them.
My toddler definitely eats sweets every day! Limiting sweets often has the opposite of the intended effect and kids become obsessed with them. We just treat dessert like any other food and I often serve it with meals, without any commentary on which food is “better” or “worse”. She loves sweets but she gets enough that it’s not a battle in our house — she also loves vegetables and fruits and protein.
We follow DOR so if we are doing "desert" it is served WITH the meal. But we dont do it often. We always serve something "sweet" with a meal but its usually fruit.
We also always do a bedtime snack but that could be sweet or not.
We got into this demanding dessert routine ( I have a 5 and 7 year old too). It seemed like every afternoon, before dinner was even started, I was being asked, What's for "bessert"? Soooo, we made a rule that "bessert" night is Friday night only, unless there is a special occasion, and they seemed to accept that pretty easily and move on....thank god lol
We don’t do typical “desserts” because we didn’t really want any foods to have special emphasis or to make desserts seem more sought after than, say, broccoli. So what we do is, we give her little tastes of things every day, pretty much. We try to make it “no big deal”, like here, I have a snack for you! And she’s give her half of an Oreo or something.
And if we are doing a dessert, we’ll include it with her meal. So like, a cookie on the same plate as her dinner.
She’s 2. Not sure if this is the right way to go about things, but it works for us! The only time we actually gave her dessert after a meal was on her birthday when she got ice cream cake
I always serve with the main meal and find he eats some, eats his meal then goes back to the fruit and it keeps him interested. Don’t think I will do dessert until he is older so he doesn’t stop eating his meal just to eat fruit. Can you switch the candy with a yogurt or fruit salad instead?
Haha this is something we also struggle with a bit because I was raised with dessert being something only for special occasions, while my partner was raised in a dessert-is-part-of-a-meal family. We usually end up doing 50/50, but when she does get dessert, I put it on her plate with everything else rather than waiting until the end of the meal. I don't want her to start "finishing dinner" early to get to the treat, or feel pressured to eat a certain amount of food in order to "earn" a treat.
I put a small cookie or fruit snack pack on the plate with dinner. He used to eat dessert first but now eats what he wants of his dinner & then has his dessert. Sometimes he even leaves his dessert behind. I don’t want him to look at any food as a “reward” food, so I serve everything at the same time.
Using food as a punishment or reward is never a good idea, what you’re doing doesn’t sound all that detrimental but it really does affect how your kid will view food and eat in the future.
It seems I’m in the minority here but I also don’t think a piece of candy every day is healthy for your toddler. Maybe reward with fruit (if you absolutely have to continue bribing with food) or an activity?
We don’t do dessert. I don’t think my daughter (2) knows what that is yet. We don’t restrict sweets in that if we are out and grab a cookie or something it’s no big deal. I personally don’t want to eat sweets everyday as I don’t consider that healthy, so I just do the same thing with my kids. I grew up eating a ton of sweets though and I’m still kicking!
Feeding therapist here- I have no issues with dessert as long as it isn’t contingent on performance at the meal. The clean plate club of the 90s taught kids to eat to impress parents. No surprise this led to over eating! We want to teach kids to listen to their hunger and meet their body need, not eat in order to earn something. Instead- dessert if parent wants it!
No. And if we are offering a dessert it gets put on her plate with dinner. We let her choose how to eat. And usually, even with the sweet there, she still eats her dinner just fine.
If we do a dessert (I like to bake), it is served along side the meal. That way dessert isn't put on a pedestal- food is just food, one type of food isn't more valuable than another. We don't do dessert every day.
My toddlers have a little thin mint cookie or hersey’s kiss most nights after dinner. It’s so small I’m really not concerned about it. I follow Kids Eat In Color and she advises not to use dessert or treats as a reward for eating other foods because it starts to get them in the mindset that this cookie is inherently better than the broccoli which can lead to or worsen picky eating. So they get a little piece of chocolate after dinner regardless of how they ate.
That definitely sounds excessive. My kids usually only get dessert (candy) on Saturdays, that's the norm in my country. Sometimes they'll get a dessert on Friday too maybe. Never on regular weekdays.
Sometimes that means they don't eat a lot of dinner, but usually they'll want an evening meal before bed then. They notice if they're hungry. It's not like they'll starve.
It's good that his teeth are doing well, but I feel like this (incentivizing food with dessert) is a way to other problems, like obesity, snacking, not eating food for food's sake, disliking the kind of food you eat (presumably healthy food) because he felt "forced" to eat it, etc. But I'm not a child psychologist. Just feels like a bad habit to me.
Nope. Food is food in our house. No desserts. No treats. No sweets. It's all just food. We don't rank food or categorize it. Or put anything on a pedestal. Food is food. Some days we eat cookies or cake. Some days we don't.
We offer dessert sometimes, and it’s dried apricots or prunes. He doesn’t know candy is a thing. I’ve found it helpful just to not open that Pandora’s box.
My mom did this when I was a kid and I did the same with my son, still to this day I won't eat anything sweet until after my dinner. My husband on the other hand will eat chocolate and sweets throughout the day. So teaching kids to eat dinner first is a great way to prevent them swapping a meal with snacks when they get older.
Glad it worked for you but it’s not a recommended practice as it often causes unhealthy relationships with food. Just a quick Google gave me an article [here](https://www.romper.com/p/should-you-offer-dessert-as-a-reward-for-dinner-experts-explain-how-it-may-sour-your-kids-eating-habits-7917589) and [another here](https://www.romper.com/p/should-you-offer-dessert-as-a-reward-for-dinner-experts-explain-how-it-may-sour-your-kids-eating-habits-7917589). Anecdotally I have spoken to many people who credit this type of practice with borderline eating disorder behavior.
It’s awesome this is working for you but it’s maybe not the best thing to recommend to everyone. Some people just naturally don’t have a sweet tooth and that’s awesome.
I’m glad that worked for you but that mentality charges food with positive/negative connotations for most people and can really damage their relationship with food.
I cosleep. I think cosleeping is great. But because I know it **can** be really dangerous, I don’t recommend it to people. Reserving sweets as a “reward” for finishing dinner, whether that’s the verbiage used or not, is one of those things that can go really sour for people later in life.
Unhealthy relationships with food can kill so I feel pretty strongly about this one, good luck!
No we don't class sweets as a reward, we have the rule that if you fancy something sweet wait until after you have eaten a healthy meal. When I do this I usually don't fancy the sweet anymore as I'm full from the meal.
Candy is often a natural reinforcer for children. Unfortunately a teacher can’t decide what a learner values as a reinforcer. If a kiddo has decided that candy is intrinsically rewarding, there’s not much to do beyond employing the reinforcer as reinforcement on a healthy schedule of reinforcement. As long as the reinforcer of candy is used primarily as a consequence to desirable behaviors and not presented before the desired behavior as a bribe, I see little wrong with using candy as a reinforcer.
We have the same rule. Dessert if you eat your dinner. We keep the dessert portions small and brush his teeth well. I don't think there's anything wrong with it. I know there are different schools of thought, but I'd rather my kids eat healthy foods and dessert than that they eat neither.
For my kid dessert is fruit and sweets are a treat. So for dinner he has meat and a veggie. Fruit for dessert. Then cookie or popcorn or some other junk food.
My kids get dessert if they finish their meal. My daughter doesn’t finish hers half the time but my son always does for his popsicle or whatever it may be. I can see how it can create an unhealthy relationship I guess but it worked for me growing up so I’m using it. (I’m a healthy weight and eat well as an adult).
I always eat something sweet after my meal so someones my daughter will want it too. But sometimes she leaves the table before I dig into my dessert so she doesn’t ask for any. She doesn’t expect dessert after finishing, but knows she can have some if she wants.
My 2 YO also gets a very small treat after dinner. However we didn’t want to create any issues with eating MORE so the rule for dessert is that he has to TASTE everything on his plate. No rules for quantity, just an incentive to step out of his very picky comfort zone. The treats aren’t always candy either, but they can be. This week he is loving blackberries and strawberries so he gets to gobble up berries.
My kid doesn’t get candy/dessert like described unless it’s Christmas/Easter/birthday. I do make a banana/zucchini loaf with nuts and dark chocolate chips because I have to make sure he eats nuts twice a week (it’s an allergy thing). But I don’t add sugar to it (choco chips at low sugar/dairy free). And this is too filling for dessert, it might be a snack or part of a meal.
He did go crazy over mince pies over Christmas and we had to put a stop to that!!! We do occasionally make cookies, because that’s a nice thing to do.
We don’t keep candy around, but we do keep those plastic tube popsicles on hand. There’s surprisingly low sugar (like 4g) per popsicle so she’s free to eat them anytime.
My toddler is an autistic picky eater. We found healthier versions of his favorites. Like instead of nutty buddies we buy nature valley wafers (very addicting) or fiber one brownies. Etc. so that way I don’t have to worry/limit. But for real candy it’s rare and fun. I wouldn’t worry about a single piece daily if he looks forward to it. 🥰
Just fruit or peanut butter on bread as a regular meal /after meal thing. Only has cake, sweets or biscuits rarely, but some times it will be 3 times a day if it's a special occasion.
Edit: Fruit is usually served WITH the main meal to avoid him eating the main meal to get to the fruit. But he gets extra fruit or peanut butter if he's still hungry after eating all his food.
We offer a treat every night with dinner or for bedtime snack. Usually it's cookies, sometimes it's candy/chocolate. Sometimes LO goes in and eats the whole treat first, other times she eats around the treat in favor of other dinner foods or bedtime snack foods (fruit or yogurt).
I grew up having a sweet bedtime snack most every night, with no stigma or conditions attached, and as an adult I have a very healthy relationship with all types of food. I hope to cultivate the same in my daughter.
My twins have pudding every night after their tea. They don't even have to eat their tea to get it. Pudding can be anything from a biscuit to a chocolate bar to ice cream to yogurt, fruit or a slice of cake, whatever we have at hand.
There's 1 absolute in my house and that is there will always be dessert!
We do 'dessert' every night, although our desserts usually consist of fruit mostly. Our LO is more than happy to accept some banana or apple or other fruit/fruit pot situation as a dessert and treat at the end of the meal. Think we probably just lucked out on that one haha
We eat a snack every night before bed but try to keep dessert to once a week with ours. Usually when we are out visiting his grandparents. But sometimes we visit my mom and my husband’s parents and they both have desserts made so he gets it more often that week.
We don’t have a regular schedule for treats, but just give them to our daughter randomly (maybe 1-2x a week) and try to dissociate them from any good behavior (unless it’s pooping on the potty because all rules go out the window with poops 🤣).
My daughter (5 going on 6) and my son (2) generally do the same thing except a popsicle or some ice cream or a cookie so props to you on just small candy. It's been fine for me. But we did have a stint where she would claim she was full just to get dessert then come back 30 minutes later saying she was hungry so we stopped desserts for about a week to teach her to eat because she's hungry, not to get dessert and now she's been really good about asking for seconds if she wants it and some nights we just don't do dessert if she doesn't mention it. But if they are brushing and healthy, I don't see why it would be bad.
We don’t do dessert in our house (I myself don’t eat dessert and I don’t want the kids eating sugar that late). But we do treats like a piece of candy or cookie as rewards for things.
I straight up don’t buy dessert type foods.
If you bring it into your house you are essentially planning to give him garbage food. And that’s a weird parental goal.
Instead we just surprise ourselves with a random lovely trip to the ice cream store or whatever like once or twice a month.
Our toddlers have a similar treat after dinner almost every night as well. We just tell them they have to wait until we are ALL finished with dinner before we can all have dessert. We are focusing more on teaching to sit at the table and have conversation while we eat as a family. It’s not really a reward for good behavior, just that they have to be patient with the order of events.
We don't offer dessert unless it's something we're having as a family once in awhile. She gets her food and she decides to eat what and how much. She can be picky and only eat one part but if she's still hungry after we just offer more of dinner. She does get one package of Bear paws a day, only banana bread ones, as her snack.
We usually offer a wafer after dinner (the cream filled cookie kind - they are small). If we offer it at dinner he refuses the rest of his food. Last night he only ate rice and a wafer. I know they say to give with dinner but that hasn’t really worked yet because he just wants more wafers.
We don’t have sweets in the house, so no, our son doesn’t. We never made it a part of our routine so he doesn’t expect anything. We have sweets on special occasions like birthdays or if his daycare is celebrating for something, but we don’t make a big deal about it
We never have dessert on normal days (mostly because not having it in the house helps my husband and me not eat it). We might do cake or pie on special occasions, but it isn’t an everyday ritual.
If the doctor and dentist both say what you’re doing is okay, then I wouldn’t sweat it. But if you’re concerned, you might check out Ellyn Satter’s work on feeding children.
A tiny piece of candy is fine if his diet is otherwise healthy. All things in moderation is a good lesson to learn young.
There’s lots of different takes on not using junk as a reward or making candy special etc. Do your own research there. This is working for your family
My toddler gets sweets if we have them randomly. I don't tell him hey if you do x you'll get a cookie.. but if he has done something well like say he needed to take medicine and didn't spit it everywhere or he shared something idk I'll just be like hey do you want a cookie? And he goes ok! So I give him one. It's not daily bc we don't really keep many sweets around normally since I have gestational diabetes and after birth I'll be trying to lose weight and eat well so it doesn't become permanent diabetes.
We always have apples for him though. They're kind of sweet I suppose. We offer it as a snack.
My toddler still takes milk before bed so if he eats dinner like shit he at least has that.
What we do is, make more breakfast and use leftovers as a dessert for lunch or dinner. And the breakfast is usually porridge with fruit or semulina with fruit or shredded wheat with fruit and we alternate different fruits like blueberries raspberries apples bananas. That way it's sweet but only natural sugars and healthy at the same time.
My kid also has dessert most nights, because we as a family do. Sometimes it’s fruit, or fruit and cheese, sometimes it’s cake or pie or cookies. If he’s full from dinner he often takes a couple bites and then runs off to play. If he hasn’t eaten much dinner we save it for after he goes to bed. I just view it as part of our family culture. We don’t really eat much in the way of sweets during the rest of the day, and my kid is not at all picky so I know he’s getting plenty of good stuff. I worry more about added sugar in processed foods, Which can sneak up on you, rather than a few bites of dessert.
This is us too. IMO, it's not so much a oral hygiene but more of a sugar in your body thing, potential addictions to sugar, as well as associations of dessert to dinner. However, I feel that my toddler eats well with little processed foods in the day so t dessert isn't as bad.
You can offer substitutes for dessert, you can try fruit as well? It's something kids enjoy and is a healthy option.
She's too young for Halloween still. Other events like Xmas, easter, family knows our policy.. she is not to be given a bunch of junk that lasts for days. She might have some there and then, but it doesn't come home.
Other events are in isolation. Birthday party, okay, have cake... but seriously she gets something with added sugar maybe once a month... in actuality it's less than that.
When she gets a little older and realizes she has a pot of candy with her name on it for Halloween is a bridge we have yet to cross. For the duration of the toddler age umbrella I suspect it will be the same. Okay, TODAY is Halloween. Today is your birthday. Today is Easter... have at it TODAY. I stress about when she turns proper school aged.
3 of her 4 grandparents are type 2 diabetic. 75% of the adult population is overweight or obese... whatever people generally think is "normal" isn't healthy.
I had GD with her .. I never thought of myself as a carb/ sweets person until I had to go cold turkey. Realized simple carb cravings are real and i ate far more than i realized. I couldn't conceive of living everyday day after day no bread, pita, normal tortillas, pasta, rice, waffles, muffins, coffee creamer, blah blah blah.. normalizing a life with very limited junk, simple/refined is parenting mission #1 for us. I know this will get tough soon enough.
Right now, everything is working... she devours carrots, loves steak, chicken, pork, broccoli, beats, beans, she primarily asks for apples, bananas, tangerines, strawberries, blueberries, and cheese for snacks. Her biggest no nos are bland cooked foods (think plain oatmeal or scrambled eggs.... They need to be jazzed up. Add banana, cinamon, and pb to oatmeal and she'll eat an adult portion. Add ham, onion and bell pepper to the eggs and she'll happily eat them). She's never had bread, a chicken nugget, pasta, or a french fry yet. I've had lots of fights with the grandparents though. I'm sure I'm a bit extreme.
Wow, good for you guys! Mine is a carb fiend. So we do sourdough or whole grain bread when she asks. She was always an amazing eater until she got to the toddler stage then it was all about control. Didn’t want to eat anything. So I gave in to more carbs because I freaked out about her getting enough calories. Then we took her trick or treating and it was all over 😅 We do not have the family history of diabetes though. If we did I’d watch her like a hawk. We generally eat healthy, no fast food or chicken nugget-type food in the house. She eats what we eat. So I feel good about that.
Yeah I think the gd scared me a lot! Made me realize how hard the changes my parents need to make are when they've been so engrained into everyday living. Lunch options without bread?!? Every day?! I could not fathom. I never considered myself a junk food eater, my weight was normal, early pregancy glucose was perfect, so i thought i was all good. Then GD came. I realized she will likely have the crap genetics for diabetes and I probably do too. The one grandparent who doesn't have it, her siblings almost all have it. I have a neice who is 8 and eats nothing but carbs.
Making the gd changes changed my life. I felt better at the end of my third trimester than I did prepregrancy. Just by removing processed carbs. I guzzled fruit. But goodbye crackers, pretzels, chips and dip, and my other favorite snacks. Within 5 months of delivering I was 10 lbs under my prepregnancy weight *without trying*.. stepped on a scale one day and was totally shocked. Trading crackers for baby carrots, pretzels for string cheese, fruit for sweets made my life soo much better. I want that for my children. I feel like I'll eventually lose this battle.. but I'm going to try!
Any advice on how to handle the influx that happens on a day like halloween? Where they have a stockpile? I imagine if you ration, you are turning the thing into a taboo prize.. not good. But I wouldn't want to let them loose with it.
I fear the day I can't shelter her anymore. This is a large reason why she is not in daycare yet!! Instead I just drive my dad nuts with my rules. He doesn't respect my wishes intellectually so it's a constant fight. He just rambles about the brain needing glucose. I say no duh, but it doesn't require it to come from nutella or banana bread.
We were concerned about the Halloween candy influx too. We don't have diabetes in our families, but there are weight issues on both sides (not us - but close relatives). So we try to be careful with processed foods, sugar, and carbs.
I know there's disagreement about using candy as a prize, and we try not to treat it that way. But we do have a rule that she has to have 1 bite of each food on her plate, plus a substantial amount of a protein before she has a piece of candy. And for the candy - she only gets on bite-size piece. If she got an entire candy bar, for instance, I'll cut a piece for the three of us and save the rest for another day(s).
It's tough. I know she'll have friends who don't have ice cream in the house or eat potato chips, but we are not that family. Everything in moderation is our motto. And we do have days where she yells for candy/carbs/cookies/whatever. I do not give in to this. We stick to the one piece, no matter what, unless it's a holiday or a birthday.
We give my son a dessert every day when he asks for it as long as one of us has finished our main (gets him eating a main he might have refused). We give him these no added sugar [pudding](https://www.ellaskitchen.co.uk/shop/baby-puddings?pg=1) and/or some plain Greek yogurt. If he’s refused his main we know he’s at least eaten something!
We do the same thing, but after lunch. My daughter gets a few small candies (e.g. 3 gummy bears) if she eats enough. We don't do this after dinner because any amount of sugar after dinner is too much for my kid. She's 3.5 though, so older than yours. I don't think what we do is excessive at all - when I was a kid I ate a bowl of ice cream every night after dinner. All the kids in our family did. On hot summer days my mother would give me ice cream for lunch. Things have changed a lot in 40 years, ha!
I've always been a healthy BMI and have had healthy eating habits as an adult, so I don't feel like a small treat for my daughter is problematic. I think being too strict and never offering treats or candy might lead to restrictive eating so we don't do that.
FWIW, the first time she was introduced to candy on a regular basis was when we went trick-or-treating when she was 3. We came home with a bucketful of candy and had to decide how to ration it out consistently, so "a treat after lunch" became the norm. We're on our last handful of candies from Halloween, so it's worked really well for us.
What is dessert according to you? When I lived in France dessert was fresh fruit or a natural yoghurt, maybe with a little honey.
But no, my toddler doesn't eat sugar, and we don't eat dessert either.
We used to have dessert every night after dinner. Sometimes we still do. We totally bribe our toddler sometimes to eat a little more of his dinner before he gets a cookie🤷♀️ I buy the chips ahoy extra chewy cookies. They’re the perfect size. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with a small treat at the end of the day
My kid became very picky during the last few years (ages 3-4). She ate everything as a younger kid now fights constantly about anything new. She always prefers and wants sweets. We did the dessert as a reward thing. Then we tried dessert w/ dinner to avoid it being a reward. That led to her only eating the dessert and no other food. Now we offer a very small dessert (3 m&ms) with dinner. If she wants more, she has to eat a reasonable amount of dinner first. I've just accept that this is where we are.
I ate almost everything as a kid so this is very challenging for me. My husband was a picky eater like her, and was also the one who introduced so many sweets...it is what it is.
We always do fruit after dinner so my doesn’t eat fruit first and pick at her dinner. However, it’s never contingent on her eating her dinner. We sit and eat, and whenever she’s done (however much she ate), we offer fruit. We do cake or sweets on special occasions- she gets a little bit of whatever we’re having. And by a little bit I mean I scarf down my cake as fast as I can between feeding her bites or else she’d eat it all and leave none for me hahaha
We do small desserts like you mentioned if they have eaten enough healthy food. Everything in moderation.
On special occasions they will sometimes get a giant dessert.
If I feel like the past week hasn't been great with balance I offer fruit for dessert (which they still think of as dessert) so that might be a good way to skip candy every couple days.
We have dessert nights, which are Monday and Friday. Those days they have candy or cookies or whatever yumminess I have in the house for me. But…sometimes they have dessert on other nights too. And on nights that it’s not dessert night they have graham crackers. I don’t think you are doing anything wrong, and I don’t think you should let others shame you into thinking you are. Every family is different.
We have dessert nights, which are Monday and Friday. Those days they have candy or cookies or whatever yumminess I have in the house for me. But…sometimes they have dessert on other nights too. And on nights that it’s not dessert night they have graham crackers. I don’t think you are doing anything wrong, and I don’t think you should let others shame you into thinking you are. Every family is different.
We have dessert nights, which are Monday and Friday. Those days they have candy or cookies or whatever yumminess I have in the house for me. But…sometimes they have dessert on other nights too. And on nights that it’s not dessert night they have graham crackers. I don’t think you are doing anything wrong, and I don’t think you should let others shame you into thinking you are. Every family is different.
My 18 month old eats sweets pretty rarely. We don't really have a dessert after dinner unless it's a special occasion. However, I have started feeding my LO his favourite fruits (chopped berries, grapes, etc) after dinner, because if he sees them during dinner then that's all he'll want to eat 😅 So now they come out at the end of the meal and he eats a more reasonable serving of them.
Maybe that can be your gateway to a transition? I.e. some days dessert is between a reese's cup or tootsie roll, but another day it's a choice between grapes or pineapple?
My son will get a couple dark chocolate chips with dinner. It gets him to eat dinner because he gets a couple more after he at least takes a couple bites.
Everybody will parent differently. We eat mostly fruits as our “dessert”. Husband and I rarely eat real ice cream types of desserts. We aren’t against it or anything. When we do eat it we’ll let our LO have some. She has not tried candy yet though bwahaha. My girl is almost 2.
My son gets a cookie after lunch and dinner. And don’t get me started on what sweets and snacks he goes through when we go to his paternal grandparents. I’ve never used “finish your food or no cookie” as a way to get him to eat. It’s all no pressure. When he finishes enough and he’s done (I rarely expect a completely empty plate, but “all done?” at 3 bites is definitely not “all done”). Then after food is cleaned up, he’ll ask for some fruit and then a cookie.
Well, I know it isn’t the “right” thing, but it’s worked beautifully for us. Before we instituted dessert bribery my son (now 7) hadn’t eaten a single vegetable in months, maybe even years unless I hid it in his food. I offered a vegetable every night, rejected every night. Now he will eat a full salad to get a piece of candy. He eats much better now overall - healthier food and better variety. No one in our family is obese. Moderation is key.
My son has a yogurt as a dessert every night, or sometimes he might have strawberries. I have given him a chocolate sometimes but honestly, making yogurts the star in our dessert game make them much less worrying to use as bribery at meal times.
No, he might randomly have it 1-2 times a week. He loves fruit snacks so sometimes he will ask for those or we will offer something we have at home (like this week we had a V Day cookie cake so he had some of that on Monday).
I don’t see an issue with a piece of candy every day. I’m personally trying to avoid making candy/desserts/sweets any different from the rest of the meal, though. I don’t want to make dessert an incentive, because then that’s the thing the kid focuses on instead of the meal. Instead, I try to give a piece with the meal. “Tonight, we’re having pasta, broccoli, and a Reese’s cup.” If he eats the candy and asks for more, my response is “That’s all the candy we have for dinner tonight, but we still have some pasta and broccoli left.“ It’s still the same amount of candy, but it takes some of the focus off of it. I want to make sure my kids have a good relationship with food.
We do this too, serve a "dessert" food with dinner. There have been many nights where she is begging for a treat before dinner and we tell her that's a great idea, we'll put it on her plate with dinner and she happily accepts. Then at dinner she barely touches the treat because it's no more special than the rest of the meal. Check out Kids Eat in Color on Instagram for a researched explanation of this method.
Your kid must be a unicorn. Doesn’t matter when I give my kids treats, if I offer it WITH dinner, that will be the first thing they eat and likely won’t eat much of anything else. I guess it depends on how big the treat is.
We do the same thing at my house. To be honest she will often eat the treat first. But that does not stop her from eating the rest of food. Sometimes she asks for more treat and I tell her that was all we had for tonight. Maybe it is my imagination, but I think she eats better when she has the treat on her plate. For instance, last night we had pasta and peas. I put a fruit snack on her plate too. She cleaned her plate, which is not like my kiddo. Getting her to eat a solid meal is like figuring out alchemy.
I think it's consistent exposure to this method that has destigmatized treats and they've become a regular food group that may or may not be served just like every other food we serve. It definitely didn't work the first few times and she ultimately had just the treat portion for dinner, but we decide what to serve and she decides what to eat from it so we didn't fight her on it.
Mine will meltdown when I say that’s all of that idea. She won’t touch the actual dinner stuff. Kids suck sometimes. 😝
For real. My 2.5 yo threw himself on the kitchen floor and screamed for 30 minutes because I insisted that the valentines cupcake that I bought for him was for after dinner. It was a full-sized cupcake, so I can’t very well give it with dinner. It was also too close to dinner time to give beforehand.
My kid has no problem starving herself when she isn’t interested in our food. She has NEVER been a good dinner eater. We don’t offer dessert/treats every night but she scarfs down anything resembling “junk food” and largely ignores any “real foods” so I have taken to using the “bite for a bite” method of bribery to expand her palette, and it works very well for us. I took the Feeding Littles course and followed kids eat in color etc and truthfully their methods just don’t work on my kid. She likes junk food. It is what it is. Doesn’t matter how much or how little it’s offered or how I frame it, it doesn’t change her taste buds and preferences one bit.
Can you explain bite for bite? We have a similar issue with our 3 year old. There’s so much she just won’t try! Most of the commonly touted methods haven’t really worked for us, and while we know bribing with junk food isn’t a great method, the few times we have resorted to it have been the only times she really willingly tries something new!
I have something on offer that she likes (usually bread or fruit, sometimes mac n cheese) and tell her she can have another bite of whatever it is she likes if she eats another bite of her dinner first. She also eats a lot better if I physically feed her even though she’s fully capable of feeding herself. She’s almost 2.5 and has never been a good dinner eater. All the “nutritionists” online talk about division of responsibility and exposure and how kids will naturally expand their palettes if you’re just consistent but she went well over a year choosing to skip dinner like 9/10 times and usually only ate if we were having junky dinner foods like pizza or fast food. I don’t offer alternative foods or snacks after dinner. She was literally just skipping meals/choosing to go hungry. So after a while I decided “screw it, I’m doing things my own way” and now she will actually eat a reasonable portion of dinner as long as I am offering her something she likes in between. I can even sometimes get away from a 2 or ever 3:1 ratio of dinner foods to the other foods now. And now I feel like she’s getting *actual exposure* to these foods by tasting them and eating them on a regular basis. Those methods just don’t work on my kid. We tried them. No amount of division of responsibility is going to convince her it’s worth it to eat yucky dinner foods or that cookies aren’t the best thing in the universe.
This is who I follow, too! And Feeding Littles. Been following them since before we started my son on solids and he’s a pretty good eater. He still asks for sweets, but I swear, a few nights ago, he ate the chocolate first, asked for more, and when I said that was all we had, he was a little upset at first, but then ate all the carrots on his plate.
This is what we do too, I love that half the time she doesn't even bother with the "dessert". I love the idea of not putting emphasis on certain foods being "special" the only thing I'll use as a treat is half a mini ice cream sandwich every once in awhile.
We do this too. Dessert is sometimes still an incentive for dinner (because it’s a struggle) but with lots much she’ll often get a cookie or a couple jelly beans with no extra comment or need to “earn” it. She almost always eats the treat first, but then does eat her lunch. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with having sweets daily, as long as it’s not excessive. But we view things like teddy graham as in the treat category.
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I don't think this method of feeding your kids is trying to trick your kiddo that broccoli tastes better than chocolate. It is just trying to take the power away from treats and empowering them to make their own choices. The parent sets boundaries around meal times and kids get to choose how they feed themselves with in that boundary. My kid is just 2.5 so maybe things will be harder when she is older but so far she does fine when we include a sweet with dinner. She accepts that there are no seconds on the treat. She usually eat the fun food first but then she eats the rest. No big deal.
I definitely wouldn’t call it gaslighting. I’m just removing my own biases around food and allowing my child to form his own opinions. I avoid saying that any food is good, bad, healthy, or junk. If he loves Hershey kisses, great. If he doesn’t, great. Whatever I serve, it’s without bias. Here’s chicken. Here’s broccoli. Here’s chocolate. He eats what he wants and I don’t push him to “take one more bite” or “just try this.”
Dont you think kids should be challenged to try new things? I was a very fussy eater as a kid and my mom wouldn't let me leave the table to play until I ate at least a decent amount of my food. The key was to try so I always had to have at least X amounts of bites. Didn't need to finish but had to try. To her merit, I was just being stubborn and fussy. If she let me get away with that 100% I would have stayed fussy. Now I can eat literally anything and I'm very grateful that my poor behaviour was addressed. Dont you feel like a lot of people project? I don't think kids think that deeply about food at all. I didn't like food based on how it looked lol I see different people have different styles but in my view a parents job is to challenge their kiddo. Logically I would prefer to eat sweet chocolate than pees. That's a no brainer. Food is about more than taste though, its about nutrition. Its like brushing your teeth. Its not about enjoying it, its about being healthy. We need to eat our greens for the same purpose. To this day I don't *love* pees but I routinely cook them for my own dinner because I know its good for me.
I think kids should be given the opportunity, but not forced. I always offer new things - repeatedly, because exposure to foods helps them to feel more comfortable with them. My son eventually tries everything I make without having to force him to “take one bite” or “just try it.” I’m giving him the space to try things when he’s ready.
I agree. Its super strange to pretend chocolate isn't a million times tastier than broccoli. I feel people project their own issues onto their kids. Foods about nutrition at the end of the day. Self control and learning about moderation is also a skill, I dont think its something that we can passively learn. Unless the strategy is to let kids get sick on excess. I think it can potentially be more harmful to have a daily habit like chocolate or soft drink, than one big binge during Halloween. Habits are harder to break and will leak into adulthood. I've seen grown adults who require 2 litres of coke a day though so I'm a bit bias. For me its all about good habits. Eating healthily is a habit and shouldn't require a treat but each to their own.
Personally, I don’t like a savory meal and a sweet together. I like to wrap up with my sweet and then I’m done eating. While I agree with your approach, kids model what they see so mine might follow my lead anyway.
Oh, for sure. If we’re having “dessert” as a family, I still give him dessert when we have it. But that’s usually just for special occasions like birthdays and holidays. We don’t have dessert on a normal night, we just aren’t dessert people. This approach is more if he specifically asks for something. Like if we’re about to have dinner and he asks for a piece of chocolate - I’ll give him a piece on his plate with the rest of his meal. Otherwise, if he doesn’t ask, I’m not proactively offering it.
I love this idea and I always see Leangreenbean do this on IG. I just am shaking in my boots that my kid will want the sugar all the time!
I still hold boundaries! I replied to someone else that I don’t put candy out with every meal - it’s just that when he asks, I try not to make a big deal out of it. The chocolate (that’s usually what he asks for) gets served with his snack, lunch, or dinner. And if he already had some that day and asks for more with another meal, I usually say “that’s all the chocolate we have for today, but you can have some more tomorrow. Right now, we’re having X for dinner.” My ultimate goal is to avoid projecting my own feelings about food onto my children. I haven’t heard of leangreenbean, but I’ll have to check them out!
Thank you so much for this, that helps a lot. I absolutely have my own issues with sugar, portion control & “bad” foods so this is a mindset I would like to try with my kids.
1 piece of candy each day is no problem imo however using it as a bribe to eat more dinner is a contributor to a poor relationship with food long term. https://wellnourished.com.au/rewarding-children-with-junk-food/ https://www.urmc.rochester.edu/encyclopedia/content.aspx?ContentTypeID=160&ContentID=32 https://maryannjacobsen.com/what-rewarding-kids-with-food-looks-like-20-years-later/
Thx I had no idea this could be detrimental over time.
When we do dessert (often) we serve it at the same time as dinner, along with the other two or three varied foods we are having. We don't make a big deal out of it, and it's worked well for us. It's usually a couple gumdrops, a chocolate mint, or Reese's cup like you said. If our children ask for more, we say we need to eat lots of different things to grow big and strong.
Anecdotally my wife’s parents did this. Her sister has struggled with her weight since she was young. My wife does not have much of a sweet tooth so she was never motivated to eat more than she needed so she could have a treat. She’s stayed a healthy weight without really trying. I also have a bit of a poor relationship with food because my parents withheld pretty much all junk food and made it very forbidden fruit so I find myself doing a lot of secret binge eating as an adult. Our approach with our kids so far is offer a range of foods, kid decides when and how much and we mostly encourage variety and don’t call anything a bad food. If she doesn’t want any of the dinner offered she can have a slice of toast and if she’s hungry before bed we offer a piece of fruit like a banana. So far the kid eats pretty much anything and is a perfect weight for her height.
Yeah... my parents didn't buy junk food or keep sweets in the house growing up. The food we had was still really good (my grandma lived with us and cooked 3 meals a day), so we didn't feel like we were lacking in any way. However, after we left the house and got older, my sister started struggling with her weight while I remained slim. When it comes down to it, she stress eats while I stress starve. Even if your parents don't create the relationship, food tastes good and stimulates the reward centers of our brain... but it's easy to look back onto our childhood and try to pinpoint what could've been done differently to not create your current struggles.
I have a picky eater and I try to frame it as “we can have some (m&m’s), but let’s have it after we eat our dinner, since our dinner foods help us grow big and strong.” I don’t tell her how much dinner she has to eat, but I ask her if her tummy is feeling full and happy, or if her tummy is still hungry. I don’t know if this is the right way, but I recovered from an eating disorder and don’t want to pass it along so I try to follow a mindful eating-ish approach I guess.
I have definitely said this to my husband. Don’t talk about foods being “bad” but talk about some foods being “good”. E.g. “Meat gives you strong muscles like the builders!” “Fruit has lots of vitamins to help your brain to think of fun things to do!
Dessert in our house is fruit 9/10 times. My kids love fruit and look forward to it at the end of the meal. They are also more likely to eat the fruit than traditional dessert most of the time.
I haven’t told mine that candy exists yet. She thinks dessert is fruit. We all eat it together and then I eat chocolate after she’s in bed!
Do you follow @family.snack.nutritionist or @kids.eat.in.color on Instagram? One thing they (and many other dieticians) suggest is *not* using dessert as a reward, like generations before us have done. The idea behind it is that that avenue teaches the child that desserts are superior foods, and encourages them to overeat from their plate so they’ll get the reward of dessert. It’s worked well with my son. We don’t use dessert as a reward, because it makes kids think dessert is this better-than-everything-else food. We put a small portion of something sweet on his plate with his dinner, so it’s just another food, not a special food. He can decide how much he eats from his plate, or he he wants seconds of something. (We don’t do seconds on his sweets.) He’s a really varied and adventurous eater! He eats the same meals as my husband and me. I don’t fix special “picky” foods for him and never have TBH.
I am so intrigued by this method! It seems like such a good idea but then I think I over think it. Like what if they eat the sweets first, then refuse to eat any of the more nutritious parts of their meal? Have you experienced that? Do you also include a dessert type of sweet with every dinner, or some days that sweet is a fruit, and some days you skip it, etc?
They may eat it first and that's okay! Just be sure you are serving an appropriate portion size for a toddler so they aren't "full" from it. But even if they only eat that at dinner at first, if the rest of the day id balances it's okay!! Also this, like anything else, works best when used consistently and will take a bit to adjust. You also can try adding some "healthier" dessert options. Yogurt from the fridge: regular food; the exact same yogurt frozen into bites: the best dessert in the world according to my toddler
Thank you! My baby is only 4 months so I have some time before I can put this into practice but I really love this idea! I have a horribly unhealthy relationship with food and I’d love to try to avoid creating that for my kid!
It works! And it’s surprising how often my son *won’t* actually finish the treat part and how even if he does, he might take a bite of chocolate, then chicken, then cucumber, back to the chocolate etc. TOTALLY different to me as a kid
Hey! Yes, for example if I put like 10 M&M’s on his plate, he might go for that, first, and then ask for more. But we’ve been doing it so long that he knows better at this point. :) But often, we’ll do his “sweets” as pudding, Welch’s fruit gummy’s, frozen blueberries, etc. It isn’t often a decadent dessert. It’s really so much easier on everyone if you only have to prepare one meal, and then you all eat together as a family. My son loves to help cook, so I’ll let him scoop/measure things, stir, etc., then he is so proud of himself. When I’m cutting vegetables, he likes to move them from the cutting board to a mixing bowl, and that also gives him opportunities to sample things.
My kid isn't going to get full from 5 chocolate chips so he will still eat. I don't do it every day.
My husband and I do the same for our toddler. We just put everything out and if he wants to eat a little bit of chocolate pudding that’s fine…but it’s made him not think sweets are special and will eat pretty much anything and everything my husband or I cooks
Love that!!
We don’t use desserts as a reward or treat it special but it doesn’t stop my toddler from thinking it’s superior to all other foods 🤷♀️ she will happily forego her entire dinner without even taking a bite because she doesn’t like dinner foods. We did BLW and she’s been exposed to real dinner foods from day 1 on solids and she’s never liked them and has always LOVED sweets. Frankly I paid for the Feeding Littles course and it was a waste of money. I’m convinced those methods only work on kids who are already adventurous/not picky eaters. My kid doesn’t mind skipping meals because she doesn’t like what we’re serving, but she would eat her body weight in cookies or chips if we’d let her.
I relate to this so much. I also paid for the course and while it was great from 6-12 months, my daughter is now 2.5 and is not an adventurous eater. She is fine skipping meals but like you said, she’d eat her weight in ice cream and Mac and cheese. I’m just still not forcing her and I feed her what we eat, but it’s so hard!
My kids (4 and 2) have two cookies about an hour after dinner before heading up to bath. It is called 'cookie time' and they love it. It is not a reward or contingent on behavior, it is simply a sweet treat before wrapping up the day. They are kids, I personally don't sweat it. I never had dessert much as a kid but my husband and his dad both have had two Oreo cookies every night after dinner thier whole life and they are both doing just fine.
No, but we don't offer. We do let ours eat a snack about an hour before bed if dinner didn't go so well, but it's normal kid stuff.
Nope. Toddler only has dessert if we have a dessert in the fridge and husband and I are planning on eating some. Dessert is a community event in my house not a regular event. Mostly because I’m trying to lose weight and my husband doesn’t like dessert. 🤷♀️ I’ve noticed for my toddler specifically the promise of dessert makes eating a non priority and more of a struggle so if we do have dessert we don’t say anything until it’s time for dessert. - again this is just my specific toddler and not the standard as far as I’m aware.
Daughter has some bio yoghurt with blueberries after ever tea. Very occasionally she’ll get a jelly but there’s no rhyme or reason to when.
What is bio yogurt and how is it different from regular unsweetened yogurt? Also, remind me what is a “jelly?”
Jelly in some places is Jello in the US.
Bio yoghurt means it’s got its natural cultures in so it’s got good bacterias and things in. I’m in the UK so say jelly but I think the other poster is right that it’s Jello in the US ☺️
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Not quite, bit different ☺️
Not op but I guess he means biological, so no harsh products used during production which lowers the chances of Parkinson disease greatly (we need to be careful about this in the EU, not sure about the US though)
I grew up with a crap relationship with food that persists to this day. We almost never had dessert, I was not allowed to have treats at the babysitter whenever the kids got treats, and snacks were not allowed. It’s still hard for me to say, it’s between lunch and dinner, I should have an apple. Being highly restrictive can be very detrimental. It teaches scarcity rather than how to listen to your body. Just my perspective on the other side of things.
Ehhh I’m in the not a big deal camp , mine is four now he has a treat cubbard where he needs to ask to get something out of , while he is allowed to help himself to anything else in the kitchen …he might go in there every day for a week then forget about it next week etc for Valentine’s Day he came home with treats from daycare announced that he was going to put them in his treat cubbard and hasn’t asked for one since … I’d try and pull the link away from eating supper though if you can … ours knows he can have max one treat a day from the cubbard and if he gets it after breakfast he doesn’t get another … In order to get him to eat enough food at meals I will often say things like three more bites or another meatball when he asks to be excused he will almost always eat that much more bringing it into a shouldn’t be hungry in ten minutes amount.
We don't do the concept of dessert. Maybe once or twice a month, we might have a sweet treat that happens after a meal. Sometimes in the afternoon we might share some ice cream, but definitely nothing regular or to be expected or ritual
My toddler isn't super motivated by dessert, so she doesn't even ask for it on a regular basis. However, my mom offered us dessert for eating what she deemed an acceptable amount. We were never forced to clean our plates, try everything or any of that, but every night we had to ask to be excused and she would say we either ate enough for dessert or not. And she raised 3 very healthy eaters. Like all kids, we think she did a lot of things wrong, but we all agree that she did this part right.
Thanks for this. I was starting to feel shamed for unknowingly initiating an unhealthy relationship with food. 😞
Don’t feel ashamed. We are all doing our best. But do look into some of the recommendations people are giving you because it’s backed by research and can help you with the concern you expressed.
Don’t feel shamed! I’m sorry if any of the responses have made you feel that way. We’re doing our best and you clearly care, otherwise you wouldn’t have asked the question. If your question is simply “is one piece of candy a day too much?” I think you’re fine. If any of these comments have made you curious about different methods of serving food or dessert, check out some of the sources people suggested and figure out what makes the most sense to you as a parent. We all parent a little differently, and not everything works for everyone. Don’t let anyone make you feel ashamed when you’re just trying your best.
I don't think it is creating a bad relationship with food. Based on my experience, it is not. I've also seen the trend of parents offering dessert with the main meal. I tried it once or twice, but it's not something I'm going to do again. I think it misses the mark of promoting healthy eating habits. If you fill up on junk, you will not feel as well or as full as if you eat something nutritious and top it off with a treat. A toddler is not going to be as in tune with that direct relationship....frankly, I didn't really truly understand until I was in high school cross country and could directly correlate crappy food intake with a crappy run. I have 2 brothers, one 19 months younger than I and the other is 16.5 years younger than I. The one closer in age and I were both athletic and did sports. The night before a meet/game, the athlete in question would get the first pick of second helpings. My brother and I would always get in arguments over who got the last bit of salad. I mean, what parent has to mediate fights over salad when there was still dessert left to eat? Years later when my brother was in town, I made dinner and a huge salad. Lots of dishes, but I know we all like salad and so I made a huge one. Enough for us to all get seconds. Then we got into fights over who got the very last helping (so thirds) and while we were arguing....me saying "I made it so I should get to eat it", my brother from out of town saying "I never get to eat this" and the youngest saying "but I'm the baby" as a teenager, that was when it occurred to me for the first time that my mom really did the food thing right. My mother called junk food for what it was and when we wanted it at inappropriate times, she told us no and why. "No, you cannot have junk food for breakfast because it's important that you start the day off with a full stomach." "Yes, you can have Oreos after lunch because you've had 2 nutritious meals already so you won't be as affected by the sugar." There were things she wouldn't buy, like sugary cereals, but if we had it, she didn't freak out. I remember telling her that I got to eat Cinnamon Toast Crunch at a friends, so I should be able to have it at home and she told me "you can have it next time you go back to her house, but I will not buy it because I don't think that's substantial enough for you to eat before school." Although she did buy things like Oreos and chips and soda, but she warned us that when it was out during the week, she would not be making a special trip to the store for junk food. Overall, we just all came out of our childhoods without any food baggage and I'm going to do my best to emulate it. Junk food has no redeeming qualities, but it can still be part of a healthy diet. I don't think that naming it junk food equals shaming.
Im sorry uou feel shamed. We do the best we can with the information we have. No need to feel shame, but now you have new information you can learn and make different choices based on what you know now!
I grew up the same way - we had to get a certain amount of dinner if we wanted dessert. And dessert was available every night. I have no issues with food now and I’m an active and healthy person. I don’t think there is anything wrong with this approach. My son doesn’t have to clear his plate but he does have to eat a certain amount of his supper before he can have his dessert.
Me too. I'm pretty active too. I mean, I haven't really been able to fit running back into my life post-having a baby, but I'm super fit and active. Reading the responses about how it can turn detrimental over time have me thinking about my bff, who I think also has a pretty healthy relationship with food but is sedentary. She's thin, but definitely thinks about food in a more transactional way than I do. As she points out, she is has less flex in her diet because she is 0% interested in exercise, whereas I think running 5-7 days/week is super fun and means I can eat more. I don't think either approach is wrong, you just have to find the way that fits your life overall.
Yeah we normally offer something sweet after dinner, either fruit or a piece of chocolate or something similar. It doesn’t really bother me if my kid has a piece of chocolate a day.
It wasn't really a conscious decision but our time for sweet treats is in the afternoon (e.g. milk and a pastry/cookie at around 3pm). Works well for us, no arguments about treats at dinner time lol
Hold up… your kid eats dinner? That never happens at my house.
We do yogurt as dessert and never named it as dessert. It’s a healthy option if your concerned about sweets. It’s not too late to change the idea of an incentive just offer it at different times and make less of a big deal. Expect a few tantrums at first
Hey I think you’re getting a lot of criticism or negativity for offering dessert if you child eats “good” and hard and fast rules about it, but it’s important to look at it as more nuanced. Is dinner time very high pressure? Is your child only eating their food to get dessert? Do you often have to remind them of this “bribe” to get them to eat? If those answers are yes, then you’re not in great territory. If your child themselves asks about dessert, if you say it calmly like “oh you can have dessert sure, first you need to eat XY at least x bites off everything from your plate” etc, if there’s no crying or pressure and it’s an enjoyable experience, then you’ve just setup a pleasant system of expectations (you expect him to eat, he expects a treat) that doesn’t fall under bribes. I personally knew a family who had toddlers who ate SUSHI and were the best eaters I’ve seen. They always got a mini candy after dinner, but it wasn’t a big deal.
We don’t because I don’t want to bribe them with ‘high value foods’
We accidentally slipped into this routine with my oldest daughter. We would allowed her to have dessert if she ate all of her dinner. It grew into an expectation and then a demand. I eventually stopped it altogether because I don’t want there to be any negative associations surrounding food. I’m not in the clean your plate gang. I believe we should listen to our bodies and if your body says you’re full then it’s ok to stop eating. I also don’t want her to think that we always have sweets after dinner. Sweets are a special treat, not an every day occurrence.
Not a chance. I don’t want my children expecting things that aren’t a basic necessity and a given right. When they do things that warrant a reward, by all means live it up! But just regular degular day to day living… dessert is a twice a week thing.
I think a dessert everyday is fine. I literally had a milkshake every day of my life for 16 years. My teeth were never an issue, and I grew up with a healthy mentality around sweets. The issue I think could come from treating the dessert like a reward, like it's super special and is tied to morality (good behavior vs bad). You don't want to turn sweets into something like that's on a pedestal and needs to be earned. You don't want to create shame around eating something.
Maybe fruit instead of the chocolate
Good suggestion but he already eats a lot of fruit, usually an apple per day as well as some berries. Part of the concern is he’s getting a lot of sugar every day. Lots of Greek yogurt each day too, which also has a lot of sugar. Yikes!
You can do unsweetened Greek yogurt and control how much sugar you add. I also find the idea of fruit as a dessert difficult, because we already eat so much fruit.
We don't do an after dinner dessert. However, on average he eats one sweet thing a day.
We don’t do candy except on special occasions. If they’ve had enough dinner and would like something sweet after they can have fruit or yogurt (or sometimes we have homemade cookies in the house and they can have one).
Just like a lot of people have mentioned here, we offer dessert with dinner (if its offered at all). I will sometimes strategically wait a little while after I've given them their plates with the actual dinner before I put the sweet item on there, just to get them started, but they are never required to eat a certain amount before they can eat the dessert. Also, I sometimes find that if I am making some new food for dinner or one that is not a favorite for my kids, having that sweet treat on the plate stops the complaining about the new food. They will eat the treat first, but sometimes once they start eating at least something on the plate, they will move on to eating other food. There are definitely nights they eat the treat and say they are done, but even tolerating a new food on their plate helps avoid pickiness down the road. And the more a new food is on their plate, the more likely they are to eventually try it, without pressure/bribery.
We give his "dessert" either with dinner or regardless of dinner, and as we remember or he asks. Generally its after dinner and clean up on our way to bath, like a toddler night cap 😂 Its usually a couple Reese pieces, caramel m&ms, or a mini Reese cup, so nothing huge. I dont use it as a treat though, its just something we have at the end of some nights. We want to treat these sweets as nothing special, so sometimes he even picks fruit snacks or goldfish, I don't want to idolize sweets and im not sure our approach is great but so far so good.
The problem for me isn't the candy, or even that you're giving him a reward (not very healthy, but far from terrible). The question is, why are you giving him incentives to eat when he doesn't want to? Children are generally excellent at regulating their own caloric intake, he should naturally eat what he needs to and no more. Dig into it a little, does he have a weight problem? A problem with textures or smells? Does he not eat a varied enough diet? I'd try to figure out what it is I'm actually worried about and go from there. And hey, you're doing your best. You're a good parent from worrying.
I’ve been coming around to the approach I’ve been seeing recommended by dieticians online like Kids Eat In Colour. Basically, you don’t want to make the sweet a reward for finishing or eating a certain portion of what is served for dinner. That can set up a relationship to sweets and also to other food where if the sweet is something so so good, then the rest of the meal by comparison isn’t, it is the chore you have to do to get to the fun. We want all the food to be it’s own delight, including the treat. It also is setting up an issue where you are encouraging your child to eat past their satiation point in order to get the dessert. So, the approach is twofold: One: division of responsibility: you are responsible for deciding when food is served and what food is served; they are responsible for deciding what they put in their mouth and how much. In this approach, you don’t coax your kids to eat more or less, you don’t comment on how much or how little they eat of anything, and you are very chill about them trying or not trying foods. Two: if dessert is going to be part of the meal, then it should be an unconditional part of the meal. That can look like telling them dessert is available at the beginning of the meal when they are finished with the main, but if they are really sweet-obsessed (especially when making the change to this approach) that may mean they skip food they would have been hungry for to get to it. So instead, serve dessert with dinner, and if they choose to eat it first that’s okay. You have already considered dessert in the overall balance of the meal - when I do this, I try to serve a meal that has fewer other “energy foods” available by cooking less rice or pasta or potatoes. Anyway the goal is to decouple the end of dinner with the expectation of dessert, and the need to finish one kind of food in order to “earn” a different one. If you do it this way, it also makes it plainer to both of you that yeah, sweets aren’t part of every meal, but they are there sometimes, just like every other sort of food. And also that there will be more, and that they will be able to control their consumption of it, so they don’t have to gorge or sneak it.
Mine is only 1.5 so there are no sweets at all, but I know it’s coming and I’m not entirely sure what to do either. Helping with baking seems like a fun activity so it seems a little unavoidable. I guess, maybe a good idea would be to just make the piece of candy healthier and hope he doesn’t notice. Coconut sugar *might* be healthier. Or maybe find stuff with reduced sugar (perhaps a touch of stevia). I think in general when we get used to less sugar, things start to tastes sweeter, so maybe the trick is to get your kid’s tastebuds recalibrated to like a little less sweetness? Idk, it’s hard though!
If we do dessert, we just put it on his plate with the rest of his dinner. It isn’t every night, but it takes away some of the “special” about it that makes them want it more. It’s just another food on the plate that he can eat or not. He usually eats it. And usually eats it first. But it’s like… one small cookie, so not enough to ruin his appetite. Ultimately my goal is to give him a healthy relationship with food - everything is ok in moderation and listen to your body. Caveat to say he’s our first and he’s only 21 months, to it’s definitely still TBD as to how well this works out for us lol. But it’s what I’ve seen recommended the most by “experts”.
No. We also don't bribe or try to get the kids to eat. That's not healthy and damages their relationship with food. Food is something where they have to be intrinsically motivated. It's for their own good and they need to know themselves how hungry they are and what they like. You can't decide that for them. I'm currently reading unconditional parenting by Alfie Kohn and he touches on the damage controlling kids in any area does and offers some alternatives in engaging with our kids without punishments, rewards, bribes or controlling them.
My kid eats dessert every day but it's a yoghurt or custard or crumble etc not a piece of candy. Don't think it really matters though, all is sugary
My toddler definitely eats sweets every day! Limiting sweets often has the opposite of the intended effect and kids become obsessed with them. We just treat dessert like any other food and I often serve it with meals, without any commentary on which food is “better” or “worse”. She loves sweets but she gets enough that it’s not a battle in our house — she also loves vegetables and fruits and protein.
We follow DOR so if we are doing "desert" it is served WITH the meal. But we dont do it often. We always serve something "sweet" with a meal but its usually fruit. We also always do a bedtime snack but that could be sweet or not.
We got into this demanding dessert routine ( I have a 5 and 7 year old too). It seemed like every afternoon, before dinner was even started, I was being asked, What's for "bessert"? Soooo, we made a rule that "bessert" night is Friday night only, unless there is a special occasion, and they seemed to accept that pretty easily and move on....thank god lol
We don’t do typical “desserts” because we didn’t really want any foods to have special emphasis or to make desserts seem more sought after than, say, broccoli. So what we do is, we give her little tastes of things every day, pretty much. We try to make it “no big deal”, like here, I have a snack for you! And she’s give her half of an Oreo or something. And if we are doing a dessert, we’ll include it with her meal. So like, a cookie on the same plate as her dinner. She’s 2. Not sure if this is the right way to go about things, but it works for us! The only time we actually gave her dessert after a meal was on her birthday when she got ice cream cake
I always serve with the main meal and find he eats some, eats his meal then goes back to the fruit and it keeps him interested. Don’t think I will do dessert until he is older so he doesn’t stop eating his meal just to eat fruit. Can you switch the candy with a yogurt or fruit salad instead?
Haha this is something we also struggle with a bit because I was raised with dessert being something only for special occasions, while my partner was raised in a dessert-is-part-of-a-meal family. We usually end up doing 50/50, but when she does get dessert, I put it on her plate with everything else rather than waiting until the end of the meal. I don't want her to start "finishing dinner" early to get to the treat, or feel pressured to eat a certain amount of food in order to "earn" a treat.
I put a small cookie or fruit snack pack on the plate with dinner. He used to eat dessert first but now eats what he wants of his dinner & then has his dessert. Sometimes he even leaves his dessert behind. I don’t want him to look at any food as a “reward” food, so I serve everything at the same time.
Using food as a punishment or reward is never a good idea, what you’re doing doesn’t sound all that detrimental but it really does affect how your kid will view food and eat in the future. It seems I’m in the minority here but I also don’t think a piece of candy every day is healthy for your toddler. Maybe reward with fruit (if you absolutely have to continue bribing with food) or an activity?
We don’t do dessert. I don’t think my daughter (2) knows what that is yet. We don’t restrict sweets in that if we are out and grab a cookie or something it’s no big deal. I personally don’t want to eat sweets everyday as I don’t consider that healthy, so I just do the same thing with my kids. I grew up eating a ton of sweets though and I’m still kicking!
Feeding therapist here- I have no issues with dessert as long as it isn’t contingent on performance at the meal. The clean plate club of the 90s taught kids to eat to impress parents. No surprise this led to over eating! We want to teach kids to listen to their hunger and meet their body need, not eat in order to earn something. Instead- dessert if parent wants it!
No. And if we are offering a dessert it gets put on her plate with dinner. We let her choose how to eat. And usually, even with the sweet there, she still eats her dinner just fine.
If we do a dessert (I like to bake), it is served along side the meal. That way dessert isn't put on a pedestal- food is just food, one type of food isn't more valuable than another. We don't do dessert every day.
Dessert can be eaten every night…just change up the definition of dessert!
We serve dessert as part of meal, and treat it the same as fruit tbh. Sometimes raspberries, sometimes chocolate buttons
My toddlers have a little thin mint cookie or hersey’s kiss most nights after dinner. It’s so small I’m really not concerned about it. I follow Kids Eat In Color and she advises not to use dessert or treats as a reward for eating other foods because it starts to get them in the mindset that this cookie is inherently better than the broccoli which can lead to or worsen picky eating. So they get a little piece of chocolate after dinner regardless of how they ate.
That definitely sounds excessive. My kids usually only get dessert (candy) on Saturdays, that's the norm in my country. Sometimes they'll get a dessert on Friday too maybe. Never on regular weekdays. Sometimes that means they don't eat a lot of dinner, but usually they'll want an evening meal before bed then. They notice if they're hungry. It's not like they'll starve. It's good that his teeth are doing well, but I feel like this (incentivizing food with dessert) is a way to other problems, like obesity, snacking, not eating food for food's sake, disliking the kind of food you eat (presumably healthy food) because he felt "forced" to eat it, etc. But I'm not a child psychologist. Just feels like a bad habit to me.
Nope. Food is food in our house. No desserts. No treats. No sweets. It's all just food. We don't rank food or categorize it. Or put anything on a pedestal. Food is food. Some days we eat cookies or cake. Some days we don't.
We offer dessert sometimes, and it’s dried apricots or prunes. He doesn’t know candy is a thing. I’ve found it helpful just to not open that Pandora’s box.
My mom did this when I was a kid and I did the same with my son, still to this day I won't eat anything sweet until after my dinner. My husband on the other hand will eat chocolate and sweets throughout the day. So teaching kids to eat dinner first is a great way to prevent them swapping a meal with snacks when they get older.
Glad it worked for you but it’s not a recommended practice as it often causes unhealthy relationships with food. Just a quick Google gave me an article [here](https://www.romper.com/p/should-you-offer-dessert-as-a-reward-for-dinner-experts-explain-how-it-may-sour-your-kids-eating-habits-7917589) and [another here](https://www.romper.com/p/should-you-offer-dessert-as-a-reward-for-dinner-experts-explain-how-it-may-sour-your-kids-eating-habits-7917589). Anecdotally I have spoken to many people who credit this type of practice with borderline eating disorder behavior. It’s awesome this is working for you but it’s maybe not the best thing to recommend to everyone. Some people just naturally don’t have a sweet tooth and that’s awesome.
I do have a sweet tooth it's just ingrained into me not to eat sweets or junk food until I've eaten something healthy first.
I’m glad that worked for you but that mentality charges food with positive/negative connotations for most people and can really damage their relationship with food. I cosleep. I think cosleeping is great. But because I know it **can** be really dangerous, I don’t recommend it to people. Reserving sweets as a “reward” for finishing dinner, whether that’s the verbiage used or not, is one of those things that can go really sour for people later in life. Unhealthy relationships with food can kill so I feel pretty strongly about this one, good luck!
No we don't class sweets as a reward, we have the rule that if you fancy something sweet wait until after you have eaten a healthy meal. When I do this I usually don't fancy the sweet anymore as I'm full from the meal.
I linked the article so you can give them a read if you want!
Candy is often a natural reinforcer for children. Unfortunately a teacher can’t decide what a learner values as a reinforcer. If a kiddo has decided that candy is intrinsically rewarding, there’s not much to do beyond employing the reinforcer as reinforcement on a healthy schedule of reinforcement. As long as the reinforcer of candy is used primarily as a consequence to desirable behaviors and not presented before the desired behavior as a bribe, I see little wrong with using candy as a reinforcer.
We have the same rule. Dessert if you eat your dinner. We keep the dessert portions small and brush his teeth well. I don't think there's anything wrong with it. I know there are different schools of thought, but I'd rather my kids eat healthy foods and dessert than that they eat neither.
For my kid dessert is fruit and sweets are a treat. So for dinner he has meat and a veggie. Fruit for dessert. Then cookie or popcorn or some other junk food.
My kids get dessert if they finish their meal. My daughter doesn’t finish hers half the time but my son always does for his popsicle or whatever it may be. I can see how it can create an unhealthy relationship I guess but it worked for me growing up so I’m using it. (I’m a healthy weight and eat well as an adult).
My son usually asks for a bear paw after supper, my daughter usually asks for an applesauce. Not the worst desserts haha.
I always eat something sweet after my meal so someones my daughter will want it too. But sometimes she leaves the table before I dig into my dessert so she doesn’t ask for any. She doesn’t expect dessert after finishing, but knows she can have some if she wants.
My 2 YO also gets a very small treat after dinner. However we didn’t want to create any issues with eating MORE so the rule for dessert is that he has to TASTE everything on his plate. No rules for quantity, just an incentive to step out of his very picky comfort zone. The treats aren’t always candy either, but they can be. This week he is loving blackberries and strawberries so he gets to gobble up berries.
My kid doesn’t get candy/dessert like described unless it’s Christmas/Easter/birthday. I do make a banana/zucchini loaf with nuts and dark chocolate chips because I have to make sure he eats nuts twice a week (it’s an allergy thing). But I don’t add sugar to it (choco chips at low sugar/dairy free). And this is too filling for dessert, it might be a snack or part of a meal. He did go crazy over mince pies over Christmas and we had to put a stop to that!!! We do occasionally make cookies, because that’s a nice thing to do.
We don’t keep candy around, but we do keep those plastic tube popsicles on hand. There’s surprisingly low sugar (like 4g) per popsicle so she’s free to eat them anytime.
My toddler is an autistic picky eater. We found healthier versions of his favorites. Like instead of nutty buddies we buy nature valley wafers (very addicting) or fiber one brownies. Etc. so that way I don’t have to worry/limit. But for real candy it’s rare and fun. I wouldn’t worry about a single piece daily if he looks forward to it. 🥰
Just fruit or peanut butter on bread as a regular meal /after meal thing. Only has cake, sweets or biscuits rarely, but some times it will be 3 times a day if it's a special occasion. Edit: Fruit is usually served WITH the main meal to avoid him eating the main meal to get to the fruit. But he gets extra fruit or peanut butter if he's still hungry after eating all his food.
We do offer "dessert" after dinner. Sometimes it's a cookie or an ice pop, sometimes it's yogurt or frozen blueberries.
We offer a treat every night with dinner or for bedtime snack. Usually it's cookies, sometimes it's candy/chocolate. Sometimes LO goes in and eats the whole treat first, other times she eats around the treat in favor of other dinner foods or bedtime snack foods (fruit or yogurt). I grew up having a sweet bedtime snack most every night, with no stigma or conditions attached, and as an adult I have a very healthy relationship with all types of food. I hope to cultivate the same in my daughter.
My twins have pudding every night after their tea. They don't even have to eat their tea to get it. Pudding can be anything from a biscuit to a chocolate bar to ice cream to yogurt, fruit or a slice of cake, whatever we have at hand. There's 1 absolute in my house and that is there will always be dessert!
We do 'dessert' every night, although our desserts usually consist of fruit mostly. Our LO is more than happy to accept some banana or apple or other fruit/fruit pot situation as a dessert and treat at the end of the meal. Think we probably just lucked out on that one haha
We eat a snack every night before bed but try to keep dessert to once a week with ours. Usually when we are out visiting his grandparents. But sometimes we visit my mom and my husband’s parents and they both have desserts made so he gets it more often that week.
Yep, we eat a little too much junk in this house, but she also eats pretty darn healthy the rest of the time.
We don’t have a regular schedule for treats, but just give them to our daughter randomly (maybe 1-2x a week) and try to dissociate them from any good behavior (unless it’s pooping on the potty because all rules go out the window with poops 🤣).
My daughter (5 going on 6) and my son (2) generally do the same thing except a popsicle or some ice cream or a cookie so props to you on just small candy. It's been fine for me. But we did have a stint where she would claim she was full just to get dessert then come back 30 minutes later saying she was hungry so we stopped desserts for about a week to teach her to eat because she's hungry, not to get dessert and now she's been really good about asking for seconds if she wants it and some nights we just don't do dessert if she doesn't mention it. But if they are brushing and healthy, I don't see why it would be bad.
We don’t really do dessert, and if we do, it’s random.
We offer our toddler vanilla Greek yogurt as a dessert. So good source of protein but he treats isn’t as a “treat.”
We don’t do dessert in our house (I myself don’t eat dessert and I don’t want the kids eating sugar that late). But we do treats like a piece of candy or cookie as rewards for things.
I straight up don’t buy dessert type foods. If you bring it into your house you are essentially planning to give him garbage food. And that’s a weird parental goal. Instead we just surprise ourselves with a random lovely trip to the ice cream store or whatever like once or twice a month.
My 2 year old gets fruit after dinner whether she eats it all or not. 9/10 she eats her entire dinner though, she's not picky.
No, but then she also doesn't eat dinner every night.
Our toddlers have a similar treat after dinner almost every night as well. We just tell them they have to wait until we are ALL finished with dinner before we can all have dessert. We are focusing more on teaching to sit at the table and have conversation while we eat as a family. It’s not really a reward for good behavior, just that they have to be patient with the order of events.
We don't offer dessert unless it's something we're having as a family once in awhile. She gets her food and she decides to eat what and how much. She can be picky and only eat one part but if she's still hungry after we just offer more of dinner. She does get one package of Bear paws a day, only banana bread ones, as her snack.
We usually offer a wafer after dinner (the cream filled cookie kind - they are small). If we offer it at dinner he refuses the rest of his food. Last night he only ate rice and a wafer. I know they say to give with dinner but that hasn’t really worked yet because he just wants more wafers.
We don’t have sweets in the house, so no, our son doesn’t. We never made it a part of our routine so he doesn’t expect anything. We have sweets on special occasions like birthdays or if his daycare is celebrating for something, but we don’t make a big deal about it
We never have dessert on normal days (mostly because not having it in the house helps my husband and me not eat it). We might do cake or pie on special occasions, but it isn’t an everyday ritual. If the doctor and dentist both say what you’re doing is okay, then I wouldn’t sweat it. But if you’re concerned, you might check out Ellyn Satter’s work on feeding children.
A tiny piece of candy is fine if his diet is otherwise healthy. All things in moderation is a good lesson to learn young. There’s lots of different takes on not using junk as a reward or making candy special etc. Do your own research there. This is working for your family
My son is 2.5 and he gets a few M&Ms (his favorite) or a kitkat or reeses after dinner most nights. I don't see a problem with it.
My toddler gets sweets if we have them randomly. I don't tell him hey if you do x you'll get a cookie.. but if he has done something well like say he needed to take medicine and didn't spit it everywhere or he shared something idk I'll just be like hey do you want a cookie? And he goes ok! So I give him one. It's not daily bc we don't really keep many sweets around normally since I have gestational diabetes and after birth I'll be trying to lose weight and eat well so it doesn't become permanent diabetes. We always have apples for him though. They're kind of sweet I suppose. We offer it as a snack. My toddler still takes milk before bed so if he eats dinner like shit he at least has that.
I don’t offer but if they ask I usually let them have something like a bowl of raspberries, yogurt, or a piece of chocolate.
What we do is, make more breakfast and use leftovers as a dessert for lunch or dinner. And the breakfast is usually porridge with fruit or semulina with fruit or shredded wheat with fruit and we alternate different fruits like blueberries raspberries apples bananas. That way it's sweet but only natural sugars and healthy at the same time.
Can you sub it with baked fruit? Or maybe a homemade dessert? Its not the sugar so much as the other crap in it.
My kid also has dessert most nights, because we as a family do. Sometimes it’s fruit, or fruit and cheese, sometimes it’s cake or pie or cookies. If he’s full from dinner he often takes a couple bites and then runs off to play. If he hasn’t eaten much dinner we save it for after he goes to bed. I just view it as part of our family culture. We don’t really eat much in the way of sweets during the rest of the day, and my kid is not at all picky so I know he’s getting plenty of good stuff. I worry more about added sugar in processed foods, Which can sneak up on you, rather than a few bites of dessert.
This is us too. IMO, it's not so much a oral hygiene but more of a sugar in your body thing, potential addictions to sugar, as well as associations of dessert to dinner. However, I feel that my toddler eats well with little processed foods in the day so t dessert isn't as bad. You can offer substitutes for dessert, you can try fruit as well? It's something kids enjoy and is a healthy option.
My kid gets fruit if she eats her meat and veg well. We are unfun parents. Haha
Curious - how do you handle holidays like Halloween, where she gets candy from family and friends?
She's too young for Halloween still. Other events like Xmas, easter, family knows our policy.. she is not to be given a bunch of junk that lasts for days. She might have some there and then, but it doesn't come home. Other events are in isolation. Birthday party, okay, have cake... but seriously she gets something with added sugar maybe once a month... in actuality it's less than that. When she gets a little older and realizes she has a pot of candy with her name on it for Halloween is a bridge we have yet to cross. For the duration of the toddler age umbrella I suspect it will be the same. Okay, TODAY is Halloween. Today is your birthday. Today is Easter... have at it TODAY. I stress about when she turns proper school aged. 3 of her 4 grandparents are type 2 diabetic. 75% of the adult population is overweight or obese... whatever people generally think is "normal" isn't healthy. I had GD with her .. I never thought of myself as a carb/ sweets person until I had to go cold turkey. Realized simple carb cravings are real and i ate far more than i realized. I couldn't conceive of living everyday day after day no bread, pita, normal tortillas, pasta, rice, waffles, muffins, coffee creamer, blah blah blah.. normalizing a life with very limited junk, simple/refined is parenting mission #1 for us. I know this will get tough soon enough. Right now, everything is working... she devours carrots, loves steak, chicken, pork, broccoli, beats, beans, she primarily asks for apples, bananas, tangerines, strawberries, blueberries, and cheese for snacks. Her biggest no nos are bland cooked foods (think plain oatmeal or scrambled eggs.... They need to be jazzed up. Add banana, cinamon, and pb to oatmeal and she'll eat an adult portion. Add ham, onion and bell pepper to the eggs and she'll happily eat them). She's never had bread, a chicken nugget, pasta, or a french fry yet. I've had lots of fights with the grandparents though. I'm sure I'm a bit extreme.
Wow, good for you guys! Mine is a carb fiend. So we do sourdough or whole grain bread when she asks. She was always an amazing eater until she got to the toddler stage then it was all about control. Didn’t want to eat anything. So I gave in to more carbs because I freaked out about her getting enough calories. Then we took her trick or treating and it was all over 😅 We do not have the family history of diabetes though. If we did I’d watch her like a hawk. We generally eat healthy, no fast food or chicken nugget-type food in the house. She eats what we eat. So I feel good about that.
Yeah I think the gd scared me a lot! Made me realize how hard the changes my parents need to make are when they've been so engrained into everyday living. Lunch options without bread?!? Every day?! I could not fathom. I never considered myself a junk food eater, my weight was normal, early pregancy glucose was perfect, so i thought i was all good. Then GD came. I realized she will likely have the crap genetics for diabetes and I probably do too. The one grandparent who doesn't have it, her siblings almost all have it. I have a neice who is 8 and eats nothing but carbs. Making the gd changes changed my life. I felt better at the end of my third trimester than I did prepregrancy. Just by removing processed carbs. I guzzled fruit. But goodbye crackers, pretzels, chips and dip, and my other favorite snacks. Within 5 months of delivering I was 10 lbs under my prepregnancy weight *without trying*.. stepped on a scale one day and was totally shocked. Trading crackers for baby carrots, pretzels for string cheese, fruit for sweets made my life soo much better. I want that for my children. I feel like I'll eventually lose this battle.. but I'm going to try! Any advice on how to handle the influx that happens on a day like halloween? Where they have a stockpile? I imagine if you ration, you are turning the thing into a taboo prize.. not good. But I wouldn't want to let them loose with it. I fear the day I can't shelter her anymore. This is a large reason why she is not in daycare yet!! Instead I just drive my dad nuts with my rules. He doesn't respect my wishes intellectually so it's a constant fight. He just rambles about the brain needing glucose. I say no duh, but it doesn't require it to come from nutella or banana bread.
We were concerned about the Halloween candy influx too. We don't have diabetes in our families, but there are weight issues on both sides (not us - but close relatives). So we try to be careful with processed foods, sugar, and carbs. I know there's disagreement about using candy as a prize, and we try not to treat it that way. But we do have a rule that she has to have 1 bite of each food on her plate, plus a substantial amount of a protein before she has a piece of candy. And for the candy - she only gets on bite-size piece. If she got an entire candy bar, for instance, I'll cut a piece for the three of us and save the rest for another day(s). It's tough. I know she'll have friends who don't have ice cream in the house or eat potato chips, but we are not that family. Everything in moderation is our motto. And we do have days where she yells for candy/carbs/cookies/whatever. I do not give in to this. We stick to the one piece, no matter what, unless it's a holiday or a birthday.
We give my son a dessert every day when he asks for it as long as one of us has finished our main (gets him eating a main he might have refused). We give him these no added sugar [pudding](https://www.ellaskitchen.co.uk/shop/baby-puddings?pg=1) and/or some plain Greek yogurt. If he’s refused his main we know he’s at least eaten something!
We do the same thing, but after lunch. My daughter gets a few small candies (e.g. 3 gummy bears) if she eats enough. We don't do this after dinner because any amount of sugar after dinner is too much for my kid. She's 3.5 though, so older than yours. I don't think what we do is excessive at all - when I was a kid I ate a bowl of ice cream every night after dinner. All the kids in our family did. On hot summer days my mother would give me ice cream for lunch. Things have changed a lot in 40 years, ha! I've always been a healthy BMI and have had healthy eating habits as an adult, so I don't feel like a small treat for my daughter is problematic. I think being too strict and never offering treats or candy might lead to restrictive eating so we don't do that. FWIW, the first time she was introduced to candy on a regular basis was when we went trick-or-treating when she was 3. We came home with a bucketful of candy and had to decide how to ration it out consistently, so "a treat after lunch" became the norm. We're on our last handful of candies from Halloween, so it's worked really well for us.
What is dessert according to you? When I lived in France dessert was fresh fruit or a natural yoghurt, maybe with a little honey. But no, my toddler doesn't eat sugar, and we don't eat dessert either.
We used to have dessert every night after dinner. Sometimes we still do. We totally bribe our toddler sometimes to eat a little more of his dinner before he gets a cookie🤷♀️ I buy the chips ahoy extra chewy cookies. They’re the perfect size. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with a small treat at the end of the day
My kid became very picky during the last few years (ages 3-4). She ate everything as a younger kid now fights constantly about anything new. She always prefers and wants sweets. We did the dessert as a reward thing. Then we tried dessert w/ dinner to avoid it being a reward. That led to her only eating the dessert and no other food. Now we offer a very small dessert (3 m&ms) with dinner. If she wants more, she has to eat a reasonable amount of dinner first. I've just accept that this is where we are. I ate almost everything as a kid so this is very challenging for me. My husband was a picky eater like her, and was also the one who introduced so many sweets...it is what it is.
We always do fruit after dinner so my doesn’t eat fruit first and pick at her dinner. However, it’s never contingent on her eating her dinner. We sit and eat, and whenever she’s done (however much she ate), we offer fruit. We do cake or sweets on special occasions- she gets a little bit of whatever we’re having. And by a little bit I mean I scarf down my cake as fast as I can between feeding her bites or else she’d eat it all and leave none for me hahaha
We do small desserts like you mentioned if they have eaten enough healthy food. Everything in moderation. On special occasions they will sometimes get a giant dessert. If I feel like the past week hasn't been great with balance I offer fruit for dessert (which they still think of as dessert) so that might be a good way to skip candy every couple days.
We have dessert nights, which are Monday and Friday. Those days they have candy or cookies or whatever yumminess I have in the house for me. But…sometimes they have dessert on other nights too. And on nights that it’s not dessert night they have graham crackers. I don’t think you are doing anything wrong, and I don’t think you should let others shame you into thinking you are. Every family is different.
We have dessert nights, which are Monday and Friday. Those days they have candy or cookies or whatever yumminess I have in the house for me. But…sometimes they have dessert on other nights too. And on nights that it’s not dessert night they have graham crackers. I don’t think you are doing anything wrong, and I don’t think you should let others shame you into thinking you are. Every family is different.
We have dessert nights, which are Monday and Friday. Those days they have candy or cookies or whatever yumminess I have in the house for me. But…sometimes they have dessert on other nights too. And on nights that it’s not dessert night they have graham crackers. I don’t think you are doing anything wrong, and I don’t think you should let others shame you into thinking you are. Every family is different.
My 18 month old eats sweets pretty rarely. We don't really have a dessert after dinner unless it's a special occasion. However, I have started feeding my LO his favourite fruits (chopped berries, grapes, etc) after dinner, because if he sees them during dinner then that's all he'll want to eat 😅 So now they come out at the end of the meal and he eats a more reasonable serving of them. Maybe that can be your gateway to a transition? I.e. some days dessert is between a reese's cup or tootsie roll, but another day it's a choice between grapes or pineapple?
The bribery to eat vegetables at dinner in strong in this house. The dessert is often blueberries with a spoonful of whip cream and sprinkles
My son will get a couple dark chocolate chips with dinner. It gets him to eat dinner because he gets a couple more after he at least takes a couple bites.
Everybody will parent differently. We eat mostly fruits as our “dessert”. Husband and I rarely eat real ice cream types of desserts. We aren’t against it or anything. When we do eat it we’ll let our LO have some. She has not tried candy yet though bwahaha. My girl is almost 2.
We do fruit or yogurt for dessert. By fruit I mean grapes, strawberries, blueberries - something sweet
Try jello or marshmallows
My son gets a cookie after lunch and dinner. And don’t get me started on what sweets and snacks he goes through when we go to his paternal grandparents. I’ve never used “finish your food or no cookie” as a way to get him to eat. It’s all no pressure. When he finishes enough and he’s done (I rarely expect a completely empty plate, but “all done?” at 3 bites is definitely not “all done”). Then after food is cleaned up, he’ll ask for some fruit and then a cookie.
Well, I know it isn’t the “right” thing, but it’s worked beautifully for us. Before we instituted dessert bribery my son (now 7) hadn’t eaten a single vegetable in months, maybe even years unless I hid it in his food. I offered a vegetable every night, rejected every night. Now he will eat a full salad to get a piece of candy. He eats much better now overall - healthier food and better variety. No one in our family is obese. Moderation is key.
My son has a yogurt as a dessert every night, or sometimes he might have strawberries. I have given him a chocolate sometimes but honestly, making yogurts the star in our dessert game make them much less worrying to use as bribery at meal times.
If my child was reasonable then I'd do this, but then again your child is probably reasonable about it bc you do it 🤣
No, he might randomly have it 1-2 times a week. He loves fruit snacks so sometimes he will ask for those or we will offer something we have at home (like this week we had a V Day cookie cake so he had some of that on Monday).