5 Reasons Why to Offer Your Kids Sweets Before They Ask For Them
If your kids are anything like mine, they probably have an affinity for sweets. I mean, I honestly don’t know a child who doesn’t.
And you know what?
This isn’t inherently a bad thing. But because we've come to demonize food in our culture, sweets sure get a bad wrap, don’t they? On top of that, we’re often judged as parents based on how or what our children eat (or don’t eat).
Let me just come right out and say it: Feeding kids can be tough. It’s an 18+ year job that involves multiple meals and snacks everyday. Phew - even just typing that out makes me tired. And there’s so much invisible mental work around feeding our children and family that can make this a heavy responsibility to carry.
Most parents I know want nothing but the best for their children: physically, emotionally and mentally. It can be hard to navigate through the information clutter that’s out there to figure out the best way to raise a healthy kid, right? Especially in this social media age, it’s easy to compare our parenting and how our kids eat to everyone on the Internet.
One recurring message we often get as parents has to do with sugar.
We hear this idea being promoted that sugar is toxic, addictive and harmful for our children’s health. And when you’re being faced with those types of messages as a parent, it can create a lot of conflict and confusion, in terms of how to approach these foods with your children.
On top of this, you might have outside factors triggering fear in how you feed your children. This can be things such as:
Behavioral issues or concerns with your children
Comments about your child from well-meaning professionals, friends or family members
Worries about your child’s appetite and/or body size
A history of a complicated relationship with food yourself that may make it challenging to fully trust your child with eating
All this to say, there are many layered issues that are wrapped around sweets and sugar. And if you’re feeling confused or overwhelmed about how to best approach it with your child, you’re not alone.
I’d love to help you clear out the clutter so you can feel empowered about raising your children to have a positive relationship with food and their bodies. And we can’t talk about raising a healthy child without involving sweets in the equation.
Because the reality is we live in a world where sweets exist.
Even if you were to ban them from your own home, your child is going to encounter them at some point outside your home. What better place to allow your child to learn how to self-regulate all foods than in the safety of your home and in the context of a trusting feeding relationship.
Importance of Legalizing Sugar in Your Home
One important step toward supporting your child in developing a positive relationship with all foods, including sweets, is to legalize sugar in your home.
This means you’re making an intentional effort to include sweets in your home as part of meals and snacks for your child in order to help normalize these foods for them.
Because if sweets are seldomly seen or kept off limits, this can actually make them even more desirable for your child. On the other hand, if sweets are included with meals and seen alongside other foods, it can help take away the power sweets often have (over adults and children alike).
Offering permission to eat is crucial for children to feel capable in trusting their own bodies to self-regulate all foods. How we approach sweets with our child can help them understand whether or not they have full permission and trust to learn how to eat a variety of foods, especially sweet and desserts.
If sweets are scarce or too tightly controlled, this can make it more difficult for a child to learn how to listen to their own bodies.
Under feelings of deprivation, kids are more likely to eat in the absence of hunger, simply due to fear of missing out on a food they really love.
In other words, your child may be more likely to overeat sweets and desserts when they don’t trust these foods are an indefinite part of their future and experience full permission to actually eat and enjoy them.
Creating an environment in our home where sweets are legalized (meaning - offered regularly and without judgement or negative language) and where our children feel permission to eat what they need to feel satisfied is the foundation of developing a positive relationship with food and trust in their bodies.
Moving Into a Proactive Role With Feeding
If you’re interested in learning how you can normalize sweets in your home, one powerful step you can take is to be the one to offer sweets to your children, before they ask.
This may seem like a counterintuitive thing to do because children typically seem like the ones to have to ask for sweets first. I mean, generally, kids are the one having to ask: “Can we have candy?”, “Can we eat these cookies?”, “Can I have another popsicle?”, etc.
And because children are the ones to have to ask for sweets, this is why this pivot is crucial.
You see, sometimes children are repeatedly asking for more sweets because they don’t get enough exposure to having them.
Sometimes, kids might be asking to eat sweets or MORE sweets because they might not trust those opportunities to eat the foods they enjoy will always be available to them. They may be asking out of a place of worry they won’t get the chance to eat something that may be on their mind, whether it’s cookies, candy, ice cream, etc. So this triggers the incessant asking and questioning around them.
For some children, this actually turns into a preoccupation with sweets. You can read more about this here: “Kids Eating Too Much Sugar? 3 Reasons Your Child's Obsessed With Sweets”
As parents, we might get so annoyed and frustrated by the repeated questioning for more sweets, and saying “No” might feel like the only way to stop our children from asking the question over and over.
But sometimes, saying NO actually makes a child feel more scarcity and shut down from having sweets, which can make those feelings of deprivation around sweets even stronger.
What if you reversed this though?
What if you were the one to offer sweets to your children before they even had to ask you?
For a lot of families who have been struggling with sweets in their home with their children, this can be a game-changer.
Let’s take a look at some of the benefits of offering sweets to your children before they ask below:
5 Reasons to Offer Your Kids Sweets Before They Ask
It breaks the scarcity feelings around sweets:
When parents take deliberate steps to include sweets in their regular meal and snack routines, it helps decrease feelings of scarcity around sweets, which can support children in better learning how to self-regulate these foods.
On the other hand, if sweets are only offered on special occasions or with stipulations, this can make it more challenging for kids to listen to their bodies. When a food feels scarce or they feel deprived from eating something they enjoy, kids move away from listening to their bodies hunger and appetite cues and toward eating for FOMO (fear of missing out).
They’re more likely to eat sweets just because it’s available, regardless of what they’re actually feeling in their bodies. Taking the initiative to offer sweets to your child can help break these feelings of scarcity associated with sweets.
2. It helps your children trust sweets are an indefinite part of their future:
Piggybacking on the last point, when you intentionally offer sweets alongside other foods and are offering them frequently and consistently, your kids will begin to trust these foods are part of their future.
Having regular access to food is fundamental for building a positive relationship with food, and this includes all foods, like sweets.
This can help subside any anxiety or worry your child may be feeling about not getting enough access to sweets or opportunities to eat foods enjoyed.
When kids trust sweets are always part of their future, they’ll feel more relaxed and open to learning about all foods and will develop an interest in a variety of foods.
3. It shows your children you trust them to eat sweets:
When parents take a more intentional role in offering sweets versus kids always having to be the one to ask, it’s a powerful demonstration of your trust in your children to eat and to learn how to self-regulate.
Children need to feel unconditional trust from their caregivers when it comes to eating, and this is another fundamental building block to developing a trusting feeding relationship with our children. If sweets are only offered sparingly or with stipulations, children can pick up on the idea that they can’t be trusted to eat these foods.
When children are regularly given opportunities to eat a variety of foods, including sweets, they form trust with their caregivers but also within themselves with eating.
As a parent, when you focus on your job with feeding and intentionally giving your child the chances they need to learn how to self-regulate all foods, they learn how to trust themselves with eating.
4. It gives your child a chance to normalize sweets alongside other foods:
It’s easy to give some foods more power over other foods based on nutritional differences, but this can be a trigger for a chaotic and confusing relationship with food.
On the other hand, when foods are approached in an emotionally equal way (meaning, you're not giving more power to one food over another), your child can learn to self-regulate what they need based on their internal regulators.
Children are born with the capacity to self-regulate their intake, and when given regular opportunities to eat a variety of foods, are able to meet their nutritional needs over the course of time. When we try to micromanage their intake (ex: trying to get them to eat certain foods or preventing access to other foods), this creates a hierarchy of foods in their minds, making it harder for them to self-regulate what they need.
When you take on the role of providing access to ALL foods, including sweets, and serve sweets alongside other foods (like at meals and snacks), your child can build emotional equality with all foods. This is important to supporting self-regulation.
5. It moves you into a proactive role with feeding your children:
As parents, it’s easy to get wrapped up in the fear-mongering messages about food, especially sweets and sugar. And when we approach feeding our children from a place of fear, this can trigger restrictive feeding practices, where we feel less able to trust our children to eat and more inclined to try to control their intake.
Fear-based feeding practices, especially with sweets, can lead to things like a child sneaking sweets, hoarding food, and overeating when there is access to sweets.
Moving into a proactive role with feeding by intentionally offering sweets more regularly and incorporating them alongside other foods for your child helps you feed your child from a place of trust. Trust-based feeding approaches are essential to supporting your children in building a healthy relationship with food and confidence in their bodies.
Practical Ways to Get Started
If you’re ready to try this out in your family, the good news is that it’s super simple to get started. Moving into the position of being the one to initiate sweets for your family can help empower you in your feeding responsibilities and make it easier for you to trust your child with eating.
Remember this: parent provides, child decides.
So YOU are the one who is going to be responsible for deciding what sweets you want to offer to your child and at which times during the day.
Generally, kids do best when sweets are offered within the context of their meals and snacks. When sweets are offered alongside other foods they’re used to eating, this can also help normalize sweets for them, promote emotional equality among all foods, and support them in learning how to self-regulate their intake of all foods.
Start by choosing the meal and/or snack at which you want to offer a sweet or dessert. Most parents would automatically choose dinner, but you can intentionally switch it up a bit. Offering it at mealtimes your child wouldn’t necessarily suspect it can also be effective in decreasing any obsession around sweets. This can also be helpful in breaking any rigid rules your child may be forming around sweets.
You can read more about how I approach this here: “I’m a Dietitian and This is Why I Let My Kids Eat Candy For Breakfast”
Do what works best for your family, and if you’re just starting this, it’s okay to trial and error to find what helps for your children.
Next comes deciding what you want to include as the sweet portion of the meal or snack. This too can vary, but one thing to consider is offering what your child is already showing interest in. If your child is asking repeatedly about a certain sweet, like chocolate, candy, cookies, etc., this is an indicator they may need more access to these foods within the context of their meals and snacks.
Offering the sweets your child is interested in can be helpful in addition to you taking the initiative to offer them before they ask. You can pre-select a portion and offer it alongside the meal or snack you’ve already decided to serve the family. You can also give your child options to help support their autonomy. For example, if you have a candy jar or your child has a candy bag leftover from a party or holiday, you can ask your child at the beginning of the meal if they’d like to pick out a certain number of pieces from their bag to eat with their meal.
An important piece to this is what comes after you offer. Remember the matra above: parents provide, child decides.
So you’ve taken the initiative to offer a meal, including the sweets; now it’s up to your child to decide: 1) whether or not they even want to eat, and 2) what they want to eat from the foods you’ve provided, and 3) how much they want to eat from the foods you’ve offered.
This is fundamental to helping your child learn how to self-regulate. You’re offering but allowing your child to decide what to eat from the foods you’ve provided, even if what they eat looks drastically different from your expectations of what you think they should eat.
This is where it’s crucial to take a step back and resist the urge to micromanage your child. Many parents want to see their kids eating veggies before dessert or some variation of this, but trying to get your child to eat in a way that feels comfortable to you will only create power struggles at the table.
So if you offer sweets with a meal and your child only eats the sweet portion of the meal or eats the sweet before touching any protein or vegetables - that is okay.
Resist the urge to micromanage or say anything to your child. You’ve done your job by deciding what to offer and by taking the initiative to include sweets as part of your child’s meal or snack. Now it’s time to sit back and trust your children to do their part with eating.
For more help with this, be sure to check out this post here: “How Much Sugar for Kids? Understanding How Frequently to Offer Sweets”
I hope this is helpful for you in moving toward a more proactive role with feeding your children, which can ultimately support them in building a positive relationship with all foods (including sweets!).
I’d love to hear from you! What questions do you have about this? Please feel free to leave any comments below. You’ve got this!
