Feeding Kids Sweets 101: Knowing Your Role When You Feed the Kids
When it comes to helping your child form a healthy relationship with all foods, including sweets, there are distinct jobs you have and areas where you will need to learn how to trust your children to do their parts with eating.
I know there’s a lot of confusion out there when it comes to feeding children and raising healthy kids.
Food can feel like an overwhelming topic because there’s a plethora of information at our disposal. You just want to “get it right” when it comes to feeding your own children. As a mother of 5 children myself, I completely understand.
Sometimes the information overload and pressure to get it right can cause us to feed our children from a place of fear, rather than trust.
This can influence us to engage in feeding practices that, while done with good intentions, may make it harder for our children to learn how to self-regulate their intake and build confidence in their eating skills. For example, persuading a child to eat certain foods or stay away from others can actually make food more confusing.
This is especially true with sweets and desserts. Sugar in general can be a sticky topic for parents.
How do you approach sweets in a way that allows a child to have a healthy relationship with all foods without feeling restrictive?
It’s common to take a more restrictive approach to sweets, for no other reason than it feels unhealthy to give our children sweets and permission to eat these foods. But the reality is that we live in a world where sugar and sweets exist.
If our children don’t have exposure to these foods while they are growing up in our homes and the opportunities to learn how to self-regulate, these foods are more likely to become chaotic for them as they grow up.
For example, kids who don’t get exposure to sweets in their home might be overly consumed with having sweets on the occasions they do get opportunities to have desserts, such as holidays, parties, etc.
Ultimately, when approaching this topic, it’s important to have the long-term goals in mind. You want to help your children to learn how to eat and self-regulate all foods, including sweets. You want your children to have a healthy relationship with food and feel confident in their bodies. And these goals, my friend, begin with us as parents and how we approach food in our homes.
A New Approach to Children and Sweets
This all starts with a good foundation to feeding. What do I mean by this exactly?
Well, when it comes to feeding our children, we have certain jobs as parents, and our kids have their own responsibilities when it comes to eat.
Understanding these roles and responsibilities can empower you to build a trusting feeding relationship with your children, which is essential for supporting your kids in building a healthy relationship with all foods.
I want to break this down for you, particularly when it comes to sweets.
Because again, the reality is that we often feel like we have to treat sweets differently than they way we approach other foods.
For example, many parents may feel inclined to push vegetables on their children while restricting access to sugar in the home.
And again, if you’ve done this with your own children - please hear me out. This is not intended to shame you or make you feel bad whatsoever but to create awareness of these common feeding approaches and why we may be influenced to feed our children the way we do.
When you’re aware of what you’re currently doing, it makes it easier for you to move forward in a more positive direction for you and your children. And it starts by understanding where you are now.
The hard thing about this approach is that it’s not as effective in helping our children develop a healthy relationship with food over the long term.
In fact, research shows us that when children feel pressured to eat certain foods, like vegetables let’s say, they’re more likely to develop an aversion to those foods over time, or feel less likely to want to eat them on their own.
On the other hand, studies have also shown that when children feel restricted from more highly palatable foods, like sweets and desserts, they’re more likely to overeat them when they do get access to them and feel more desired toward forbidden foods. A restrictive approach to feeding children can increase risk of disordered eating and the likelihood of children eating in the absence of true hunger.
So if attempting to restrict sweets isn’t necessarily effective in the long-term, what other options are there?
If you’re wondering this question, I have good news for you, my friend.
There is a better way to approach sweets that doesn’t involve restriction. And it doesn’t mean making sweets and desserts a free-for-all either. This is a common myth about sweets and children, but this is not creating a supportive approach to sweets that children need to develop a healthy and positive relationship with all foods.
Essentially, this boils down to understanding your roles with feeding all foods to your children, including sweets, and learning how to trust your children with eating all foods, including sweets.
So let’s dive into the details below.
Learning Your Roles With Feeding Kids
Let me start by giving you an overview of this, and then we can dive into the details of each of these points.
Basically, as a parent, when it comes to feeding your child and offering sweets, your roles break down into these jobs below (and don’t worry, we’ll get to what your child is responsible for in the next section):
Deciding when you’re offering sweets to your child and what you’re offering
Creating a supporting environment for your child to learn how to eat and self-regulate
Refraining from micromanaging your child
Taking a neutral approach to sweets
Modeling eating and enjoying sweets, too
Being aware of signs your child exhibits that may indicate a more frequent exposure to sweets
Now when it comes to your children, here’s what there jobs are when it comes to eating:
Deciding whether or not they want to eat at any given meal or snack time
Deciding what they want to eat from the foods you’ve provided
Deciding how much to eat from the foods you’ve provided, including the sweet portion
So let’s break these down a bit more to help you understand all that’s involved here:
Parent Roles With Feeding:
1.Deciding the When and the What:
This means as a parent, you’re in charge of when you’re going to offer sweets and what you’re going to offer your child.
What I mean by when is deciding with what meal and/or snacktime your child may have during the day. This could look like lunchtime, dinner, and/or a snack your child may be having in the afternoon.
As the parent you’re in charge of deciding when you’re putting sweets on the menu for your child. The key is to do it intentionally, consistently and frequently.
For many children who don’t see sweets frequently or consistently enough, sugar can become an obsession or something they’re preoccupied with for quite some time. You can read more about this in this post here: “How Much Sugar for Kids? Understanding How Frequently to Offer Sweets”
So you want to be intentionally about offering it frequently but within the context of your child’s meals and snacks.
You offer the sweet portion of their meal alongside the other foods they’re already having.
You can read more about the benefits of offering dessert with meals in this post here.
The other part of your job here is to decide the what.
Meaning, what are you going to offer your children as their portion of dessert?
Ideally, you may consider offering something your child is showing a high interest in. You can switch it up or offer the same thing consistently, but the choice is yours.
If your child is repeatedly asking you for a certain something, like chocolate, candy, cookies, etc. this may be a good indication your child needs more frequent exposure to this in the context of their meals and snacks.
You’re deciding the what and offering it alongside meals and snacks.
2. Creating a supportive environment:
This is an important part of feeding your children, where you’re being intentional about making meals and snack times a supportive environment for your children to learn how to eat and to feel safe eating all foods.
This involves taking a neutral approach to all foods, especially sweets (because these are the foods that tend to be demonized).
Taking a neutral approach to sweets to create a supportive eating environment for your children may look like refraining from talking about sweets in a good versus bad way.
For example, it’s easy for us to talk about food in this black-and-white manner, where we might say things like, “The veggies are so good for you, why don’t you have a bite of those?”, or, “Too many cookies are bad, don’t eat too much of that”.
This language, while coming from a place of good intention, can make it harder for your child to learn to eat in a supportive environment. Instead, take a neutral approach.
Offer the foods to your child together and allow them to learn how to self regulate their intake and what they need from the foods you’ve provided.
Remember, it’s not your job to get your child to eat or to micromanage what they're eating from the foods you’ve provided.
You’re doing your job in offering the dessert with a meal or snack. Now you need to trust your child to do their part with eating. This means letting go of the micromanaging.
3. Modeling eating and enjoying sweets, too:
This can be harder for a lot of parents, especially if you’ve been on your fair share of diets or don’t give yourself permission to eat foods you want and enjoy eating, like sweets.
Many parents might feel like they can’t trust themselves to eat sweets, like cookies, candy, chocolate, etc., and so they might ban it from the home or limit exposures they’re having.
Inadvertently and by default, this will limit exposures and opportunities for your child to learn how to eat and enjoy sweets, and to self-regulate their sugar intake.
On the other hand, if you’re able to give yourself permission to eat sweets, it will also be easier for you to give your child full permission to eat sweets, too, and to trust them to self-regulate what they need from the foods you offer.
This can be a process for sure, so please be gentle with yourself. Intentionally giving your child more opportunities to enjoy sweets alongside meals and snacks is a big part of the equation.
But you matter too, and your child is observing and learning about food through your behaviors and relationship with food. When your child sees you enjoying sweets and desserts, they learn these foods are safe to enjoy and feel full permission to eat all foods.
Keep in mind, this doesn’t mean you need to eat sweets with your child every single time you offer them, but if on occasion, your child has the opportunity to see you enjoying sweets with them, this can communicate a powerful message that will support your child in building a positive relationship with all foods.
4. Being aware of your child’s behavior:
This last part here that you want to be aware of your child’s behavior around sweets and how they’re engaging with food in general.
When kids are showing a high interest in sweets, repeatedly asking for sweets or always eating the sweet portion of the meal and asking for more, this could be an indication they need a higher exposure to sweets.
Your child might need a quantity of sweets that feels more satisfying, may need to see sweets offered more consistently and/or may need to see sweets more frequently in order to trust these foods are an indefinite part of their future.
Many times, parents might feel frustrated by a child showing a higher interest in sweets, and if you’ve found yourself in this position, know you’re not alone.
It can be stressful to see your child repeatedly asking for more sweets or primarily showing an interest in sweeter foods.
However, the solution is not to shut your child down or restrict the availability of sweets. In fact, this can often make the problem worse. Instead, consider taking a more proactive approach and observe how your child is reacting to having these foods.
When you intentionally incorporate them into your meal and snack routine for your child, you’re given them the permission and opportunities they need to learn how to eat a variety of foods, especially sweets.
For more help on this, check out this post here: “Kids Eating Too Much Sugar? 3 Reasons Your Child's Obsessed With Sweets”
Child Roles With Eating:
When it comes to actually eating the food and sweets, here is what your child should be responsible for:
1.Decide whether or not they want to eat desserts offered: Yes, it’s up to your child to decide whether or not they even want to eat at any given meal or snack time, including the desserts offered on the plate.
2. Decide what they want to eat from the foods offered:
Children also should be responsible for deciding what they want to eat from the foods provided. This can often be the most challenging part for parents to let go of because there is a tendency to want to micromanage what our children are eating.
Just remember, once you’ve offered the food, including the dessert, the ball is now in your child’s court. Your child gets to decide what to eat from the foods you’ve provided.
You might feel better if your child took some bites of the vegetable or protein first before eating dessert, but this is crossing out of your line and trying to do your child’s job of eating. You can trust your child to eat, even if what your child decides to eat from the foods you’ve provided looks drastically different from your own expectations.
This is essential to help your children learn how to trust themselves and to self-regulate what feels best in their bodies. Because the only person living in your child’s body is your child!
3. Decide how much they want to eat from the foods offered:
Similarly to the last point, your child is in charge of deciding how much they want to eat from the foods you’ve offered.
Again, this can be challenging for many parents to let go of, especially if your child gobbles up all the dessert and doesn’t want to touch anything else on their plate, or maybe eats everything on their plate and asks for more.
On the other hand, children with smaller appetites can be worrisome for parents too.
The important thing to realize is that your child can and will self-regulate what they need for their individual bodies if they’re trusted to eat. So focus on providing a variety of foods and regular meal and snack times, and trust your child to eat when they need from the foods you’ve provided.
This is where it’s necessary to be aware of your own discomfort around your child’s appetite and lean into it with some curiosity in effort to help support your child with the long-term goals with feeding. Kids can be trusted to eat what they need to grow at a rate that is right for them. We have to trust them.
Learning to Trust Your Child to Eat All Foods
So now that you know some of the basic approaches to feeding your children, including desserts, let’s talk about some of the obstacles that might make it challenging for you to follow through with this.
One big roadblock I see for many parents has to do with mindset and beliefs around sugar. Your past experiences around sweets may influence how you feel about your child eating sweets, as well as the messages you’ve picked up from the environment around us.
Remember, we live in a culture that demonizes sugar and sweets at every turn, and these recurring messages can make it harder to fully trust your child around sweets and desserts.
So as you’re venturing on this path and working to support your child in developing a positive and healthy relationship with all foods, it’s essential to consider your current mindset and beliefs around these foods.
I’ll address a couple big misconceptions here:
First, parents often worry if their children won’t stop eating sweets if they offer them or that they might only ever want to eat sweets if these are offered as part of meals and snacks.
So before we even delve into this, consider reflecting on these questions:
When you say you’re worried your child won’t stop eating sweets if you offer them, where is that fear coming from? Could any of your own experiences around sweets play a role in how you perceive sweets with your child? How does your own upbringing influence your approach with food with your child?
These can be harder questions to reflect on but are important nonetheless because it may help you separate your own fears from your child.
If you grew up in an environment where sweets felt very chaotic or if you were restricted from regularly having sweets as a child, you might find yourself feeling out of control around them when you do get access to sweets. In this case, you might project these fears from your own experiences on to your child, where you might believe they will have the same relationship with food.
However, that is not necessarily the case.
The whole reason you’re reading this blog right now is to learn an approach to sweets that may be more helpful and beneficial for your child, especially for the long term. You’re doing things differently for your family, and that is a brave thing to do.
So when you experience fear around feeding your children, take a step back and ask yourself where that fear is coming from?
Examine past experiences that have influenced your own perception of how your child will interact with sweets. These all play a part in your mindset around feeding your child and learning to move from fear to trust around food.
A second part that can be challenging is trusting your children to eat when what they eat from the foods you provide looks drastically different from your expectations of how or what they should eat.
Going back to earlier examples, this might come up if your child only eats the dessert portion of the meal, or eats the dessert and touches little else. This can be worrisome for many parents, making it harder to lean into trust with feeding.
If you’re just trying this approach and moving from a restrictive approach to feeding sweets to a trust based approach to feeding, your child may be infatuated with eating dessert for quite some time.
That is normal, okay and necessary in order for your child to fully trust desserts are an indefinite part of their future and something they no longer have restricted access to.
Eventually it will even out and your child will begin to show interest in other foods.
What’s crucial is consistency in offering sweets regularly with meals and/or snacks, and sticking with your jobs with feeding and trusting your children to do their part with eating.
In fact, this might be the most challenging part for many parents. It may be uncomfortable for you to see your child repeatedly eat the dessert portion of the meal when you start taking steps to normalize sweets in your home.
For some parents, this discomfort may cause them to throw in the towel and give up on this approach because it might feel like it’s not working. But this is where it’s necessary to push through and stay consistent so your child can get to a place where the infatuation with sweets wears off.
Now, this is not to say you should expect your child to get to a place where sweets are no longer exciting any more.
Sweets often are exciting to kids, and that’s okay!
However, you want your child to be able to establish an emotionally equal playing field with all foods, where they can make their food choices based on their internal regulators and on what feels best for them and their bodies (not on external factors, like always eating dessert simply because it’s available).
When children are used to seeing sweets alongside other foods they’re eating, it will help normalize it for them.
For more help with this, be sure to check out this post here: “Should You Give Your Kids Dessert With Meals When Your Child Won't Eat Dinner?”
This is going to require some consistency though, and you need to think about this as a long-term thing, not a quick, fix, one-and-done issue. If it’s been a few years with a more restrictive approach to sweets, it's going to take some time for kids to really trust that 1) They’re okay to eat these foods and will have indefinite opportunities to eat them, 2) They your full permission to eat them (at designated snack and meal times), and 3) you trust them to eat and to learn to become the best expert of his body You want them to know you trust them so they can learn to trust themselves.
When we approach feeding our children from fear, we’re more likely to operate from a restrictive mentality around sweets.
When we move into a trusting approach to feeding our kids, allowing them to learn how to self-regulate and taking a more proactive approach in including and allowing sweets based on frequency our child may need.
Shifting your mindset is important to moving into a position where you’re fully trusting your child and your child feels your trust to learn to become the best expert of their own bodies.
Pulling it All Together
I know this can be a challenging area for many parents, so please know you’re not alone. It’s often a learning experience for both you and your child. Every step you take is a brave step forward to help your entire family enjoy freedom with food.
If you’re needing more support in this area, be sure to check out the Simplify Sweets Academy, my online course for parents who need a stepwise system to end the sugar scaries in your home. You don’t have to do this alone.
If you have any questions about this, please feel free to drop them in the comments section below. I’d love to hear from you and learn how I can help you!
Cheering you on, you’ve got this!