Sugar Rush in Kids? How to Help Your Kids Manage Their Holiday Treats
It’s that time of the year where the sweets and treats are flowing, with a continuous stream of goodies that seem to start from Halloween all the way through the New Year. Even with the holidays looking different this year, one thing remains: sweets are part of the holidays.
And you know what? All of our kids are totally here for it.
But as a parent, on the other hand, you might be feeling overwhelmed with the sight of sweets at every corner and the constant requests for “More cookies!”, “More candy!”, “More chocolate!”
You may feel unsure about how to best handle this influx in sugar and sweets.
You likely want your kids to enjoy the tastes and treats of the holiday season without any guilt or shame attached. On the other hand, you might be worried about the amount of sugar they’re intaking or unsure how to handle the sugar overload without them feeling restricted from it. You might feel uncomfortable by the sheer volume of all the sweets in your house or tired of the constant obsession around all things sugar.
If you’ve found yourself in this position this holiday season, please know you’re not alone.
This can be challenging for MOST parents and givers, and navigating sweets with kids can feel like a sticky situation.
Holiday Candy: What Makes Sugar and Sweets Stressful?
But first, let’s take a closer look at this situation. There’s a LOT of factors that may influence how you feel about your kids eating sweets and holiday treats.
Here are some of the common factors that might be making sugar and sweets more stressful:
Diet culture: We live in a primarily dieting culture that glorifies both thinness and dieting. Diet culture demonizes certain foods or entire food groups, creating a ridiculous amount of food rules that makes eating feel impossible.
Differing Opinions: You may have been given well-meaning nutrition “advice” from family members, friends, or even the influencers you follow on social media. Your pediatrician may have also given you instructions on how you should feed your kids. All this information overload and differing opinions can be overwhelming.
Past Experiences: These include experiences you and your children may have had around food. For example, if you’ve struggled with an unhealthy relationship with food and find desserts in your home to be triggering or find yourself binging on sweets, it may be challenging to let your child eat these foods without projecting some of your own discomfort.
Child’s Body Size: Many parents’ attitudes toward feeding their children often stem from their feelings around their kids’ body sizes. Our society is fatphobic and harsh toward people in larger bodies (children and adults alike). Fears around this can project in how you feel about your child eating certain foods, like sweets. For more on this topic, be sure to check out this post: “Sugar Kids: Should Children in Larger Bodies Be Limited From Sweets?”
Child’s Behavior: Another common fear and misconception around sweets has to do with how sugar may impact a child’s overall behavior. Many parents worry about their kids becoming hyperactive when eating sweets, which may cause them to restrict or hold back from their sugar intake. This is a valid fear surrounded by many misconceptions. For more information on this topic, be sure to check out this post here: “Does Sugar Make Kids Hyper? 5 Reasons Why Your Child Has a Sugar High”
Other People’s Opinions: If your child is being food policed or shamed for what they’re eating, that can trigger your own insecurities or fears around how or what you’re feeding your child. Comments like, “That’s too much sugar, you shouldn’t be eating that!”, or, “Too much sugar is going to make you sick!”.
These factors are often amplified during the holidays, when emotions and stressors may already be running higher. Not to mention, if you’re around other family members or friends, you might find yourself feeling more conscious about how or what your kids are eating.
So what’s the best way to work through these fears in order to support your children in not only building a healthy and positive relationship with all foods, but to enjoy the holiday season without a side serve of diet culture?
I know you don’t want to feel like the sugar police this holiday season or constantly be patrolling what or how much candy your kids are eating.
I also know that you want to feel prepared with effective ways to approach this to normalize sugar for your kids, not just during the holidays but all year long.
With this in mind, here are some suggestions to help you navigate the higher influx of sweets that are around during the holiday season, so you can keep your sanity and support your kids in building a positive relationship with all foods.
5 Positive Ways to Navigate Holiday Treats With Your Kids
Get curious about your own mindset and discomfort:
For starters, it’s important to first understand why you might currently approach sweets the way you do with your kids.
Is there something that makes you feel uncomfortable about your child eating sugar?
Do you have any underlying fears that influence rigidity or strict rules around sweets?
If so, it might be helpful to simply be aware of what’s coming up for you and curious about the feelings you have when it comes to your child eating sweets.
Ultimately, the more awareness and understanding you have about your thoughts and feelings around this, the easier it will be to help support your child in building a more positive relationship with food.
This will also help you move from a place of FEAR to TRUST when it comes to feeding your kids.
If you need more support around working through any discomforts around your child eating sweets, make sure you read this post here: “How to Trust Your Kids With Sweets When You're Uncomfortable With Sugar”
2. Give unconditional permission and trust
Children have an innate ability to self-regulate their intake.
This includes desserts and sweets. Yet, what often hinders them the most from self-regulation is our own interference with how much they eat.
Part of helping your child successfully manage their sugar intake is to give them unconditional permission to eat the foods you’re including in their meals and snacks without attempting to micromanage them or limit how much they eat.
Children need to be trusted to eat, and part of them learning to self-regulate what feels best in their bodies is through self-discovery - not by their caregivers telling them how much or little they should be eating of certain foods.
So when you’re allowing your child to take part in holiday sweets, be sure to do so without reservation or rigid rules. This can look like offering a dessert alongside your child’s meal and not having any rules about how/when that dessert gets eaten. For example, unconditional permission to eat can look like allowing your child to have dessert, even if they didn’t eat their veggies.
Give full permission for them to enjoy the eating experience, which will help them normalize sugar and learn how to self-regulate what feels best in their bodies.
3. Set healthy boundaries by offering within a meal structure
To piggyback on the last point, it’s also important to give kids healthy boundaries and structure around food, which builds a supportive environment from which they can learn about eating.
A supportive eating environment often looks like a reliable structure or routine around food.
This is helpful for kids because it helps them trust that food is reliable and is foundational to building a trusting feeding relationship with their caregivers.
Desserts and holiday treats can be offered repeatedly within the context of a meal and snack schedule. This can take out the stress and chaos that often ensues around sugar and holiday sweets and when to allow it.
When your child sees their sweets alongside other foods they’re used to eating at meals and snacks, it helps normalize sugar for them and make all foods emotionally equivalent.
For more information on serving sweets with meals, check out this post here: “7 Practical Reasons Why To Offer Your Kids Dessert With Dinner”
4. Proactively offer sweets more frequently during times of high frequency:
During times of higher sugar exposure, like around the holidays, the tendency may be to more tightly control sweets.
This can be a result of fear around the higher influx of sugar; however, when sweets are too tightly controlled, this often backfires and can cause a child to become more preoccupied with or obsessive about sugar.
Research has also found that parental use of restriction to control a child’s eating habits can have counterproductive effects, as it interferes with a child’s self-regulation of appetite.
This may seem counterintuitive, but kids actually need more interactions with sweets during times of higher sugar exposure in order to help any obsession or preoccupation around these foods subside.
During the holidays, in particular, where sweets are around and more readily available, be intentional about incorporating it more frequently into your child’s daily meal/snack routine.
Offering sweets before your child asks is also helpful for decreasing any anxiousness your child may have about having something sweet.
Switching up their routine around when they’re used to having sweets can also be effective in making their holiday sweets less of a big deal.
You can read more about this approach in this post here: “I'm a Dietitian and This is Why I Let My Kids Eat Candy For Breakfast”
5. Speak Neutrally About All Foods
How you talk to your kids about sweets and the words you choose around food plays an important role in shaping how your children feel about those foods.
It’s easy to say things like, “You’ve had enough of that!”, “You’re going to make yourself sick eating so much candy!”, or “Too much of that is so bad for you!”. These are things we all grew up hearing, and it’s easy to recycle the same phrases.
But your kids aren’t going to be able to learn how to navigate sweets successfully when these foods are demonized and talked about in a negative way.
Be aware of your word choices or any verbal cues you may express when it comes to your children eating sugar.
It’s also important to be aware of how you talk about yourself when it comes to eating sweets. It’s easy for caregivers to fall into the “good vs bad” trap of eating, throwing out phrases like, “I’m trying to be good, no sweets for me!”, or, “I’m so bad for indulging in this.”
Aim to take a neutral stance to help avoid any negative or confusing associations around sweets for your kids. If you’re unsure how to best respond to their ongoing requests for sugar and sweets, be sure to check out the next section below.
6. Let Your Kids See You Enjoying Sweets, Too
When our children see us enjoying the same foods they like to eat, it can also help normalize the experience for them. When it comes to desserts, a common mentality is that it may be okay for kids to eat, but sugar should be off limits for the adults.
If kids routinely see their caregivers refraining from eating the very foods they like to eat, it can potentially send mixed messages.
Enjoying sweets alongside your children can send a powerful message that all foods are safe, and not to mention, this is also a tangible way to connect with your children.
This doesn’t mean you always have to eat every same food and sweets your child loves - this isn’t realistic. Instead, focus on the big picture, and think about what it might look like for you to enjoy freedom with food as a family.
Perhaps this looks like giving yourself AND your children to enjoy those foods that can typically be “off-limits”. In doing so, you’re modeling what it looks like to have a healthy relationship with food.
7. Approach From a Place of Trust Instead of Fear
To summarize all the points above, it’s important to be aware of how you feed your children - even more so than the WHAT you feed your children.
Are you making decisions around food based on fear? Are you worried about the things you child eats or doesn’t eat? Or fearful of how your child’s body size may end up? Are you concerned about your child’s overall health and nutrition? Or their relationship with food?
If so, please know these are valid concerns, and you are a good parent because you care so deeply. Be aware of how these fears can play a role in the way you interact with your child around food.
Ultimately, if you can focus on doing your jobs with feeding and TRUST your kids to do their part with eating, you’ll be supporting them with a healthy foundation from which they’ll flourish and grow.
How to Respond to a Child’s Request for More Holiday Sweets
Are you getting bombarded with holiday sweets requests? Your child may have leftover candy or you have extra holiday desserts in your home - which kids are usually fully aware of. And even when the holidays have come and gone, the requests for candy continue to persist.
With all the holiday treats around, your kiddos might be asking the same question on repeat: “Can I have some more candy?”
If you’re feeling unnerved by the question, let me give you some encouragement here: This can actually be a great opportunity to respond to your child in a way that helps them build a positive relationship with all foods.
The tendency might be to shut them down, just to get them to stop. asking. the. question.
But when kids hear things like, “No, not right now”, “Later, you can have some later”, or “You’ve already had enough” → these phrases can actually make candy MORE desirable.
If kids don’t understand when more opportunities for candy or sweets are coming, this can tick up their anxiety around it, making them MORE likely to keep asking and obsessing over it.
Instead, focus on strategically using language that helps them feel reassured that more opportunities for eating candy are coming. Choose neutral words to prevent feelings of guilt or shame from attaching to candy or eating sweets in general.
By normalizing candy and giving them permission to enjoy it, you’re helping them trust all foods are safe and that candy will always be part of their future. This is essential to supporting your kiddos in building a positive relationship with all foods.
Here are some ideas to help you positively respond when your children ask, “Can I have some of my candy?”:
Validate their requests: “I hear you saying you’d really like some of your candy. Let’s have some with our snack after we get back from the library.” (Acknowledging what they’re asking helps prevent feelings of shame around sweets).
Lead with a ‘Yes’: “Yes, we’re going to have some candy with lunch. You can pick out 2 pieces when it’s time to sit down and eat.” (Reassure them candy is always part of their future).
Offer structure and support: “I’ll make sure candy is on the menu for dinner tonight. We’ll enjoy some with our meal.” (Allow repeated opportunities to have candy alongside meals and snacks).
Use events instead of time: “After we play outside, we’ll have candy and milk for our snack.” (Help them understand when opportunities for candy are coming).
Normalize candy/sweets and give them permission to enjoy it: “I would love to eat some candy with you at snack time. Which ones are your favorite?” (Build a trusting feeding relationship to help them learn all foods are safe).
I hope this helps give you some ideas on how to engage with your kids around sweets in a way that supports them in building a positive relationship with all foods - during the holidays and beyond.
I know the holidays can be stressful, but you can reclaim the joy around food and sharing this joy with your children to enjoy freedom with food as a family.
Be sure to leave a comment below: What are you going to focus on to help normalize holiday sweets for your children?
From my home and family to yours, Happy Holidays!