Sorry to disappoint but this isn’t a post on yummy scrummy recipes. Although I can happily provide that if you like?! Instead I’ve been having a bit of a ‘moment’ on the whole issue of sweet treats for the girls.
As kids we ate very healthily. All home cooked meals and the like. Plus we had what we called ‘A Friday Night Treat’. Every Friday my stepdad would come home with a special cake or doughnut for us and in the summer we could choose an ice cream from the village shop on our way home from school. We did have other bits and pieces but these were our big treat. It wasn’t that my mum was strict, just that we didn’t have it, nor did we crave or pester for things. In the main anyway!
Fast forward a few (Ok a lot of) years and for some reason my rationing of treats for the girls has gone to pot. Completely. I thought I’d like to do the same Friday night treat thing but along the way and in a fuzz of negotiating the trials and tribulations of motherhood I kind of forgot. Instead it seems to be an ‘every night treat’ or even a ‘two or three times a day treat’.
Please don’t judge me but in a normal day the girls will probably have at least 2 biscuits and then more often than not a bit of chocolate. Not a full on Mars bar I might add, just a few choccy buttons. And then there is the cake. On that note for those of you that don’t know I also make A LOT of cakes and so my house is always full of cake off cuts from wedding cakes or new recipe testing. There are also copious bowls of buttercream floating around my kitchen and the girls will often be found waiting eagerly for me to finish with it.
I am not strict about what they eat, as you can tell. They eat home cooked meals with a healthy dose of pasta and fish fingers! But on the whole it isn’t what I would call junk food. It isn’t always packed full of veg because they just won’t eat it but I figure it could be worse.
And recently I wondered if I have gone a bit wrong somewhere. Am I setting them up for a lifetime of dealing with a sweet tooth or is it actually the opposite in that allowing them to have it they don’t become crazed sugar fiends when at someone else’s house.
I could give a million and one reasons to justify my choices but in short I really don’t mind them eating a few biscuits. When you are trying to juggle two toddlers it sometimes became easier to reach for the biscuit tin than some carefully prepared crudités (which they won’t eat anyway BTW). I will also say that the girls are pretty healthy and both have excellent teeth with no concerns from their Dentist.
It’s not that I can’t make healthy snacks. I can concoct all manner of healthy treats that would fool anyone in to thinking they were eating a calorie laden sweet fest but for some reason I just haven’t quite cracked it with Molly and Alice. I did try some super healthy ‘chocolate’ flapjack bites for Molly’s lunchbox the other week but they came back uneaten. I get the girls involved in the baking but it doesn’t seem to fool them. Alice is a bit better and will eat the ‘healthy’ biscuits but Molly not so much. I did feel a little bit better this week when Charlotte told me that Mabel had woken up and asked for a McDonalds for breakfast!! She blames the grandparents…
So with this post I am either going to find some fellow secret biscuit feeders or realise the extent of my girl’s sweet teeth. Either way I’d love to hear what you give your littles in the way of treats, if anything at all. And any suggestions for breaking my habit of reaching for the biscuit tin.
Another naive ‘my child won’t eat sugar or watch TV’ parent here but that pretty much went to pot around 18 months.
Like yours, she eats healthy home cooked meals and she eats well at nursery (apparently) so I don’t see that trying some biscuit or a few chocolate buttons is the end of the world. Plus I remember a previous article on here where someone called Sophie said that there was a similar amount of sugar or the same structure or some such in chocolate as there was in fruit.
As an aside, there is a recipe for Apple flapjacks in 5 o’clock Apron which has always gone down well here. It has sugar in it but most of the sweetness comes from the apple.
There was a chapter on sweet treats in French children don’t throw food and it said that limiting treats often creates issues when they DO discover them and leads to overconsumption or an association between food and treats which is hard to break and leads to obesity. French toddlers have a form of hot chocolate and baguette for breakfast for goodness sake and chocolate is practically seen as one of the food groups! *moves to France*.
I am so moving to France too. Hot chocolate for breakfast you say?! It’s so hard to know what are good or bad sugars isn’t it. It’s a minefield and so many differing opinions. Obviously the girls eat fruit but also a biscuit so I’m probably doubling the sugar. Oops! I shall hunt out the Apple flapjacks recipe, they sound rather good. xxx
If it makes you feel better we were asked at nursery whether we wanted our daughter to have the healthy fruit and yoghurt or the more cakey option (organic spinach muffins – *gags*) for pudding. I asked what they thought and what most other parents did and they said to go for cake as they really need the sugars for energy at this age. We ended up saying she could have what she wanted. 60% of the time she goes for fruit it seems.
In my opinion (which is completely unfounded and without any scientific research whatsoever) educating your child about choices and teaching them to self limit their intake with food is as important as teaching them to walk, share and the alphabet. Life skillllllz.
Now the sun is out and we live by the beach Noah asks for a “lorrypop” pretty much everyday! And I often give in for peace but also for the enjoyment of being by the beach and enjoying the sun! He woud eat biscuits if I bought them, but as I can never resist I don’t!! My in laws treat him a bit too often to cake and a bit of chocolate but again it’s the enjoyment of being a treat with granny and gramps which makes it OK. I figure if you give them, and they usually eat, pretty decent meals then the odd snack isn’t going to harm them, its life. I worry giving no treats means when they are old enough they might OD on the sugary stuff!
I reckon if I lived by the beach I would have a lorrypop every day too. Molly was most excited last week when we went to the doctors and they prescribed ice cream, lollypops and jelly!! (she had lots of ulcers from a mild case of Hand, foot and mouth so couldn’t eat). If a doctor prescribes it I reckon a lorrypop can’t be bad! xxx
Soooo we don’t limit him but we don’t offer them to him so he hasn’t clocked on yet that chocolate can come from more places than the Easter Bunny. He does ask for chocolate sometimes in which case he gets some of his easter egg. Yes he still has loads! Mine went by easter Sunday evening. He likes cake. He likes biscuits. However they tend to be at a weekend or at nanny’s house. He will in the same breath ask for a banana or an apple so I don’t worry. The one thing I don’t let him have are squashes as they are full of sugar and the sugar free ones are not much better. He sticks to water milk and he does like a cup of tea before he can function in the morning. Don’t judge, my 2 year old has been on caffeine since he was one. He’s still has all his teeth and looks healthy has lots of energy so I’m assuming he’s alright
I love that you give him tea. My little sister apparently used to have a ‘dub a dee’ in her bottle in the morning! Squash is another cardinal sin in my house. I have never drunk it, always just had water, and don’t like the taste. My husband on the other hand drinks loads of the stuff so it just seemed to get added to the girls juice cups. Alice will more often than not just have water but Molly prefers squash. Provided we have fruit juice in I will add a splash of that instead. Sooooo many considerations, it’s all too much sometimes isn’t it? Everything in moderation I reckon xx
I agree with the everything in moderation approach, plus making as much as you can at home – I personally feel that so long as you are 85% of the time making meals from scratch for your kids (i.e. not fish fingers and smiley faces every night), then daily treats are fine. We don’t really have a biscuit tin in our house (I would raid that far too often!) but I do take a small treat to school every day for each of our children to enjoy on the way home – mini packet of cookies or fruit yoyo. My 3 also have one Innocent smoothie per day (it counts as part of 5 a day, right?!), and I do worry about the (natural) sugar content in that. They then only drink water or milk, and even my 9 year old son would never touch fizzy drinks – can’t bear them. I generally think anything home made, be it cakes or biscuits, is infinitely better than shop bought as its not full of additives or preservatives.
I am impressed with how little I do raid the biscuit tin in our house! That said a malted milk isn’t quite as appealing as an M&S extra chocolatey biscuit! Innocent are definitely fine I reckon. Mine don’t have fizzy drinks either and agree that home made is best. I never buy shop bought cakes mainly as there is always some homemade in my house. Another temptation for me to resist! xxx
I was talking to a friend at the weekend and she said they’d got around the whole fizzy drinks thing by using a soda stream – they just fizzed up normal tap water and then add lemons to the drink and sold it as “homemade lemonade”. Their 10 year old still believes it despite having been to McDonalds birthday parties and the like….
I thought it was genius
Totally agree with Rebecca above on the ‘life skillz’. As soon as mine were old enough to understand we got reading regularly on what foods are and what they are good for doing in your body. We used a Food Doctor book so if we’re trying something new they can find the picture and find out what its good for. My eldest has been a keen onion fan ever since she read it was good for asthma. If it doesn’t have the nutritional information of a custard creme its probably because it doesn’t do much for our bodies… so they understand why that can be an occasional thing just for the sake of tasting nice, but not something our bodies really need. We did that from about 4 years old and have a pretty happy balance of healthy food and ocassional sweets.
Niema is two and can’t read yet so I don’t make her read the book (!) but I do take the approach of me being in charge at snack time. Sometimes it’s a biscuit, sometimes bread sticks, sometimes fruit or veg. I choose and I put it out for her. If she doesnt fancy whats on offer then she’ll spread it all over the floor or spit it out and say ‘I dont like it’ but I don’t rush off to the cupboard to get her anything else (she quite enjoys eating things off the floor at her own pace actually). Now she’s starting to ask for specifics it is a bit of a battle of the wills. She had an icecream at the park on her birthday and now everytime we go to the park she asks for icecream. We met friends for lunch the other day and she insisted she wanted ice cream so I just told her we would have one at the weekend with Daddy and ordered her some scrambled eggs. I think its easier to say ‘yes soon’ rather than ‘no, eat your spinach!’
I’ve been quite strict with my older 2, but involving them means they have a pretty good attitude about food, and they are well educated and happy to eat well. I also try not to make a big deal about not having certain things and try not to call sweet things treats either, or use them as rewards. To be completely honest the pressure and difficulty has mainly come from family and friends who tell them they are deprived and try to sneak them junk food and make a big deal about it – when actually they were quite happy. The amount of people who offer my kids rubbish and say ‘lets not telly mummy about it’ It makes me so mad!
I’d also try again with some of the healthy snacks Charlotte – the home baked healthy goodies I’ve spied on your instagram look really yummy – you never know if you keep putting them there they might get tried on a hungry day and as soon as something becomes normal they don’t turn their noses up at it as much.
I love that you have been educating your kids from an early age on food. Such great mummy skills. I think maybe that might work with Molly as she is really in to finding out things already.
Can’t believe people sneak them junk food. Not the best really as like you say it then becomes a bigger deal.
Molly is also really sneaky and says ‘I’m a little bit hungry…’ so I say you can have a banana and she’ll ask what else. I’ve started listing other fruits and she soon gives up and has her banana so I may slowly be getting somewhere. Now they are a bit older I feel I can be a bit stricter. When they were younger it was easier to give up (bad I know) as I mainly wanted them to eat. The last few weeks I have been adding more veg to their dinners and if they don’t eat it then that’s tough. I also know what fruit they do and don’t like so Molly gets offered bananas and strawberries and alice baby oranges and raspberries. That way they are at least having something they like. They do still have a biscuit but trying to limit that down and is when they have been super active or busy rather than just sat around. I’m slowly getting there I think and am definitely going to persevere with the healthy baking. Molly loves helping so I figure eventually she will want to eat them. It’s all a bit difficult isn’t it?! xxx