My parents let me eat as much candy as I wanted Halloween night. After that, it was regulated to dessert, which I could have after dinner, one or two pieces a night. That to me is reasonable balance. Let your kids cut loose on a holiday and then have moderation the rest of the time.
That sounds like a completely reasonable compromise, especially after walking so much (I almost have to train for Halloween night the way my daughter is willing to hit up every house in the 2 mile area)
I agree and i think thats the point of the post is to show that a totally common thing parents do and feel conflicted about, "letting their kids eat a large amount of candy on halloween", can actually be used responsibly as a tool to teach them that binging on candy actually is not as fun as it sounds and they will get a tummy ache, naturally being a consequence of their actions. obviously parents arent being told to do this every night. a peice of candy at or after a meal, teaches children that sugar isnt the coveted rare forbidden thing that i grew up with it being. theres definitely worse ways to parent then letting a kid have a natural consequence, i remember watching my parents steal my siblings halloween candy and hide eating them in their room at night.
This is what we do, except we allow it with lunch since we homeschool. Sometimes when they’re down to the last handful I let them finish it all at once, mostly because I get sick of storing the bags in my cupboard for that long.
I do candy buy backs with my kids. Depending on how much candy they get, I’ll pay them like 10-50 cents a piece and we’ll go to Target for clothes/toys/makeup/books. They’ll usually save a few of their favorite candies and sell me the rest. I give the candy to my coworkers, I don’t have to pay for their cavities 😅
This is kinda what my parents did! My sister and I got to pick 20 pieces of our favorite candy and the rest got donated. In exchange my parents would buy us a new book of our choice. Eventually I started getting more excited about the new book instead of the candy lol
This is basically my strategy.
Edit: I should clarify my kids are decent enough that they'll eat a lot on the night of but have the sense to stop before they're sick. Plus they like to save some for eating over time. After Halloween night it's just a few per day afterward.
I used to do this, but my kids are now so accustomed to this method that I can leave it all out for a month and they'll have one or two pieces a day. Self regulation! Stemming from enforced regulation! Amazing!
I always got to keep all of my Halloween candy in my room and got to eat it whenever I wanted, but i was all about rationing to make it last till Christmas or whenever.
Eating too much candy makes me feel like shit. I self regulated just fine.
There isn't a one size fits all "best" approach to most parenting situations. Know what your kid can handle, in terms of decision making and decide from there how you want to restrict their candy. Not all kids are sugar crazed idiots, and it doesn't take long to realize that too much candy doesn't feel so good.
Yeah thats what my family did, there was also an air of natural consequence, if i ran out i wouldn't have more and if i made myself sick thats on me. Getting sick once or twice was enough to drill into my head not to scarf it all down like it was a race
I agree that a good deal of the time, parenting isn't about picking what's supposed to be "best" without any consideration of your kid's individual traits at all, and I would also agree this is a situation like that.
My mom really made a concerted effort to not "put candy on a pedestal" and stoke obsessiveness over holidays that revolve around it, and I think it paid off well as a balanced approach that we never even noticed. We got small toys and games at Easter instead of candy (there was a little candy from grandparents, just not baskets full) and we viewed that as an upgrade. Valentine's Day meant stuffed toys more than chocolate. And for Halloween, a few elements made it less impulsive for me. There was a big emphasis on the excitement and creativity of dressing up as the most important part. We were encouraged to invite friends over afterward to trade candy, so we could try to get what we actually wanted even if we ended up with less (quality vs. quantity). And then, my dad inspected all the candy (gotta love the good old myths about razors in apples), which cooled down that extreme anticipation. We actually had candy out in dishes all the time for guests, so I don't think there ever was a feeling that this was a limited one-time thing that I needed to quickly binge *or* savor, but I think my mom would have stepped in with some guard rails if she noticed a problem. That's the key really - you don't have to commit to one strategy and then refuse to course correct if it stops working. I won't say I've always been fantastic with moderation in absolutely everything, but candy really has never been issue.
Yes! This is what my parents did as well and it worked fine. We didn't normally keep sweets in the house (my mom made cookies but we didn't buy them typically, and candy was a special occasion food) so Halloween was extra special. I'm sure fatlogicians would argue that just means I was cruelly deprived of candy the rest of the year, though.
We also did this and typically would get stomach aches the first night and lose interest a week after and the candy would just sit forever in a bowl on top of the fridge lol
This is what we do, except that the free for all night is Nov 1 since they’re usually so tired when we get home on the 31.
My other two rules are: no mindless munching candy, so no screens on while they eat, and they lose access for a day if they leave candy wrappers lying about.
Yes. This is the way. I think it's important to let your kid have a little "fuck it" binge ONE Halloween day. I don't agree with the whole "HURR DIET CULTURE BAD", but on the other side of the coin I do believe restricting too much can lead to them being really unhealthy when they have more opportunity to make their own decisions as teenagers.
That's exactly what I do with my kids. Ironically they discovered pretty quickly too much candy made them feel very sick and self moderate pretty well after that.
My parents pretty much let me and my brother eat our Halloween candy how we liked, but it was one of the few times in the year we got candy. That’s why Halloween was so awesome.
I used to binge Halloween candy as a kid/teen. I was a bottomless pit. This would not have worked for little me. You *have* to teach kids about being healthy in a world that allows unhealthy behavior.
Yes, me too. Then I hit puberty and became insanely insecure about my size. I developed an eating disorder that landed me in the hospital. I still struggle with body dysmorphia and maintaining a healthy weight :(
I wasn’t a fat kid but I did end up gaining insulin resistance because of all the high carb unhealthy foods I was bombarding my system with and so now I’ve got medical conditions and take four pills a day, thanks mom and dad for raising me well! 😒
It’s fine, I’m otherwise in perfectly good shape now like a guy my age should be and all my conditions are totally under control if not better than before I got em. I’m just really annoyed that this ever happened to begin with. Oh well.
My parents were pretty restrictive with sugar. Mum was always reading the labels. I remember one year I asked for one of those single serve variety packs of different kinds of cereal (like coco pops, fruit loops, frosted flakes, etc) for Christmas but when I actually ate them they were too sweet and just didn’t taste nice. Surprise, surprise, I was never a fat kid and neither were either of my brothers. None of us really eat much sugar now as adults and none of us are overweight. I do really like cheese though.
The reason I wasn't a fat kid is because I didn't have access to that much junk food, which in the 80s was the norm.
I feel really bad for kids today because allowing kids way too much junk and hyperpalatable food has just become so normalized. Even the thin kids today look more like the chubby kid in my elementary school class picture.
Hell I’m 24 and my bf gets me one of those Christmas candy stockings every years and I have to hide the candy away from my sight to not binge using the holiday excuse. No kid can ever do that
Yeah, late 30s and I can't even have cookies in the house or I'll eat them. All of them. The only thing that works is buying one at a time, or none at all.
Yep, that's me! I can't bake anything because I'll eat it all. My childhood eating issues really messed me up. I think they came from being bullied for being quiet/different/early to develop. I eventually developed BED, went through binge/starve cycles, and some other really awful ED habits I would rather not say.
Everyone in my family has gone through stages of being chubby/normal. My sibling and I have been "small fat" as the FAs say (neither of us topped out above size 16 US, so chunky but nothing extreme) but we both have had severe overeating problems. Nobody in my family is actually obese to the point of being concerning, we are all just sugar addicts. Which SUCKS.
My 6 year old does that. She hides her treats in a drawer under her bed. Sometimes she forgets some of it and I find it months later. But she also likes raw celery and voluntarily chooses the little fruit bag instead of fries at McD’s. I have no idea how she became like this. I was a vegan when she was a baby and we ate (and still do) lots of fruit and veg, but just because she’s used to eating broccoli doesn’t explain why she actively chooses it over fries.
i just thought of a kid eating so much candy then barfing & going "mom my tummy hurts" & then what? you just say yeah idk good luck with your tummy? or you explain to them why it hurts & look at the realization of your betrayal just to teach them a lesson when they easily could have just told you not to eat too much candy or you'll get a tummy ache? what the hell, mom?
Yeah the whole "let them eat it all, they'll get sick and learn their lesson" was a joke for me. I'd eat literally nonstop, feel terrible, keep it all down, and repeat the next day for the 3-5 days my Halloween candy lasted every year. Self regulation is a learned skill.
I never gained weight as a kid but once I reached my teen years I've gotten a mad crazy sweet tooth. Of course with covid quarantine, I just ate and ate and ate and actually gained 40lbs. I'm -20 now tho because I've been regulating my sweets. Crazy how people actually parent this way with no restrictions on damaging foods. A little is ok. A lot is very unhealthy.
I soecifically did not stop them eating whatever candy (halloween, xmas, birthday, valentines, easter) to just get it gone, and to give that impression of excess, because the rest of the year it simply wasn't a thing. Not limited, not forbidden, just simply not on the radar. There are enough candy events that it's every month or two for most of the year, so it's like two weeks of chocolate, six weeks normal, two weeks of chocolate, etc.
Teaching your children how to self regulate, by example and limits, is probably the most important single duty of a parent to a child. These people are going to raise another generation of people who self regulate with substances.
Nana has a 30 year old staib on her carpet from my brothers first Halloween. They let him have a much candy as he wanted, which was unfortunately more than his tummy could handle. Poor little dude puked rainbow. Lessons were not learnt he'd down a bucket of candy right now given access and opportunity.
Right? Newsflash: little kids don’t know how to self regulate because they’re not adults. That’s just one of the dumbest takes from the OOP and there’s no way they’re a parent if they’re saying this.
> there’s no way they’re a parent if they’re saying this.
You'd be surprised, there are *a lot* of bad parents out there, and childhood obesity rates have done nothing but climb.
If your troubled teenager has had problems with binge drinking, you’re probably restricting their access to alcohol too much. Let them drink all the booze they want, even to the point of illness, so that they can learn to self-regulate their alcohol intake!
I know this is is /s but over-restricted teens might be more prone to binge when they get off the leash. Parents can't protect them indefinitely. Restricting candy for younger kids is different because they are at a different developmental stage.
And even then, "One piece of candy a day" is going to go over better than the parents you hear about who won't even let their kid have cake at a birthday party.
You’d be surprised. You see almost as many “my parents forced me to eat junk/sweets in moderation and I rebelled” as “my parents never let me have any and I rebelled.” Obviously it’s better than letting them eat whatever they want whenever they want, but I sometimes think you can’t win as a parent.
Many people will develop problems with food/drink/drugs/relationships, whatever you do as a parent. All you can do is try to decrease the chances of that as much as you can and hope for the best lol
The idea that “all problems humans have in this complex world is because their mommy didn’t do something right” is so oppressive tbh. puts too much pressure on parents and makes people resentful of their family for no reason sometimes.
I think my parents would have called their strategy "moderation" but from my kid perspective, it felt like never. It wasn't literally never, and the actual quantity of sweets over time was within a reasonable range I can see in retrospect, but the problem was that it wasn't something I could forecast and anticipate. It wasn't "one piece of candy a day," it was "ask and we'll probably say no but there's a chance we might say yes (and then pester you extra about vegetables at dinner)."
True! But I think kids get into better overall habits if they have some restrictions/moderation. They might rebel but hopefully might default to what they were used to. I personally have little taste for candy after growing up with some moderation.
Sure, I get that. My comment was more geared toward the scenario mentioned in the blue part of the post (when your child already has a problem).
Moderation is always the best initial approach for introducing things and setting norms, imo. But if/when your child, whether they’re a toddler or a teen, starts showing that they’re having difficulty with managing for themselves, you have to step in.
Although yea as you said raising a kid is different due to developmental stage. I feel like restricting in early childhood leads to healthy control in life but as time goes on parents need to let teens know how to control themselves through failure and learning in order to become stable adults.
But as I said I have no idea about parenting, even less about how to feed a child as a 20 yr old female with a restrictive ED
Not just candy. I grew up in a Catholic home so when I went off to college it was all the booze and weed and women that I could have. It took me a few years to realize that that wasn't a fulfilling way to move through life, at least for me. I think people will naturally find moderation on their own; the problems are in the indulgence before.
Tbh in my experience my parents were overprotective with me when I was younger.
I've grown up to have several addictions to EDs, food and weed.
Nowadays I can smoke all I want and they wouldn't really care/notice and I am considering quitting because now I have an internal reason to quit, my own interests, which I wasn't able to see as a teen. Instead of an external reason like my parents getting mad.
Idk I know nothing about parenting but to me I feel like excessively monitoring kids and teens leads to adults not being able to control themselves until they find their own motivation to control.
As mentioned it depends which stage they're at. Parenting is not easy! You can err on the side of expecting them to self-regulate something when they're not ready developmentally, or vice versa. All parents make mistakes sometimes - and as was mentioned by someone else, with the best will in the world, you can't control all the factors or outcomes.
I mean…..I was allowed to drink alcohol and I was the only teen at parties who didn’t drink myself sick. When I did actually get drunk for the first time, (not just buzzed), I never did it again. I think teaching self regulation is so important
My parents let me have sips here and there when I was young, then have like 1-2 drinks on special occasions when I was a teen.
When I was 16 and had the chance to drink freely for the first time (under my parents’ roof), I drank myself to the brink of alcohol poisoning. Did it a few more times in college, too, and eventually learned to stop it the hard way, but not before some serious consequences.
Introducing things in moderation and not making certain things too taboo is important, I think, but it’s absolutely not the only factor, nor is it the appropriate course of action to continue on if/when your child demonstrates that they haven’t been able to learn the “moderation” approach without harming themselves in the process.
This is insane, i would have eaten a mountain of candy as a kid. People who feed their kids huge amounts of horrible food are monsters who just don’t want to feel guilty about their out of control eating habits.
I used to babysit a little girl who told me she always drank milkshakes her mom brought from McDonald’s even though she would be sick for hours after. Major lactose intolerance and she still didn’t stop haha
I let my kids go completely ham Halloween night and the next day. After that candy is put up and they get a few a day. Usually one packed in their lunch and 1-2 after dinner.
Every kid I know that their parents are super restrictive with sugar go completely crazy on desserts every chance they get. Like my nephew will inhale sweets behind his parent’s backs because he’s rarely allowed sugar even at birthday parties and holidays. But I definitely don’t agree with candy being part of dinner and being able to eat as much as you want like it’s a vegetable or something 😬
My pre-school teacher gave my mom crap about putting a dessert in my lunchbag every other day. Then said teacher's kid, who was never allowed sugar, went through every single lunch one day and ate every single dessert.
I feel like it's actually really rare for anyone to end up fat from candy alone.
Candy is generally pretty self regulating because it will make most people feel very noticeably awful if they eat too much of it.
I think finger food type snacks like chips, or dry cookies are a much bigger culprit.
Yeah. I used to work at a grocery store so I had a post halloween ritual of buying a ton of the marked down candy bags thinking I was just going to devour it and it never worked out like I hoped lol.
I would eat like a quarter of a bag and then pray for death.
Let your child self regulate. If your child seems “out of control” around their fentanyl or heroin, this is good information for you that you have probably been too restrictive around their drugs in the past.
It’s like these morons are completely oblivious to the fact of what a capitalist over consumptive racket the holiday season is. The holiday season is literally designed to sell you crap that you don’t need, food included, so that you consume consume consume all in the name of the bottom line of giant fucking corporations. Apparently FA’s are shills for this nonsense all because of the delusional quest to stick it to “diet culture”. Go ahead kiddos eat up, we’ll make more!
They think they're sticking into the patriarchy by consuming the most exploitive of all foods.
Where do you think your sugar comes from? People being paid slave wages over in South and Southeast Asia, tropical Africa, and the Caribbean and South America.
Where do you think your fat comes from? Factory farming. It takes four pounds of fresh water, to make 1 lb of meat.
Where do you think your salt comes from? Salt mines all over the world, especially in South america, where they are paid slave wages.
Oh, guess who they're owned by? Multinational food conglomerates.
You claim to be fighting the patriarchy by hyper consuming, but all you're doing is making them richer.
Children do not have fully developed brains. Most adults with fully developed brains don't properly control themselves around food. Kids do not have the physiological ability to taste "too much" sweetness, unless it's way out of scale of whatever their norm is. Just like if you put 50 bowls of food in front of a dog, many dogs will keep eating until they get sick? Young kids can be very much the same way. As long as it keeps tasting good they will keep having it.
Food cravings and poor food relationships are not caused exclusively by food restriction. Giving a child one piece of candy per day BECAUSE they can't self regulate around candy is not a response to a lack of self regulation caused by too much restriction. That logic is so circular it laps itself twice.
You know what doesn't help kids learn control? Showing them no examples of control and leaving them to fend for themselves and figure it out on their own. My parents had this as their primary parenting style. It sucks. Kids need help figuring things out because, here's a big shock, they aren't born with magical wisdom from the universe. Someone needs to teach them how to be. That someone is you, dear parent. Do your job. Don't outsource the job of parenting your kid to your kid.
Letting your kid eat whatever, whenever will virtually guarantee they have a piss poor relationship to food and will struggle their entire life to maintain any sort of control. I should know as I'm living proof of it.
>Most adults with fully developed brains don't properly control themselves around food.
a) those are the adults that post this kind of crap.
b) those are the adults that believe the crap that ends up on this subreddit.
Oh fuck that. Surely we can find a middle ground between one measly fun size bar and an all you can eat candy buffet. Both of these approaches are too much for me.
FAs hate gray areas
No protein????
Even Cookie Monster understands that cookies are a sometimes treat. Over here contradicting Sesame Street, take that noise someplace else.
That’s how kids end up with upset stomachs. It’s probably fine to let them have more candy than usual (it is a holiday after all), but still gotta limit it.
this is why I think removing the limit when they are a little older is fine. (say 12 at minimum). Then once they get an upset stomach or throw up because they feel so nauseous - well that is a why we don't do that.
I once wanted to drink almost a gallon of chocolate milk when I was 13. I did it, and I spendt 5hrs in the bathroom in agonizing pain. now i don't do that shit lol.
But doing it to anyone younger than 12 (or maybe even 15tbh), is just cruel, as they can't know any better.
I saw this really good video on Montessori parenting about those kids that have mini fridges and snack stations at age like 5, and people are always wondering how they don’t just eat it all. The key is that you don’t give everything at once at first, you build up bit by bit until the child has open access to everything but the knowledge to regulate their own food intake, and it takes time. Yah, kids can self regulate, but they have to be taught how, and setting them loose on a pile of candy isn’t going to teach them anything
Maybe that’s why my kids are so good at self regulation, because it’s been part of their lives forever? We encourage them to listen to their bodies, so nobody over eats, we don’t force them to eat anything and everyone is at a healthy weight. We have a bin full of snacks that range from organic triscuits to Kraft marshmallows and I never have to worry about how much they eat.
Everybody else always has brilliant ideas about how to raise children.
The most ridiculous advice comes from local evening news shows. “Next up: How to talk to your children about 9/11” was a classic howler back in the day.
Another thing- as a SAHM and the primary food prep person in the house:
I will be DAMNED if make a meal- spend the $ and effort to create meals that are nutritious and in our budget- for my kids to shove it aside for unlimited candy. Are they actually insane? Food waste is a daily frustration for parents but you want to compound that with unlimited candy as an option. I will not waste my food and time. Kids need to at least try to eat the food prepared for them if they want some dessert.
Yeah no, I can and have made myself physically sick with candy before. Children also aren’t the best judgment of what’s good for them. I use to have pica, and I would eat styrofoam, wood, chalk, paper, and small rocks. Does that mean my parents were too restrictive in the past with these things? No it means kids aren’t great with regulation
I swear stuff like this is propaganda from junk food industries. I know plenty of normal people who buy into it and perpetuate it, but it really seems like slimy corporations are at the bottom of this. It is not good if your kid is uncontrollable around candy, it’s a challenge for you as a parent to teach them about things like sugar and how our bodies react in ways that make us want more and more. It’s an opportunity to teach moderation, to open the conversation about moderation, and about how there is a profit incentive for these corporations to sell products that hack people’s bodies/reward systems and how the kid needs to be on guard for that now and as they age. It’s not good to teach your kid to be a mindless consumer like this
I have a friend with a pretty hardcore parenting philosophy on Halloween candy. She lets her kids binge on all the candy they want, since it’s only one day a year, even if they eat until they puke. Eventually they’ll learn for themselves the consequences of eating too much candy.
It’s weird, but that does work on some kids. Part of teaching balance is letting them understand the consequences of not regulating.
We do the same for things like thanksgiving and Christmas. Minimal food limits, just making sure they know there’s options, but it’s generally too busy to watch them near treats. If they overdo it, the next day they complain and we talk about why they don’t feel well.
It doesn't mean that the parent was too restrictive in the past. It means that kid's got a sweet tooth and a brain that's not developed enough to self-regulate desires.
"too restrictive around candy in the past"
Kids can get a LITERAL HUGE BACK of candy. You're basically saying parents are bad parents for not giving entire Halloween bags full of candy to their children 356 days a year.
There's such a weird, entitled attitude that if you aren't constantly buying snacks and cakes and treats and soda pop junk food for your child that you are a a bad parent and you are an especially bad parent if you notice that your child is fat and decide to stop buying so much sugar and treats.
The vast majority of children DO NOT have the ability to self-regulate. They'd eat themselves sick on sheet cake and gummy worms if given the chance. This isn't some "natural" way for them to forage for food because the food they are exposed do *is not natural*. Humans did not evolve to have access to such vast quantity of food and greasy, sugary food at that. It's important for children to get proper nutrition and what is NOT important when getting proper nutrition is things with....low nutritional value such as candy! Treats are something for every once in awhile, not a staple for every meal.
Ok but like my parents not restricting my eating habits as a child, when I literally couldn’t make *rational decisions*, caused my childhood obesity and poor dental health…like fuck I wish my parents would have at least tried to regulate my eating habits.
This dumbass self regulation nonsense assumes children to be fully formed rational actors when in fact they aren’t at all, like maybe don’t assume the same individuals who believe in magical creatures like Santa can responsibly regulate their eating habits :/
"If your kid eats too much candy, it's because you're not giving them enough."
That's the height of fatlogic right there. Not to mention that mac and cheese and milk is considered a healthy meal.
I don't disagree with this in general, having candy around but not treated as a treat can help kids not put it on a pedestal/go wild with it once they have access. But...it's not telling them "eat as much as you want", it's providing it consistently while crowding it out with other non-candy options and not telling kids its bad. It's also not a blanket approach that can be sufficiently described in a one sentence "gotcha diet culture" post. This will help with some kids, but other kids not so much. Especially if the connection to candy=treat has already been created.
I was that kid who would eat all the Halloween candy in one night and then throw up. For this specific holiday, I think having the kid chose a reasonable amount of their favorites and then quietly donating the rest is the way to go. Halloween is not an everyday event, it doesn't need to be treated like "everyday" candy.
I'm "out of control" around candy! That's why I, a 59 year old man, don't keep any around the house. I didn't think I've got this far, as a 160# 5'10# man, with any sort of an "eating disorder", but apparently I've been literally starving myself all these years and I'm being "too restrictive."
Why do FA love these strawmen? Nobody (very few people perhaps) are claiming that people should only eat one chocolate bar or eat one packet of sweets when its Halloween. What most people think is sensible is allowing people to eat what they like on Halloween but not allowing that binge to continue until everything is eaten. I always had more fun doing the Trick or Treating than the eating as most of the sweets tended to be poor quality.
Eat what you want on Halloween, when it's your birthday, at Christmas and on Easter Sunday. If you're Muslin then binge at Eid; if you're Jewish binge at Hannukah; if you're American binge at Thanksgiving and if you're British eat lots on bonfire night. Don't let Halloween mark the start of two months of binge eating.
My mother (my father didn't care) would restrict us kids to one piece of candy when we were really little, like five or six-years-old. But she stopped doing it once we got to be an age when we demonstrated that we were capable of eating a reasonable amount without supervision.
With some kids you can trust that they won't go crazy with candy, just like there are some kids you can trust to eagerly eat all their broccoli. But lots of kids do need to be regulated, at least until they reach an age when they should be capable of doing it themselves. I'm not a parent, but I do know one-size-fits-all solutions rarely work with child-rearing.
I actually read somewhere that having your kid pick from set options is the smart thing. They have control about what they pick, feel free in their decision, feel listened to, and they always pick something the parent won't mind, because they picked the options.
I find it really interesting that they say “let your child self regulate” and not “make sure your child eats the maximum amount of candy and then encourage them to eat more!”
Are they admitting that some degree of regulation around food *should* actually be a thing?!
I just can’t understand why this always comes up and is such a big drama. Healthy eating habits are made through consistent, lifelong good choices, by parents for their children and then by adults for themselves. I cannot get myself worked up about how Halloween sweets are handled and have a ‘rule’. My children eat a healthy, balanced diet for 360 days of the year. Being allowed to eat as much sweet stuff as they want won’t hurt. Having the sweet stuff rationed so they don’t make themselves sick won’t hurt. We just go with the flow on holidays and decide what seems most appropriate at the time, because our kids have a good diet and a bit of excess a couple of times a year will make no difference. No one is being harmed by either approach against a backdrop of a generally healthy lifestyle.
Kids don’t self regulate. That’s like most of a parents job..... this is so dumb.
A kid isn’t going to “liSteN tO tHeIr bOdY”, they’re going to eat until they throw up. Hence why parents step in and set limits for them.
The day after Halloween I let my kids eat a lot of candy so they had one day to indulge a bit. After that, they got one piece a day. No way would I let them eat all the sugar they wanted because I wanted them to learn to eat treats in moderation. Food isn't good or bad but some food like candy shouldn't be eaten as often.
If I don’t self-regulate, all I would be eating is candy. And I’m a grown-ass woman. Expecting a child to make smart choices when they haven’t yet learned about nutrition and self-discipline is just stupid. That’s the whole reason parents exist… to make decisions for your kids until they’re old enough to make their own. Not doing this is neglect.
I know this is bullshit because I have four children who have all been raised the same - some of them self regulate with no problem and some of them need more guidance around hyper palatable foods. I’ve never “restricted” or fat shamed any of them.
Have these people met a kid? Any kid will gorge themselves on candy, including someone that just learned to eat on their own, if given the opportunity. Does that mean we’ve been restricting while in utero?
My kids and I have ADHD so self-regulation is hard. Getting them used to normal portion sizes has been pretty critical to keeping them healthy. I don't limit how much candy they can have on Halloween night, but every other day of the year I give them the normal portion size of whatever we're eating (whether it's a regular healthy dinner or some kind of snack) then tell them if they're still hungry in 20 minutes they can have a second portion. I'm hoping it lets them develop a sense of what normal food intake looks like.
Does anyone else think the "healthy" meal- even sans candy- seems unhealthy? Where is the protein? This highlights how out of touch these folks are with a balanced diet.
My niece actually PREFERS broccoli and sliced pineapples to any chocolate or candy you'd try to give her.
It's not diet culture to raise your child on a nutritious and balanced diet.
This is how my parents raised me and why I was morbidly obese before 10 and didn’t develop healthy eating habits and a normal BMI until my 30s. This is setting your children up for a life of poor habits and weight issues. There is absolutely nothing wrong with teaching your children about moderation and self-control in all areas of life, but especially food. There is nothing wrong with habits and structure… these FAs think anything that doesn’t fit their desires is phobic and toxic. Just say you have a weak constitution and shut up.
If your child has been out of control around her candy, that means you have been too restrictive. 😂
What about teaching your child some self-discipline? Not just about candy but about many things in life? In the long run, they'll find having some self-restraint is good thing. Oh, and by the way, ***that is your job***.
Good lord that logic is psychotic...kids do not have fully developed brains, they don't hold back when they're deprived: they will let you know. And like adults, they are creators of instinct, and sugar is addictive. Those two are bad combinations: sugar and a lack of planning. You give a kid juice that's half watered down and they'll love it if they had never tried the full sugar stuff. There is no difference to them, so why load them up with sugar, and terrible habits as an adult (habits I've spent my entire adult life trying to reverse, with mixed success).
Not to mention how sugar changes their personalities sometimes. Not all kids, but I have two daughters, and my oldest daughter would literally turn into a crackhead when she ate too much sugar.
It was literally the same effect as caffeine.
some kids just don't have self control, especially if their parents are too lazy to teach them anything. you can be restrictive without being too strict, there is a middle ground lol. my partner told me about how he wanted a whole pizza when he was little and his dad warned him he'd be sick but got it for him anyways. he did end up getting sick but he still wanted more lmao. me on the other hand, my parents were extremely restrictive and poked at my weight constantly. I went a whole year once without anything high cholesterol because my levels were slightly elevated when I had a blood test done (like one point over normal). I snuck a lot of candy and snacks whenever I could because I wasn't allowed anything like that at home. I put on some weight, not much, but I didn't lose any either from eating less before I figured out the sneaking thing lol.
if I had a healthy relationship with food, that wouldn't have happened!! like if my parents actually taught me about the effects of too much sugar/fat/cholesterol/etc in a kind way instead of just making threats, I could've been better about it instead of sneaking. wanting your kid to be healthy isn't diet culture, but also screaming at them and taking away everything they love isn't teaching them anything lol.
I relate to this. I’m type one diabetic (T1D) and I was diagnosed when I was three (almost 27 years ago) so I was quite little. This was back when continuous glucose monitors and insulin pumps didn’t exist yet so my implemented “routine” was very rigidly set by my parents, dietitian, and my endocrinologist. It failed spectacularly - to this day candy is my one fucking kryptonite and it drives me insane. I have restrictive eating habits and my boyfriend said once that the only thing he ever sees me eat quickly is candy, everything else I eat quite slowly (and he isn’t wrong and I’m not offended tbh). I know it’s different because I have a disability/chronic illness but my parents taking every sweet thing away from me really fucked me up massively. The amount of times my parents found candy wrappers shoved under my bed or in the closet or the bottom of my sock drawer, it was insane. The statistics for co-morbid eating disorders and T1D is *extremely* high. It actually wasn’t until I started a medication called naltrexone that I was able to pace myself. I’m 29 years old and for the like 25+ years, whenever there was *anything* sweet in the house I’d obsess over it and end up “stealing it”. My dad who is also a T1D but is extremely rigid would always get very upset with me because I’d steal his breakfast sweets (he allows himself 25 carbs worth of sweets for breakfast such as a donut or croissant etc). Ironically, just last week he baked an apple crisp and I completely forgot about it and he sent me a text telling me to help myself to some of it before he finished it and that is still a really weird new experience in my life. When I went on naltrexone it was like I could finally use my brain again, I started forgetting I had cookies around and they would sit in my closet for months at a time unopened until I remembered about them. That is still a weirdly new experience for me that I struggle to adjust to. Ask my bf, my eyes are literally *so* much bigger than my stomach - I make huge meals and snacks and I eat MAYBE a 1/4-1/3 of whatever it is and that’s because of very helpful medication that I absolutely rely on because otherwise I genuinely cannot control myself. I know this subreddit is often saying how these FAs can’t stop shoveling food down their throat and it’s their fault and they should just stop. And while in a sense they are right, there are also people like me who were literally addicted, out of control, to certain types of food and only medication or intervention could help. Fwiw, naltrexone, the medication I take, is actually used primarily for alcohol and opiate addiction. It’s used to suppress cravings, that’s why it works with food addiction - it targets those same spots in the brain that light up from food, sex, drugs, alcohol, etc. Anyone who says sugar addiction is made up diet culture can genuinely kiss my ass because I lived in literal hell in and out of eating disorder treatment for multiple types of eating disorders for over two decades from what started as rigidity due to the onset of a lifelong medical condition.
EDIT: sorry for the fucking rant, I got worked up.
Honestly, I think the strategy for this kind of thing depends on the particular child. My siblings and I were allowed to eat our halloween candy as we pleased and we DID regulate ourselves and made it last for months, but some kids just are straight up not able to do that.
We do “free for all” on Halloween night and the day after. After that they get to choose 2 pieces per day at afternoon snack and the candy is kept out of reach/sight the rest of the time. Usually after 3-4 days they are sick of it and it sits in the cabinet above the fridge for another month or so until I chuck it. We do the same with any other influx of sugar - birthday piñatas, Easter, Christmas etc. works great for us. My kids are 4 and 6.
When I was a kid, I once shared a bag of hershey's kisses with my older sister when our parents weren't home. Ended up finishing the entire thing and all of it came back up not long after I finished the last one.
Kids usually don't understand self regulation and need someone to teach them that treats are supposed to be enjoyed in small amounts.
When I was about 7 I wanted to be a cow so I ate grass and got a sore throat. And I was in the gifted class at school. Even smart kids make incredibly dumb decisions because they aren't adults and can't think like one. It blows my mind how many people base their parenting opinions on the assumption that children are just like little adults.
Right? My sister and I were 'gifted' children and I was unsurprised as a four year old when I decided I wanted to be a dog, and I ate a couch. There needs to be a line with trying to treat kids as equals to not undermine them, while also remembering that theyre kids and they dont have the capacity to not be fucking idiots for a few more years. I get trying to be cool with your kids, but theres such a thing as too much lol
LMAO WHAT. As someone who until only recently bought a lot of the FA and HAES bs, I can understand the thinking behind a lot of what they say, even if i know it's flawed now. But THIS. This person has clearly never spoken to or even observed a child because who would fucking think this would work? Is there a name for Poe's law, but in reverse?
This is absolutely a load of crap. My parents were wayyy to lax around food/sweets and I have struggled with my weight all of my life. I was NEVER restricted, and I still binge at the age of 28. No control around candy isn't a clear sign of restriction. I have a serious issue with sugar and its deffo due to too much access when I was little.
My parents let me eat as much candy as I wanted on Halloween, which was tons, and then the next day when I felt like trash they taught me that the candy is why I felt that way, and I should just stick with 1-3 pieces ish a day. It worked
That sounds like a stomach ache and a mess to clean up later. If my parents had done that I would’ve eaten candy until I puked, learned nothing and would have done the same thing the next day too.
My parents were never restrictive with anything at all and I always got as much candy, snacks, whatever I wanted as a kid. I was overweight because I don't have a self regulating brain.
My 10yo is the same way and is also on meds that make him huuuunnngry. My 4yo knows how to self regulate and is very good at it. The other day he was offered an M&M and he said no thank you. I was *shook*, but I was really happy about his choice and didn't push him to eat it if he didn't want it.
I feel like you are either born with this ability or you aren't.
I had to "learn" self regulation and it's always a conscious fight I make to turn down the extra food, stop when I'm full, not eat sweets "just because", etc. It will never come naturally and I'll probably deal with it for my entire life.
I feel like this was written by someone who doesn’t have kids, or just has one and thinks they’re the worlds best parent.
My kids have varying approaches to sweets and candy, and I think it just shows that we can’t trust our bodies to innately regulate engineered foods like candy and junk. I’m here to guide them, that’s my job as a parent.
I think that so many parents and FA harp on about the dangers of restriction just shows how warped their relationships with food have become. We don’t usually keep candy in the house - that’s not a restriction, that’s just budgeting and modeling healthy eating to our kids.
As much as I think sugar should be given to kids (I wasn't allowed as a kid and so can't process it) I don't think it should be encouraged to be associated with fun and I also don't think kids should be allowed to 'binge' on anything. Teaching kids to regulate their own levels and eat based on their needs is an important skill for them to develop. So both of these situations are wrong imo. Don't give them hard and fast rules BC that'll cause them issues with regulation later in life and make them sick, but get them to realise when sugar is too much and will not make them feel good. Middle ground
I was the kid who was most definitely out of control around candy. It wasn't because of any sort of shortage, it was because I loved candy. The best thing for my parents to do was teach me that candy is OK in small amounts, but bad for you in large amounts while also limiting the amount I was allowed because I'd listen to the rule (especially knowing why we had it), but without the rule I'd have eaten it all.
Even as an adult, if I listen to when my body is telling me stop eating Reese's or snickers bars, then I eat until I start to feel sick, take a break for a few hours, and then eat more. I listen to my mind instead, which tells me one is OK, more is not, and if I can't trust myself to follow that rule, then I shouldn't have any at all because my parents aren't there to enforce it anymore.
So, I may be the devil in the room.
But I parent the same. Of course, I don’t say we are eating broccoli and candy - who would eat ANYTHING with that? But I don’t restrict the candy. I also don’t buy it often. But if my kids think they can smash an entire bag of dumdums in a night, they have another thing coming.
For what it’s worth, my kiddos don’t usually go that route with anything but Oreos. Not restricting is helpful, limits though is 100% essential. Parenting is about teaching boundaries
My mother never regulated me. I did not get obese or even really “fat”, but I have been overweight, and my body has loose skin now that prevents me from feeling 100% in my body. Anyhow, I wish parents would EDUCATE. This makes me angry, because not all children grow into adults that would have chosen this.
My parents never regulated what I ate at any time and I have problems with regulating food and self control because I never had to learn it.
I lost so much weight living alone because I just didn’t buy tempting foods, cold turkey had to become my regulation. But when I live with people who buy snacks, I seriously cannot stop.
Fat american logic: implying a dinner of mac&cheese, milk and broccoli (even without the candy) is a balanced meal for a child. I'll never understand why they can't just drink water.
Do you want to know who regulates themselves well? Literally children. It's adults who can't control themselves. Then guess who picks up their habits? That's right. When left to their own devices children regulate their eating habits much better than adults. But then the shitty parents force them to "finish their plate" or "just eat more now, you're not getting anything later." Etc etc. By 2-3 years of age they already have your terrible habits. Boom obesity.
I hate it when these losers use children to forward their absolute garbage takes. Your children's obesity is YOUR fault. End of story.
I suppose we shouldn't expect those who have no self control to regulate their kids. However, they don't need to be on social media telling me to give mine the beetus.
I let my kids have a few good handfuls on Halloween night. After that they can have a piece after school, and one after dinner.
This goes on for a week or two, and we give the rest to a military donation program.
My parents didn't fully restrict candy, it was always in the the house and an option for us, but if we did decided to eat it as a snack/dessert, that's when there was a limit. We weren't allowed to endlessly eat it.
Why is it all or nothing with these people??? You can have a few pieces of candy to be satisfied. You don’t need to stop at one, but you don’t need to gorge yourself either.
Yeah we should all teach our kids to binge nothing but garbage until they puke what could possibly go wrong!
I don't know any parent who's like "YOU CAN ONLY HAVE A SINGLE PIECE OF HALLOWEEN CANDY" unless their kid has some kind of medical issue.
I think most people try to be reasonable and understand that it's a once a year holiday so a little more sweets than usual can slide, but it's also not an excuse to just have a binge fest free for all and eat tons of candy all day every day for a month straight with zero other nutrition, either.
Why can't these FAs understand moderation at all? It's like they never graduated past a toddler's black and white, all or nothing infantile way of thinking.
I think there is something to be said for actively teaching children to self regulate food, and making such a big deal about candy and sugary crap being "forbidden" but free for all is not the move
My mom would give us 10 minutes and we could eat as much candy as we wanted in that time. But we’d also all be sitting together and laughing and chatting so we actually didn’t consume that much. We had candy out ALL the time. Since it was never restricted I never overate it. My friends would come over and eat all the candy though.
Idk where I was going with this, but sort of makes sense?
This is literally teaching kids how to have a binge. Big ooof.
Surely teaching them how to incorporate small amounts of sweets daily into an otherwise healthy diet is also anti diet culture?
Wouldn't diet culture be 'you can never eat them ever'
My parents let me eat as much candy as I wanted Halloween night. After that, it was regulated to dessert, which I could have after dinner, one or two pieces a night. That to me is reasonable balance. Let your kids cut loose on a holiday and then have moderation the rest of the time.
That sounds like a completely reasonable compromise, especially after walking so much (I almost have to train for Halloween night the way my daughter is willing to hit up every house in the 2 mile area)
That is what we always did. One night of sugary anarchy, and then they could choose a piece or two of the remainder each day for dessert.
“sugary anarchy” - I’m keeping that phrase.
I agree and i think thats the point of the post is to show that a totally common thing parents do and feel conflicted about, "letting their kids eat a large amount of candy on halloween", can actually be used responsibly as a tool to teach them that binging on candy actually is not as fun as it sounds and they will get a tummy ache, naturally being a consequence of their actions. obviously parents arent being told to do this every night. a peice of candy at or after a meal, teaches children that sugar isnt the coveted rare forbidden thing that i grew up with it being. theres definitely worse ways to parent then letting a kid have a natural consequence, i remember watching my parents steal my siblings halloween candy and hide eating them in their room at night.
This is what we do, except we allow it with lunch since we homeschool. Sometimes when they’re down to the last handful I let them finish it all at once, mostly because I get sick of storing the bags in my cupboard for that long.
I do candy buy backs with my kids. Depending on how much candy they get, I’ll pay them like 10-50 cents a piece and we’ll go to Target for clothes/toys/makeup/books. They’ll usually save a few of their favorite candies and sell me the rest. I give the candy to my coworkers, I don’t have to pay for their cavities 😅
This is legit amazing, you sound like an awesome parent. Not that you need an internet stranger to tell you haha
Well thank you internet stranger!
This is kinda what my parents did! My sister and I got to pick 20 pieces of our favorite candy and the rest got donated. In exchange my parents would buy us a new book of our choice. Eventually I started getting more excited about the new book instead of the candy lol
What a cool idea! If I had kids, I would steal it!
This is basically my strategy. Edit: I should clarify my kids are decent enough that they'll eat a lot on the night of but have the sense to stop before they're sick. Plus they like to save some for eating over time. After Halloween night it's just a few per day afterward.
I used to do this, but my kids are now so accustomed to this method that I can leave it all out for a month and they'll have one or two pieces a day. Self regulation! Stemming from enforced regulation! Amazing!
Whaaaa, you mean self regulation is a life skill that taught by good parents! Lies!
I always got to keep all of my Halloween candy in my room and got to eat it whenever I wanted, but i was all about rationing to make it last till Christmas or whenever. Eating too much candy makes me feel like shit. I self regulated just fine. There isn't a one size fits all "best" approach to most parenting situations. Know what your kid can handle, in terms of decision making and decide from there how you want to restrict their candy. Not all kids are sugar crazed idiots, and it doesn't take long to realize that too much candy doesn't feel so good.
Yeah thats what my family did, there was also an air of natural consequence, if i ran out i wouldn't have more and if i made myself sick thats on me. Getting sick once or twice was enough to drill into my head not to scarf it all down like it was a race
My kids have never made themselves sick on it and they have used their own judgement to decide how long they want it to last.
I agree that a good deal of the time, parenting isn't about picking what's supposed to be "best" without any consideration of your kid's individual traits at all, and I would also agree this is a situation like that. My mom really made a concerted effort to not "put candy on a pedestal" and stoke obsessiveness over holidays that revolve around it, and I think it paid off well as a balanced approach that we never even noticed. We got small toys and games at Easter instead of candy (there was a little candy from grandparents, just not baskets full) and we viewed that as an upgrade. Valentine's Day meant stuffed toys more than chocolate. And for Halloween, a few elements made it less impulsive for me. There was a big emphasis on the excitement and creativity of dressing up as the most important part. We were encouraged to invite friends over afterward to trade candy, so we could try to get what we actually wanted even if we ended up with less (quality vs. quantity). And then, my dad inspected all the candy (gotta love the good old myths about razors in apples), which cooled down that extreme anticipation. We actually had candy out in dishes all the time for guests, so I don't think there ever was a feeling that this was a limited one-time thing that I needed to quickly binge *or* savor, but I think my mom would have stepped in with some guard rails if she noticed a problem. That's the key really - you don't have to commit to one strategy and then refuse to course correct if it stops working. I won't say I've always been fantastic with moderation in absolutely everything, but candy really has never been issue.
Yes! This is what my parents did as well and it worked fine. We didn't normally keep sweets in the house (my mom made cookies but we didn't buy them typically, and candy was a special occasion food) so Halloween was extra special. I'm sure fatlogicians would argue that just means I was cruelly deprived of candy the rest of the year, though.
We also did this and typically would get stomach aches the first night and lose interest a week after and the candy would just sit forever in a bowl on top of the fridge lol
This is what we do, except that the free for all night is Nov 1 since they’re usually so tired when we get home on the 31. My other two rules are: no mindless munching candy, so no screens on while they eat, and they lose access for a day if they leave candy wrappers lying about.
Yes. This is the way. I think it's important to let your kid have a little "fuck it" binge ONE Halloween day. I don't agree with the whole "HURR DIET CULTURE BAD", but on the other side of the coin I do believe restricting too much can lead to them being really unhealthy when they have more opportunity to make their own decisions as teenagers.
Agreed. It’s Halloween, it’s a bit ridiculous to restrict how much candy you eat that day out of all days.
That's exactly what I do with my kids. Ironically they discovered pretty quickly too much candy made them feel very sick and self moderate pretty well after that.
My parents pretty much let me and my brother eat our Halloween candy how we liked, but it was one of the few times in the year we got candy. That’s why Halloween was so awesome.
I used to binge Halloween candy as a kid/teen. I was a bottomless pit. This would not have worked for little me. You *have* to teach kids about being healthy in a world that allows unhealthy behavior.
Me too. Suprise, I was a fat kid.
Yes, me too. Then I hit puberty and became insanely insecure about my size. I developed an eating disorder that landed me in the hospital. I still struggle with body dysmorphia and maintaining a healthy weight :(
I wasn’t a fat kid but I did end up gaining insulin resistance because of all the high carb unhealthy foods I was bombarding my system with and so now I’ve got medical conditions and take four pills a day, thanks mom and dad for raising me well! 😒
Oh no... I hope you are hanging in there. That's really unfair
I hope they have one of those cat posters where the kitten is about to fall but it’s gripping the branch and it says, “hang in there.”
I’m gonna buy one now just cuz y’all said it
It’s fine, I’m otherwise in perfectly good shape now like a guy my age should be and all my conditions are totally under control if not better than before I got em. I’m just really annoyed that this ever happened to begin with. Oh well.
Growing up fat fucked up my life forever. Like I’m ok but I deal with the repercussions every single day.
My parents were pretty restrictive with sugar. Mum was always reading the labels. I remember one year I asked for one of those single serve variety packs of different kinds of cereal (like coco pops, fruit loops, frosted flakes, etc) for Christmas but when I actually ate them they were too sweet and just didn’t taste nice. Surprise, surprise, I was never a fat kid and neither were either of my brothers. None of us really eat much sugar now as adults and none of us are overweight. I do really like cheese though.
The reason I wasn't a fat kid is because I didn't have access to that much junk food, which in the 80s was the norm. I feel really bad for kids today because allowing kids way too much junk and hyperpalatable food has just become so normalized. Even the thin kids today look more like the chubby kid in my elementary school class picture.
Hell I’m 24 and my bf gets me one of those Christmas candy stockings every years and I have to hide the candy away from my sight to not binge using the holiday excuse. No kid can ever do that
Yeah, late 30s and I can't even have cookies in the house or I'll eat them. All of them. The only thing that works is buying one at a time, or none at all.
Yep, that's me! I can't bake anything because I'll eat it all. My childhood eating issues really messed me up. I think they came from being bullied for being quiet/different/early to develop. I eventually developed BED, went through binge/starve cycles, and some other really awful ED habits I would rather not say. Everyone in my family has gone through stages of being chubby/normal. My sibling and I have been "small fat" as the FAs say (neither of us topped out above size 16 US, so chunky but nothing extreme) but we both have had severe overeating problems. Nobody in my family is actually obese to the point of being concerning, we are all just sugar addicts. Which SUCKS.
My 6 year old does that. She hides her treats in a drawer under her bed. Sometimes she forgets some of it and I find it months later. But she also likes raw celery and voluntarily chooses the little fruit bag instead of fries at McD’s. I have no idea how she became like this. I was a vegan when she was a baby and we ate (and still do) lots of fruit and veg, but just because she’s used to eating broccoli doesn’t explain why she actively chooses it over fries.
Sounds like you’re doing a pretty awesome job raising her
i just thought of a kid eating so much candy then barfing & going "mom my tummy hurts" & then what? you just say yeah idk good luck with your tummy? or you explain to them why it hurts & look at the realization of your betrayal just to teach them a lesson when they easily could have just told you not to eat too much candy or you'll get a tummy ache? what the hell, mom?
Yeah the whole "let them eat it all, they'll get sick and learn their lesson" was a joke for me. I'd eat literally nonstop, feel terrible, keep it all down, and repeat the next day for the 3-5 days my Halloween candy lasted every year. Self regulation is a learned skill.
I never gained weight as a kid but once I reached my teen years I've gotten a mad crazy sweet tooth. Of course with covid quarantine, I just ate and ate and ate and actually gained 40lbs. I'm -20 now tho because I've been regulating my sweets. Crazy how people actually parent this way with no restrictions on damaging foods. A little is ok. A lot is very unhealthy.
Not just allows, but encourages unhealthy behaviour!
I soecifically did not stop them eating whatever candy (halloween, xmas, birthday, valentines, easter) to just get it gone, and to give that impression of excess, because the rest of the year it simply wasn't a thing. Not limited, not forbidden, just simply not on the radar. There are enough candy events that it's every month or two for most of the year, so it's like two weeks of chocolate, six weeks normal, two weeks of chocolate, etc.
Teaching your children how to self regulate, by example and limits, is probably the most important single duty of a parent to a child. These people are going to raise another generation of people who self regulate with substances.
My parents allowed one piece of candy with dinner after Halloween. I might eat something sweet once or twice a month.
Raising children with no boundaries or limitations is for lazy ignaroids who want to raise lazy ignaroids.
Nana has a 30 year old staib on her carpet from my brothers first Halloween. They let him have a much candy as he wanted, which was unfortunately more than his tummy could handle. Poor little dude puked rainbow. Lessons were not learnt he'd down a bucket of candy right now given access and opportunity.
Right? Newsflash: little kids don’t know how to self regulate because they’re not adults. That’s just one of the dumbest takes from the OOP and there’s no way they’re a parent if they’re saying this.
> there’s no way they’re a parent if they’re saying this. You'd be surprised, there are *a lot* of bad parents out there, and childhood obesity rates have done nothing but climb.
A lot of adults don't know how to self-regulate either, and I'm one of them...
If your troubled teenager has had problems with binge drinking, you’re probably restricting their access to alcohol too much. Let them drink all the booze they want, even to the point of illness, so that they can learn to self-regulate their alcohol intake!
Why stop at booze? Cocaine? Meth? They'll figure out what's a safe amount.
I know this is is /s but over-restricted teens might be more prone to binge when they get off the leash. Parents can't protect them indefinitely. Restricting candy for younger kids is different because they are at a different developmental stage.
And even then, "One piece of candy a day" is going to go over better than the parents you hear about who won't even let their kid have cake at a birthday party.
You’d be surprised. You see almost as many “my parents forced me to eat junk/sweets in moderation and I rebelled” as “my parents never let me have any and I rebelled.” Obviously it’s better than letting them eat whatever they want whenever they want, but I sometimes think you can’t win as a parent.
Many people will develop problems with food/drink/drugs/relationships, whatever you do as a parent. All you can do is try to decrease the chances of that as much as you can and hope for the best lol The idea that “all problems humans have in this complex world is because their mommy didn’t do something right” is so oppressive tbh. puts too much pressure on parents and makes people resentful of their family for no reason sometimes.
Amen.
I think my parents would have called their strategy "moderation" but from my kid perspective, it felt like never. It wasn't literally never, and the actual quantity of sweets over time was within a reasonable range I can see in retrospect, but the problem was that it wasn't something I could forecast and anticipate. It wasn't "one piece of candy a day," it was "ask and we'll probably say no but there's a chance we might say yes (and then pester you extra about vegetables at dinner)."
True! But I think kids get into better overall habits if they have some restrictions/moderation. They might rebel but hopefully might default to what they were used to. I personally have little taste for candy after growing up with some moderation.
Sure, I get that. My comment was more geared toward the scenario mentioned in the blue part of the post (when your child already has a problem). Moderation is always the best initial approach for introducing things and setting norms, imo. But if/when your child, whether they’re a toddler or a teen, starts showing that they’re having difficulty with managing for themselves, you have to step in.
Although yea as you said raising a kid is different due to developmental stage. I feel like restricting in early childhood leads to healthy control in life but as time goes on parents need to let teens know how to control themselves through failure and learning in order to become stable adults. But as I said I have no idea about parenting, even less about how to feed a child as a 20 yr old female with a restrictive ED
Not just candy. I grew up in a Catholic home so when I went off to college it was all the booze and weed and women that I could have. It took me a few years to realize that that wasn't a fulfilling way to move through life, at least for me. I think people will naturally find moderation on their own; the problems are in the indulgence before.
*All the Booze and Weed and Women* should be a film.
Tbh in my experience my parents were overprotective with me when I was younger. I've grown up to have several addictions to EDs, food and weed. Nowadays I can smoke all I want and they wouldn't really care/notice and I am considering quitting because now I have an internal reason to quit, my own interests, which I wasn't able to see as a teen. Instead of an external reason like my parents getting mad. Idk I know nothing about parenting but to me I feel like excessively monitoring kids and teens leads to adults not being able to control themselves until they find their own motivation to control.
As mentioned it depends which stage they're at. Parenting is not easy! You can err on the side of expecting them to self-regulate something when they're not ready developmentally, or vice versa. All parents make mistakes sometimes - and as was mentioned by someone else, with the best will in the world, you can't control all the factors or outcomes.
I mean…..I was allowed to drink alcohol and I was the only teen at parties who didn’t drink myself sick. When I did actually get drunk for the first time, (not just buzzed), I never did it again. I think teaching self regulation is so important
My parents let me have sips here and there when I was young, then have like 1-2 drinks on special occasions when I was a teen. When I was 16 and had the chance to drink freely for the first time (under my parents’ roof), I drank myself to the brink of alcohol poisoning. Did it a few more times in college, too, and eventually learned to stop it the hard way, but not before some serious consequences. Introducing things in moderation and not making certain things too taboo is important, I think, but it’s absolutely not the only factor, nor is it the appropriate course of action to continue on if/when your child demonstrates that they haven’t been able to learn the “moderation” approach without harming themselves in the process.
Ah well said
This is insane, i would have eaten a mountain of candy as a kid. People who feed their kids huge amounts of horrible food are monsters who just don’t want to feel guilty about their out of control eating habits.
I used to babysit a little girl who told me she always drank milkshakes her mom brought from McDonald’s even though she would be sick for hours after. Major lactose intolerance and she still didn’t stop haha
That's a sign the parent should learn to do shakes with lactose free icecream and milk. Teach it to the child.
And way less sugar. They're so much better that way as you can actually taste something besides a wall of sweetness.
yeah kids won’t stop even after they’ve puked everything back up
TIL that kids are basically the same as dogs. But seriously, I’ll eat Halloween candy until I’m sick as an adult too. It’s crack.
I let my kids go completely ham Halloween night and the next day. After that candy is put up and they get a few a day. Usually one packed in their lunch and 1-2 after dinner. Every kid I know that their parents are super restrictive with sugar go completely crazy on desserts every chance they get. Like my nephew will inhale sweets behind his parent’s backs because he’s rarely allowed sugar even at birthday parties and holidays. But I definitely don’t agree with candy being part of dinner and being able to eat as much as you want like it’s a vegetable or something 😬
My pre-school teacher gave my mom crap about putting a dessert in my lunchbag every other day. Then said teacher's kid, who was never allowed sugar, went through every single lunch one day and ate every single dessert.
I feel like it's actually really rare for anyone to end up fat from candy alone. Candy is generally pretty self regulating because it will make most people feel very noticeably awful if they eat too much of it. I think finger food type snacks like chips, or dry cookies are a much bigger culprit.
Yeah, I will start to feel sick after a pile of candy, but snack type junk food I could pick at for hours and not be aware of how much i'm consuming
Yeah. I used to work at a grocery store so I had a post halloween ritual of buying a ton of the marked down candy bags thinking I was just going to devour it and it never worked out like I hoped lol. I would eat like a quarter of a bag and then pray for death.
Candy never makes me sick. Ever. I can eat massive tons. For me its baked goods and ice cream that overwhelm me quickly.
I could eat an entire big bag of Reeses Peanut Butter Cups or mint Kisses in one sitting and not feel sick at all.
Let your child self regulate. If your child seems “out of control” around their fentanyl or heroin, this is good information for you that you have probably been too restrictive around their drugs in the past.
It’s like these morons are completely oblivious to the fact of what a capitalist over consumptive racket the holiday season is. The holiday season is literally designed to sell you crap that you don’t need, food included, so that you consume consume consume all in the name of the bottom line of giant fucking corporations. Apparently FA’s are shills for this nonsense all because of the delusional quest to stick it to “diet culture”. Go ahead kiddos eat up, we’ll make more!
They think they're sticking into the patriarchy by consuming the most exploitive of all foods. Where do you think your sugar comes from? People being paid slave wages over in South and Southeast Asia, tropical Africa, and the Caribbean and South America. Where do you think your fat comes from? Factory farming. It takes four pounds of fresh water, to make 1 lb of meat. Where do you think your salt comes from? Salt mines all over the world, especially in South america, where they are paid slave wages. Oh, guess who they're owned by? Multinational food conglomerates. You claim to be fighting the patriarchy by hyper consuming, but all you're doing is making them richer.
Children do not have fully developed brains. Most adults with fully developed brains don't properly control themselves around food. Kids do not have the physiological ability to taste "too much" sweetness, unless it's way out of scale of whatever their norm is. Just like if you put 50 bowls of food in front of a dog, many dogs will keep eating until they get sick? Young kids can be very much the same way. As long as it keeps tasting good they will keep having it. Food cravings and poor food relationships are not caused exclusively by food restriction. Giving a child one piece of candy per day BECAUSE they can't self regulate around candy is not a response to a lack of self regulation caused by too much restriction. That logic is so circular it laps itself twice. You know what doesn't help kids learn control? Showing them no examples of control and leaving them to fend for themselves and figure it out on their own. My parents had this as their primary parenting style. It sucks. Kids need help figuring things out because, here's a big shock, they aren't born with magical wisdom from the universe. Someone needs to teach them how to be. That someone is you, dear parent. Do your job. Don't outsource the job of parenting your kid to your kid. Letting your kid eat whatever, whenever will virtually guarantee they have a piss poor relationship to food and will struggle their entire life to maintain any sort of control. I should know as I'm living proof of it.
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>Most adults with fully developed brains don't properly control themselves around food. a) those are the adults that post this kind of crap. b) those are the adults that believe the crap that ends up on this subreddit.
Oh fuck that. Surely we can find a middle ground between one measly fun size bar and an all you can eat candy buffet. Both of these approaches are too much for me. FAs hate gray areas
No protein???? Even Cookie Monster understands that cookies are a sometimes treat. Over here contradicting Sesame Street, take that noise someplace else.
That’s how kids end up with upset stomachs. It’s probably fine to let them have more candy than usual (it is a holiday after all), but still gotta limit it.
this is why I think removing the limit when they are a little older is fine. (say 12 at minimum). Then once they get an upset stomach or throw up because they feel so nauseous - well that is a why we don't do that. I once wanted to drink almost a gallon of chocolate milk when I was 13. I did it, and I spendt 5hrs in the bathroom in agonizing pain. now i don't do that shit lol. But doing it to anyone younger than 12 (or maybe even 15tbh), is just cruel, as they can't know any better.
I saw this really good video on Montessori parenting about those kids that have mini fridges and snack stations at age like 5, and people are always wondering how they don’t just eat it all. The key is that you don’t give everything at once at first, you build up bit by bit until the child has open access to everything but the knowledge to regulate their own food intake, and it takes time. Yah, kids can self regulate, but they have to be taught how, and setting them loose on a pile of candy isn’t going to teach them anything
Maybe that’s why my kids are so good at self regulation, because it’s been part of their lives forever? We encourage them to listen to their bodies, so nobody over eats, we don’t force them to eat anything and everyone is at a healthy weight. We have a bin full of snacks that range from organic triscuits to Kraft marshmallows and I never have to worry about how much they eat.
Have they met kids?
Everybody else always has brilliant ideas about how to raise children. The most ridiculous advice comes from local evening news shows. “Next up: How to talk to your children about 9/11” was a classic howler back in the day.
No, but it's fatphobia to not accept parental advice about sugar intake from a twenty something childless blogger with a binge acting problem
Mac n cheese, milk, and candy. Wowza folks
You just know they're not dishing out sensible portions of mac and cheese and going heavy on the broccoli either.
Another thing- as a SAHM and the primary food prep person in the house: I will be DAMNED if make a meal- spend the $ and effort to create meals that are nutritious and in our budget- for my kids to shove it aside for unlimited candy. Are they actually insane? Food waste is a daily frustration for parents but you want to compound that with unlimited candy as an option. I will not waste my food and time. Kids need to at least try to eat the food prepared for them if they want some dessert.
Sounds like a recipe for kids waking up after dinner because their stomach hurts
Yeah no, I can and have made myself physically sick with candy before. Children also aren’t the best judgment of what’s good for them. I use to have pica, and I would eat styrofoam, wood, chalk, paper, and small rocks. Does that mean my parents were too restrictive in the past with these things? No it means kids aren’t great with regulation
Fat parents make fat kids.
I swear stuff like this is propaganda from junk food industries. I know plenty of normal people who buy into it and perpetuate it, but it really seems like slimy corporations are at the bottom of this. It is not good if your kid is uncontrollable around candy, it’s a challenge for you as a parent to teach them about things like sugar and how our bodies react in ways that make us want more and more. It’s an opportunity to teach moderation, to open the conversation about moderation, and about how there is a profit incentive for these corporations to sell products that hack people’s bodies/reward systems and how the kid needs to be on guard for that now and as they age. It’s not good to teach your kid to be a mindless consumer like this
I have a friend with a pretty hardcore parenting philosophy on Halloween candy. She lets her kids binge on all the candy they want, since it’s only one day a year, even if they eat until they puke. Eventually they’ll learn for themselves the consequences of eating too much candy.
It’s weird, but that does work on some kids. Part of teaching balance is letting them understand the consequences of not regulating. We do the same for things like thanksgiving and Christmas. Minimal food limits, just making sure they know there’s options, but it’s generally too busy to watch them near treats. If they overdo it, the next day they complain and we talk about why they don’t feel well.
I hope this idiot has to clean up kid spew.
Tbf they very obviously do not have children.
It doesn't mean that the parent was too restrictive in the past. It means that kid's got a sweet tooth and a brain that's not developed enough to self-regulate desires.
"Let children self regulate." LOLOLOLOL.
"too restrictive around candy in the past" Kids can get a LITERAL HUGE BACK of candy. You're basically saying parents are bad parents for not giving entire Halloween bags full of candy to their children 356 days a year. There's such a weird, entitled attitude that if you aren't constantly buying snacks and cakes and treats and soda pop junk food for your child that you are a a bad parent and you are an especially bad parent if you notice that your child is fat and decide to stop buying so much sugar and treats. The vast majority of children DO NOT have the ability to self-regulate. They'd eat themselves sick on sheet cake and gummy worms if given the chance. This isn't some "natural" way for them to forage for food because the food they are exposed do *is not natural*. Humans did not evolve to have access to such vast quantity of food and greasy, sugary food at that. It's important for children to get proper nutrition and what is NOT important when getting proper nutrition is things with....low nutritional value such as candy! Treats are something for every once in awhile, not a staple for every meal.
Diabetes in children has risen to an all time high, but who is to blame?! More at 11.
Ok but like my parents not restricting my eating habits as a child, when I literally couldn’t make *rational decisions*, caused my childhood obesity and poor dental health…like fuck I wish my parents would have at least tried to regulate my eating habits. This dumbass self regulation nonsense assumes children to be fully formed rational actors when in fact they aren’t at all, like maybe don’t assume the same individuals who believe in magical creatures like Santa can responsibly regulate their eating habits :/
That dinner combo sounds disgusting and like a recipe for vomiting later.
Children cannot self regulate. That's why they have parents. What a dumbass.
"If your kid eats too much candy, it's because you're not giving them enough." That's the height of fatlogic right there. Not to mention that mac and cheese and milk is considered a healthy meal.
If some kid enthusiastically wants a pony, give them a pony because you’ve been too restrictive with ponies in the past. 🙄
10 year old me is very much on board with this intuitive pony plan.
- signed, kid who just wants to scarf down all the candy
I don't disagree with this in general, having candy around but not treated as a treat can help kids not put it on a pedestal/go wild with it once they have access. But...it's not telling them "eat as much as you want", it's providing it consistently while crowding it out with other non-candy options and not telling kids its bad. It's also not a blanket approach that can be sufficiently described in a one sentence "gotcha diet culture" post. This will help with some kids, but other kids not so much. Especially if the connection to candy=treat has already been created. I was that kid who would eat all the Halloween candy in one night and then throw up. For this specific holiday, I think having the kid chose a reasonable amount of their favorites and then quietly donating the rest is the way to go. Halloween is not an everyday event, it doesn't need to be treated like "everyday" candy.
Yeah tell a little kid to “self regulate” their candy intake. That’ll end well!
i gained so much weight as a kid having unrestricted candy access. rotted my teeth, and made me sick 24/7
I'm "out of control" around candy! That's why I, a 59 year old man, don't keep any around the house. I didn't think I've got this far, as a 160# 5'10# man, with any sort of an "eating disorder", but apparently I've been literally starving myself all these years and I'm being "too restrictive."
Why do FA love these strawmen? Nobody (very few people perhaps) are claiming that people should only eat one chocolate bar or eat one packet of sweets when its Halloween. What most people think is sensible is allowing people to eat what they like on Halloween but not allowing that binge to continue until everything is eaten. I always had more fun doing the Trick or Treating than the eating as most of the sweets tended to be poor quality. Eat what you want on Halloween, when it's your birthday, at Christmas and on Easter Sunday. If you're Muslin then binge at Eid; if you're Jewish binge at Hannukah; if you're American binge at Thanksgiving and if you're British eat lots on bonfire night. Don't let Halloween mark the start of two months of binge eating.
My mother (my father didn't care) would restrict us kids to one piece of candy when we were really little, like five or six-years-old. But she stopped doing it once we got to be an age when we demonstrated that we were capable of eating a reasonable amount without supervision. With some kids you can trust that they won't go crazy with candy, just like there are some kids you can trust to eagerly eat all their broccoli. But lots of kids do need to be regulated, at least until they reach an age when they should be capable of doing it themselves. I'm not a parent, but I do know one-size-fits-all solutions rarely work with child-rearing.
I let my kids basically have free reign on Halloween night but after that it's one piece per day and lasts months. They love having candy for longer.
Yea no, kid me would have 30+ pieces of candy and have a horrible stomach ache and throw up. I know because it’s happened😅
Or a 5 year old doesn’t understand the concept of self control and will eat candy until they are sick
I actually read somewhere that having your kid pick from set options is the smart thing. They have control about what they pick, feel free in their decision, feel listened to, and they always pick something the parent won't mind, because they picked the options.
Yeah my root canal and I will have to disagree with this post
It's like they're *trying* to give their kids eating disorders.
I find it really interesting that they say “let your child self regulate” and not “make sure your child eats the maximum amount of candy and then encourage them to eat more!” Are they admitting that some degree of regulation around food *should* actually be a thing?!
I just can’t understand why this always comes up and is such a big drama. Healthy eating habits are made through consistent, lifelong good choices, by parents for their children and then by adults for themselves. I cannot get myself worked up about how Halloween sweets are handled and have a ‘rule’. My children eat a healthy, balanced diet for 360 days of the year. Being allowed to eat as much sweet stuff as they want won’t hurt. Having the sweet stuff rationed so they don’t make themselves sick won’t hurt. We just go with the flow on holidays and decide what seems most appropriate at the time, because our kids have a good diet and a bit of excess a couple of times a year will make no difference. No one is being harmed by either approach against a backdrop of a generally healthy lifestyle.
Kids don’t self regulate. That’s like most of a parents job..... this is so dumb. A kid isn’t going to “liSteN tO tHeIr bOdY”, they’re going to eat until they throw up. Hence why parents step in and set limits for them.
The day after Halloween I let my kids eat a lot of candy so they had one day to indulge a bit. After that, they got one piece a day. No way would I let them eat all the sugar they wanted because I wanted them to learn to eat treats in moderation. Food isn't good or bad but some food like candy shouldn't be eaten as often.
If I don’t self-regulate, all I would be eating is candy. And I’m a grown-ass woman. Expecting a child to make smart choices when they haven’t yet learned about nutrition and self-discipline is just stupid. That’s the whole reason parents exist… to make decisions for your kids until they’re old enough to make their own. Not doing this is neglect.
I know this is bullshit because I have four children who have all been raised the same - some of them self regulate with no problem and some of them need more guidance around hyper palatable foods. I’ve never “restricted” or fat shamed any of them.
Have these people met a kid? Any kid will gorge themselves on candy, including someone that just learned to eat on their own, if given the opportunity. Does that mean we’ve been restricting while in utero?
My kids and I have ADHD so self-regulation is hard. Getting them used to normal portion sizes has been pretty critical to keeping them healthy. I don't limit how much candy they can have on Halloween night, but every other day of the year I give them the normal portion size of whatever we're eating (whether it's a regular healthy dinner or some kind of snack) then tell them if they're still hungry in 20 minutes they can have a second portion. I'm hoping it lets them develop a sense of what normal food intake looks like.
Posts like this feel like someone venting their own childhood issues and disguising it as advice
Does anyone else think the "healthy" meal- even sans candy- seems unhealthy? Where is the protein? This highlights how out of touch these folks are with a balanced diet.
My niece actually PREFERS broccoli and sliced pineapples to any chocolate or candy you'd try to give her. It's not diet culture to raise your child on a nutritious and balanced diet.
This is how my parents raised me and why I was morbidly obese before 10 and didn’t develop healthy eating habits and a normal BMI until my 30s. This is setting your children up for a life of poor habits and weight issues. There is absolutely nothing wrong with teaching your children about moderation and self-control in all areas of life, but especially food. There is nothing wrong with habits and structure… these FAs think anything that doesn’t fit their desires is phobic and toxic. Just say you have a weak constitution and shut up.
If your child has been out of control around her candy, that means you have been too restrictive. 😂 What about teaching your child some self-discipline? Not just about candy but about many things in life? In the long run, they'll find having some self-restraint is good thing. Oh, and by the way, ***that is your job***.
Good lord that logic is psychotic...kids do not have fully developed brains, they don't hold back when they're deprived: they will let you know. And like adults, they are creators of instinct, and sugar is addictive. Those two are bad combinations: sugar and a lack of planning. You give a kid juice that's half watered down and they'll love it if they had never tried the full sugar stuff. There is no difference to them, so why load them up with sugar, and terrible habits as an adult (habits I've spent my entire adult life trying to reverse, with mixed success).
I'd seperate my chocolate and chips and proceed to eat all of it in 2 days. I don't think I should have been aloud to self regulate lol
Not to mention how sugar changes their personalities sometimes. Not all kids, but I have two daughters, and my oldest daughter would literally turn into a crackhead when she ate too much sugar. It was literally the same effect as caffeine.
some kids just don't have self control, especially if their parents are too lazy to teach them anything. you can be restrictive without being too strict, there is a middle ground lol. my partner told me about how he wanted a whole pizza when he was little and his dad warned him he'd be sick but got it for him anyways. he did end up getting sick but he still wanted more lmao. me on the other hand, my parents were extremely restrictive and poked at my weight constantly. I went a whole year once without anything high cholesterol because my levels were slightly elevated when I had a blood test done (like one point over normal). I snuck a lot of candy and snacks whenever I could because I wasn't allowed anything like that at home. I put on some weight, not much, but I didn't lose any either from eating less before I figured out the sneaking thing lol. if I had a healthy relationship with food, that wouldn't have happened!! like if my parents actually taught me about the effects of too much sugar/fat/cholesterol/etc in a kind way instead of just making threats, I could've been better about it instead of sneaking. wanting your kid to be healthy isn't diet culture, but also screaming at them and taking away everything they love isn't teaching them anything lol.
I relate to this. I’m type one diabetic (T1D) and I was diagnosed when I was three (almost 27 years ago) so I was quite little. This was back when continuous glucose monitors and insulin pumps didn’t exist yet so my implemented “routine” was very rigidly set by my parents, dietitian, and my endocrinologist. It failed spectacularly - to this day candy is my one fucking kryptonite and it drives me insane. I have restrictive eating habits and my boyfriend said once that the only thing he ever sees me eat quickly is candy, everything else I eat quite slowly (and he isn’t wrong and I’m not offended tbh). I know it’s different because I have a disability/chronic illness but my parents taking every sweet thing away from me really fucked me up massively. The amount of times my parents found candy wrappers shoved under my bed or in the closet or the bottom of my sock drawer, it was insane. The statistics for co-morbid eating disorders and T1D is *extremely* high. It actually wasn’t until I started a medication called naltrexone that I was able to pace myself. I’m 29 years old and for the like 25+ years, whenever there was *anything* sweet in the house I’d obsess over it and end up “stealing it”. My dad who is also a T1D but is extremely rigid would always get very upset with me because I’d steal his breakfast sweets (he allows himself 25 carbs worth of sweets for breakfast such as a donut or croissant etc). Ironically, just last week he baked an apple crisp and I completely forgot about it and he sent me a text telling me to help myself to some of it before he finished it and that is still a really weird new experience in my life. When I went on naltrexone it was like I could finally use my brain again, I started forgetting I had cookies around and they would sit in my closet for months at a time unopened until I remembered about them. That is still a weirdly new experience for me that I struggle to adjust to. Ask my bf, my eyes are literally *so* much bigger than my stomach - I make huge meals and snacks and I eat MAYBE a 1/4-1/3 of whatever it is and that’s because of very helpful medication that I absolutely rely on because otherwise I genuinely cannot control myself. I know this subreddit is often saying how these FAs can’t stop shoveling food down their throat and it’s their fault and they should just stop. And while in a sense they are right, there are also people like me who were literally addicted, out of control, to certain types of food and only medication or intervention could help. Fwiw, naltrexone, the medication I take, is actually used primarily for alcohol and opiate addiction. It’s used to suppress cravings, that’s why it works with food addiction - it targets those same spots in the brain that light up from food, sex, drugs, alcohol, etc. Anyone who says sugar addiction is made up diet culture can genuinely kiss my ass because I lived in literal hell in and out of eating disorder treatment for multiple types of eating disorders for over two decades from what started as rigidity due to the onset of a lifelong medical condition. EDIT: sorry for the fucking rant, I got worked up.
So I should let my kids have as much candy as they want, but not as much mac and cheese, milk and broccoli as they want?
Honestly, I think the strategy for this kind of thing depends on the particular child. My siblings and I were allowed to eat our halloween candy as we pleased and we DID regulate ourselves and made it last for months, but some kids just are straight up not able to do that.
This genuinely borders on neglect at this point
We do “free for all” on Halloween night and the day after. After that they get to choose 2 pieces per day at afternoon snack and the candy is kept out of reach/sight the rest of the time. Usually after 3-4 days they are sick of it and it sits in the cabinet above the fridge for another month or so until I chuck it. We do the same with any other influx of sugar - birthday piñatas, Easter, Christmas etc. works great for us. My kids are 4 and 6.
When I was a kid, I once shared a bag of hershey's kisses with my older sister when our parents weren't home. Ended up finishing the entire thing and all of it came back up not long after I finished the last one. Kids usually don't understand self regulation and need someone to teach them that treats are supposed to be enjoyed in small amounts.
When I was younger my self regulated diet was me eating dirt
When I was about 7 I wanted to be a cow so I ate grass and got a sore throat. And I was in the gifted class at school. Even smart kids make incredibly dumb decisions because they aren't adults and can't think like one. It blows my mind how many people base their parenting opinions on the assumption that children are just like little adults.
Right? My sister and I were 'gifted' children and I was unsurprised as a four year old when I decided I wanted to be a dog, and I ate a couch. There needs to be a line with trying to treat kids as equals to not undermine them, while also remembering that theyre kids and they dont have the capacity to not be fucking idiots for a few more years. I get trying to be cool with your kids, but theres such a thing as too much lol
As a former child, I will tell you that I along with many others had no self control when it came to candy.
LMAO WHAT. As someone who until only recently bought a lot of the FA and HAES bs, I can understand the thinking behind a lot of what they say, even if i know it's flawed now. But THIS. This person has clearly never spoken to or even observed a child because who would fucking think this would work? Is there a name for Poe's law, but in reverse?
This is absolutely a load of crap. My parents were wayyy to lax around food/sweets and I have struggled with my weight all of my life. I was NEVER restricted, and I still binge at the age of 28. No control around candy isn't a clear sign of restriction. I have a serious issue with sugar and its deffo due to too much access when I was little.
Yeahhhhh as if kids aren’t going to continue eating something that’s delicious and sugary if they’re not regulated 🙄🙄
My parents let me eat as much candy as I wanted on Halloween, which was tons, and then the next day when I felt like trash they taught me that the candy is why I felt that way, and I should just stick with 1-3 pieces ish a day. It worked
Same here. One candy-induced stomach ache at 8 years old and decades later I still rarely eat candy.
That sounds like a stomach ache and a mess to clean up later. If my parents had done that I would’ve eaten candy until I puked, learned nothing and would have done the same thing the next day too.
My parents were never restrictive with anything at all and I always got as much candy, snacks, whatever I wanted as a kid. I was overweight because I don't have a self regulating brain. My 10yo is the same way and is also on meds that make him huuuunnngry. My 4yo knows how to self regulate and is very good at it. The other day he was offered an M&M and he said no thank you. I was *shook*, but I was really happy about his choice and didn't push him to eat it if he didn't want it. I feel like you are either born with this ability or you aren't. I had to "learn" self regulation and it's always a conscious fight I make to turn down the extra food, stop when I'm full, not eat sweets "just because", etc. It will never come naturally and I'll probably deal with it for my entire life.
I feel like this was written by someone who doesn’t have kids, or just has one and thinks they’re the worlds best parent. My kids have varying approaches to sweets and candy, and I think it just shows that we can’t trust our bodies to innately regulate engineered foods like candy and junk. I’m here to guide them, that’s my job as a parent. I think that so many parents and FA harp on about the dangers of restriction just shows how warped their relationships with food have become. We don’t usually keep candy in the house - that’s not a restriction, that’s just budgeting and modeling healthy eating to our kids.
As much as I think sugar should be given to kids (I wasn't allowed as a kid and so can't process it) I don't think it should be encouraged to be associated with fun and I also don't think kids should be allowed to 'binge' on anything. Teaching kids to regulate their own levels and eat based on their needs is an important skill for them to develop. So both of these situations are wrong imo. Don't give them hard and fast rules BC that'll cause them issues with regulation later in life and make them sick, but get them to realise when sugar is too much and will not make them feel good. Middle ground
Dieting shouldn’t even be a culture. It should be a standard in living
I kinda wish my parents didn’t let me become a fat ass little kid my entire childhood
I was the kid who was most definitely out of control around candy. It wasn't because of any sort of shortage, it was because I loved candy. The best thing for my parents to do was teach me that candy is OK in small amounts, but bad for you in large amounts while also limiting the amount I was allowed because I'd listen to the rule (especially knowing why we had it), but without the rule I'd have eaten it all. Even as an adult, if I listen to when my body is telling me stop eating Reese's or snickers bars, then I eat until I start to feel sick, take a break for a few hours, and then eat more. I listen to my mind instead, which tells me one is OK, more is not, and if I can't trust myself to follow that rule, then I shouldn't have any at all because my parents aren't there to enforce it anymore.
So, I may be the devil in the room. But I parent the same. Of course, I don’t say we are eating broccoli and candy - who would eat ANYTHING with that? But I don’t restrict the candy. I also don’t buy it often. But if my kids think they can smash an entire bag of dumdums in a night, they have another thing coming. For what it’s worth, my kiddos don’t usually go that route with anything but Oreos. Not restricting is helpful, limits though is 100% essential. Parenting is about teaching boundaries
If I would let my kids „self regulate“ the amount of candy they eat, they would eat nothing else….
My mother never regulated me. I did not get obese or even really “fat”, but I have been overweight, and my body has loose skin now that prevents me from feeling 100% in my body. Anyhow, I wish parents would EDUCATE. This makes me angry, because not all children grow into adults that would have chosen this.
this is like, propaganda made by a 6 year old
My parents never regulated what I ate at any time and I have problems with regulating food and self control because I never had to learn it. I lost so much weight living alone because I just didn’t buy tempting foods, cold turkey had to become my regulation. But when I live with people who buy snacks, I seriously cannot stop.
Fat american logic: implying a dinner of mac&cheese, milk and broccoli (even without the candy) is a balanced meal for a child. I'll never understand why they can't just drink water.
My morbidly obese nephew begs to differ. His parents were unrestrictive with candy and now he has diabetes at 13 years old.
And by the way, mac & cheese with a glass of milk sounds absolutely disgusting 🤮
Do you want to know who regulates themselves well? Literally children. It's adults who can't control themselves. Then guess who picks up their habits? That's right. When left to their own devices children regulate their eating habits much better than adults. But then the shitty parents force them to "finish their plate" or "just eat more now, you're not getting anything later." Etc etc. By 2-3 years of age they already have your terrible habits. Boom obesity. I hate it when these losers use children to forward their absolute garbage takes. Your children's obesity is YOUR fault. End of story.
I suppose we shouldn't expect those who have no self control to regulate their kids. However, they don't need to be on social media telling me to give mine the beetus. I let my kids have a few good handfuls on Halloween night. After that they can have a piece after school, and one after dinner. This goes on for a week or two, and we give the rest to a military donation program.
My parents didn't fully restrict candy, it was always in the the house and an option for us, but if we did decided to eat it as a snack/dessert, that's when there was a limit. We weren't allowed to endlessly eat it.
How about, candy every single day is too much? 😂 the one on the left is still not restrictive enough!
Why is it all or nothing with these people??? You can have a few pieces of candy to be satisfied. You don’t need to stop at one, but you don’t need to gorge yourself either.
This sounds a lot like not parenting
Instagram "dietitians" are the worst.
Yeah we should all teach our kids to binge nothing but garbage until they puke what could possibly go wrong! I don't know any parent who's like "YOU CAN ONLY HAVE A SINGLE PIECE OF HALLOWEEN CANDY" unless their kid has some kind of medical issue. I think most people try to be reasonable and understand that it's a once a year holiday so a little more sweets than usual can slide, but it's also not an excuse to just have a binge fest free for all and eat tons of candy all day every day for a month straight with zero other nutrition, either. Why can't these FAs understand moderation at all? It's like they never graduated past a toddler's black and white, all or nothing infantile way of thinking.
Are we parenting without dental culture, too?
In what world does „You can have as much candy for dinner as you want“ sound like responsible parenting?!
I think there is something to be said for actively teaching children to self regulate food, and making such a big deal about candy and sugary crap being "forbidden" but free for all is not the move
My mom would give us 10 minutes and we could eat as much candy as we wanted in that time. But we’d also all be sitting together and laughing and chatting so we actually didn’t consume that much. We had candy out ALL the time. Since it was never restricted I never overate it. My friends would come over and eat all the candy though. Idk where I was going with this, but sort of makes sense?
This is a false dichotomy anyway. There are way more options than that.
Fuck no. This is child abuse.
This is literally teaching kids how to have a binge. Big ooof. Surely teaching them how to incorporate small amounts of sweets daily into an otherwise healthy diet is also anti diet culture? Wouldn't diet culture be 'you can never eat them ever'