Who says you can't have your cake and eat it too? As your trusted family dietitian, I'm here to debunk the myth that sweets and a healthy relationship with food can't coexist for your children. In this enlightening conversation, we delve into the critical reasons behind children's obsession with sweets and its impact on their behavior and concentration. We shed light on the difference between simple enjoyment and the unhealthy fixation with sweets, while guiding you on how to spot the signs early on.
If you feel as though you've been taking steps to normalize sweets in your home but your child still seems obsessed with sugar - this episode is for you!
Shownotes:
Questions about today's episode or do you have topic requests for future episodes? Please send your feedback via email to hello@crystalkarges.com or connect with Crystal on Instagram.
Who says you can't have your cake and eat it too? As your trusted family dietitian, I'm here to debunk the myth that sweets and a healthy relationship with food can't coexist for your children. In this enlightening conversation, we delve into the critical reasons behind children's obsession with sweets and its impact on their behavior and concentration. We shed light on the difference between simple enjoyment and the unhealthy fixation with sweets, while guiding you on how to spot the signs early on.
If you feel as though you've been taking steps to normalize sweets in your home but your child still seems obsessed with sugar - this episode is for you!
Shownotes:
Questions about today's episode or do you have topic requests for future episodes? Please send your feedback via email to hello@crystalkarges.com or connect with Crystal on Instagram.
Hey there, mama, you're listening to the Lift the Shame podcast. I'm your host, crystal, mama of Five and your family's intuitive eating dietitian, here to help you cut through the diet culture clutter so you can enjoy freedom with food as a family. I'm on a mission to help you end the generational legacy of diet culture in your home so you can experience motherhood free from food guilt and body shame. Listen in weekly for guidance on how you can ditch diet culture, heal your relationship with food in your body and confidently raise intuitive eaters. Let's dive in and live the shame together. Hey, mama, welcome back to the show. I'm so glad that you're here and appreciate you tuning in with me.
Speaker 1:Today I am answering another question from you, from a listener, and it's actually a question that I do receive quite frequently in different forms and in different ways. So I thought it would be a good opportunity to address this on a podcast episode, as it may be something that you're wondering about as well, and we are revisiting a topic of sweets with today's question, and so I'm just going to read the question I got and then share some thoughts and feedback for you here, and this is also just a friendly reminder that you can share and connect with me about any questions that you might have or topic suggestions. If there's something that I can help address for you anonymously on the podcast, I would love to do so. So feel free to email me over at hello at crystalcargiscom. You can also connect with me via Instagram, though email usually works best, and so today's question reads Dear Crystal, we regularly serve dessert with meals, but my four-year-old daughter still seems obsessed.
Speaker 1:I'm trying hard to keep sweets off the pedestal. We normally offer some form of sweets at least three days a week and go out for ice cream every one to two weeks, but it never seems like enough for my daughter. I'm stumped and don't know what to do. Help, oh, mama. Thank you so much for just taking the time to share this, and this is very relatable, and you're absolutely not alone in this. I know that sweets can feel chaotic and overwhelming, and a big piece of this is what diet culture purports that we should do as parents around sweets, and not to mention that diet culture highly demonizes sweets and sugar, and so it can feel like a really confusing topic or a confusing food to manage in our homes. And I just hear your heart through this question you want your daughter to have positive relationship with food. You likely want her to learn how to self-regulate sweets and for sweets to not be something that's escalated or elevated in her mind, and that is amazing desires that you're holding for her, and this is something that, again, I hear in many different forms.
Speaker 1:This is a common question that comes up, and one thing I just want to plug in a quick disclaimer here, because I didn't have an opportunity to ask you any follow-up questions or to gather more information about your particular scenario. This information is purely for educational purposes and should not be taken as an individual recommendation. So I just want to kind of walk through some of the common reasons why I see this coming up, and this is something that I hear, as parents are kind of dipping their toes in the water and wanting to normalize sweets in their home and realize that keeping their kids away from sweets is not a solution or a long-term solution to supporting their kids and being able to eat sweets intuitively. And so you might find that you're normalizing it. You're bringing things into your home that you might have not normally had. You're being proactive about offering sweets and providing them alongside other foods that your child is used to eating.
Speaker 1:However, you might feel like your child still seems obsessive about having sweets, or maybe sweets are the only things that they ever want to eat, or maybe they're eating their sweets and not interested in any other foods. And this is where I do think it's important to distinguish the difference between an obsession around sweets and just general excitement or enjoyment of sweets. So we want to make sure to distinguish that these are two different things, and there's nothing inherently wrong about being excited about eating sweets or looking forward to having sweets, or showing a lot of joy or enjoyment when you are eating something sweet that you love. There's nothing wrong with that, and you may see that in your kids and I know here in our home we have sweets all the time. They're definitely in the rotation of foods that we regularly eat and my kids still look forward to them. You know they love having ice cream, they love picking different things out at the store, and that's okay. The goal of offering our kids sweets frequently, or normalizing them in our home, is not to make them less appealing or less exciting.
Speaker 1:The difference here is when our child starts to show or develop an obsession or a preoccupation with eating sweets. This is something different. Now this can actually affect our child's behavior in a detrimental way. So you might see that your child has difficulty concentrating on other aspects of their life because they're so preoccupied with sweets, or finding sweets or seeking them out or eating sweets. This can also influence a child's behavior in the home, where you might notice that maybe your child is sneaking sweets or eating them in secret or hoarding them or hiding them. These are all things that can be related to a preoccupation with having sweets.
Speaker 1:Another thing that we see, too, is just general anxiety or concern or fear or worry in our kids when sweets are not available. Or maybe you might find that your child has a lot of difficulty if sweets are not available or if their request for sweets is denied. That can trigger a fall on tantrum or maybe a meltdown. So these are things that we might see or that could be associated with an obsession around sweets. You might also notice just an incessant questioning about sweets or persistent asking for sweets. It seems like it never stops.
Speaker 1:Another thing as well is that you might find that your child has a low threshold or low tolerance for sweets not being available. So if you were to say, no, we're not going to have that or we're not getting that. That can really tailspin your child into kind of overwhelming emotion that's difficult for them to handle. So they may have a very low capacity to handle sweets not being available. So, again, these are things that we would look for to help us distinguish. Is my child really preoccupied with sweets or is this just general excitement or enjoyment of sweets and having sweets? And I did a podcast episode a few weeks back describing what a good relationship with sweets would look like in a child. So if you're not sure, if you're wondering, does my child have a good relationship with sweets, definitely go back and listen to that episode. I'll make sure that I put a link to it in the show notes for you. So you know, we do want to make sure that we're distinguishing those two different things.
Speaker 1:So let's say that you are, like this question asked, offering desserts in your home. You're being proactive, you're purchasing things again that you may not have bought before. You're really trying to be intentional about incorporating sweets as part of your child's eating routine. If you're doing that and you're noticing that your child is still showing some signs of an obsession around sweets or a preoccupation with having sweets, then there may be some reasons that are influencing that, and I just want to again talk through some of the common things that I see in my practice working with families who are navigating this issue. So it's important to remember that every family is different and every situation is different and every child is different. So, again, these are just general kind of broad ideas and as I'm talking through them, I just want you to think about could any of these be applicable to, maybe, your situation.
Speaker 1:So one of the most common reasons that I see kids still showing an obsession around sweets, even when they're being integrated in the home, is that sweets are still not being offered frequently enough. It's like not quite at the threshold of what a child may need to feel more relaxed about them, and a common reason for this is that we tend to us underestimate the frequency of which our kids need to actually see sweets in order to again trust that these foods are a consistent and regular part of their future and of their lives. It's not just kind of like a one and done thing. It really is like you want to think about integrating sweets just as regularly as you would fruit or vegetables or milk or bread, and I know it's really hard to think about sweets in that light because, again, of how diet culture really has just a dichotomy with these foods and creates a hierarchy around foods where certain foods are classified as being better or more nutritious for you than others. But again, we want to think about creating an emotionally equal playing field for all foods for our children, so that they can learn how to self-regulate and eat intuitively. And if sweets are still on a pedestal for them, it's going to be really challenging for them to be able to do that.
Speaker 1:And so you want to think about frequency. Is the frequency at which you're currently offering sweets enough for them? And this is where I usually encourage parents to think about offering it multiple times a day, every day and I know that seems like a lot and I know this is just again general guidelines here, but if here's a good rule of thumb, if your child is still showing signs of an obsession around sweets at the frequency that you're currently offering, you might want to think about bumping it up as a starter. So if you're offering sweets with meals about three times a week, that may not be enough. And so you want to think about do I need to bump it up more frequently again in order to help my child trust that these foods are a regular part of their eating routine and so that might need to look like a daily thing.
Speaker 1:And I always recommend to you to not become rigid about when you offer sweets. You know, sometimes it's like I just want to offer it at dinner or with dinner or after dinner, and sometimes, if we're too rigid about when we're offering sweets, our kids can escalate sweets at that eating time. So it's like they know they're going to get a dessert with dinner and so they may forego eating dinner or whatever other foods are there, because that's the only time that they're used to having or seeing a sweet. And so it's great to mix it up so that there's no rigidity around it and just kind of fall into what works as a natural rhythm within your home and within your family's eating routine. But definitely considering the frequency at which you're offering and asking yourself can I bump this up, can I offer it more frequently than what I'm currently doing so that my child can feel more relaxed and be able to trust? Oh yeah, I get to see this. This is not, you know, once a week or twice a week or just at dinner. It's, it's here and it's available, and I don't have to worry about it not being available, and that really can remove that hierarchy around the sweets. So that is something to consider.
Speaker 1:Another point here is the quantity of sweets at which we offer our kids, or which we tend to offer our kids, and this is a big one too, where we tend to dish out sweets to our children in a quantity that feels safer for us as parents, and this is where I can see a lot of issues rising up. Some kids naturally just have a higher interest in sweets, and sweets can be more rewarding for them or more enjoyable to them than other kids. This is just part of their inherent eating temperament that kids all naturally have, and some kids again find sweets more enjoyable than others. Just like as adults, we all have different palates and different foods that we tend to gravitate towards, and sometimes the amount or the quantity that we're providing our child helps us feel like we're still in control, especially if this is a food that you may not feel comfortable with, if sweets are something that maybe are tumultuous for you, or that you've had a difficult time or that in your history and in your relationship with foods sweets have been challenging.
Speaker 1:You may find it difficult to watch your child eat a certain quantity of sweets without that triggering something inside you. You might feel anxious, you might feel uncomfortable, you might feel some distress coming up in your body when your kiddos on their third cupcake or Oreo, whatever it is, and so that can cause us to restrain how much our kids are eating. And what happens, and what I see here is that kids are often prematurely getting cut off and not ever able to eat a quantity of sweets that actually feels satiating to them. And this is where it's really important to remember that your eating experiences have not been your child's and vice versa, and also to remember that what feels good in your body or what doesn't feel good in your body is not the same for your child. So often, as parents, we are trying to guide our kids eating behaviors, and this is a subtle form of micromanaging where it comes from our own hidden agenda of feeling uncomfortable with how our kids are eating, and so we want to interject, or we want to say things like I don't know if you should eat another one of those, you might, you might feel sick or your tummy might start hurting or I think you've had enough, and these are coming from a place of good intention, but they're also typically stemming from a place of fear or a place of our own trauma around food and our own distrust in our bodies, and it's easy to extend that to our kids unintentionally, when we have not learned how to trust ourselves around these foods, and so it's a complex thing that can be coming up. What I want you to see is a bigger picture, is that this is still a form of restraint when it comes to feeding our kids, where essentially, we're providing a food, but we're still putting some stipulations around it, especially with this quantity piece.
Speaker 1:If your child is never allowed to eat a higher quantity of sweets or to be the one to decide how much of a certain sweet that they get to eat, versus you being the one to decide that, then this can be a trigger for an obsession or a preoccupation with sweets. It's like if you never reach that point of satiety, it always leaves you with wanting more, and so this is sometimes what happens with our kids, when we're always portioning out their sweets and an amount for them that we think that should be plenty. But again, if we're not ever letting our kids have that embodied eating experience where they get to figure that out for themselves. We are doing them a disservice, and I know that's a hard pill to swallow, it's really hard, but this is the truth when we're thinking about issues or reasons why our kids may be obsessive with sweets.
Speaker 1:And so some things that you can think about incorporating or doing is providing regular opportunities where your child is allowed to have a higher portion of sweets and or get to decide the quantity of sweets they want to eat from the sweets or the foods that you're providing. And this might look like putting out a plate of cookies with milk for a snack and letting your child be the one to decide how many cookies they want to eat in that setting and I know that this can be really scary, I know it can be uncomfortable, and if this feels like something that's too out of reach for you right now, that's okay. You can work yourself up to that and up to doing this for your kids. But just having awareness of what may be coming up for you and just understanding that this is an important strategy to incorporate for our kids can be helpful, and I know it's hard too. I know that this one is really hard, and again, a lot of this discomfort can stem back to our relationship with food and also the stigma around sweets and sugar and the narrative that we've all grown up hearing about our bodies and about sweets, and these are messages that so many of us have come to internalize, which is these foods are bad and your body can't be trusted to regulate these foods, and so, of course, if we've had these messages deep seated in us, it can be really challenging to extend trust to our kids, and I'm telling you, it's a practice.
Speaker 1:It's not something that is going to be perfect by any means, and it's so important to shifting away from this narrative of body shame and food guilt. I will tell you, too, that if you're trying this out with your kiddos especially if you have older kiddos and you've never allowed them to do this before they need to learn, and it's going to be some trial and error for them too. What we're of eating intuitively is gathering data and information about what feels good in your body and what doesn't, but if we're always stopping our kids or policing them, or micromanaging them or telling them you've had too much or you need to stop, or one, we're only having one. That's all you can have. It's going to take some time for them to learn how to regulate, and the beautiful thing about this and again looking at the big picture is that when we give our kids this safe opportunity to learn how to regulate a higher quantity of sweets in the safety of our own homes, it's only going to help them as they grow up. Because we have to remember that our kids are not always going to be under our home and under our care, and every single thing that they eat is not going to be in our control. They're going to grow up, they're going to move away, they're going to live on their own and be in charge of what they buy and the foods that they eat.
Speaker 1:And you want your child to be able to have a normal relationship with sweets where they don't leave your home and go wild on sweets or feel like they're always binging or overeating sweets because they never had an opportunity to have them as a child. So it's important to think about these big picture ideas, especially when you're feeling uncomfortable as you're navigating this particular strategy and this point here. So the last one I want to touch on today is looking at any hidden agendas or what I like to call a conditional yes. This is a really hard one, and this is probably the most common reason why I see kids still feeling obsessive or preoccupied with eating sweets. And an easy way to kind of distill this is that your walk and your talk may not be matching up, and what I mean by this is that you may be saying yes to your child in terms of offering and providing a sweet and incorporating it in your home.
Speaker 1:Whatever, if you are still communicating messages to your child that you don't trust them to eat sweets or that you're uncomfortable with them eating sweets, either verbally or non-verbally, they are going to pick up on that. So we have to remember that our children are very attuned to us as their parents and their caregivers. They are attuned to our emotional state. They're picking up what we're putting down. They are feeling what is coming up for us and, as hard as that is, it's also important to remember that, because this is where it can be so important to just examine our own relationship with food and what's coming up for us, and is this being projected in my child's eating environment? Are they picking up on, maybe, your energy around sweets, which maybe is chaotic or anxious or fearful or uncomfortable. They may be picking up on that, and that is also influencing how they feel about sweets, and their body too, and it also just perpetuates this feeling, or this message, that sweets are a really big deal. These are things that I should be really keen on, because mom seems to be making a big deal about this, or mom and dad are arguing about this, or this is becoming an issue in the home, or this is becoming a power struggle every time you're at the grocery store and your child's asking for something, and you find yourself just stuck in this power struggle with your child around sweets. These are all different things that may be coming up that your child might be picking up on, and the antidote to this is not to just say yes to your child's every request. That's certainly not what I'm trying to communicate here.
Speaker 1:However, it is important to be aware of the messaging that we're communicating to our children, either verbally or nonverbally. Sometimes we are providing a food, but we're also telling them something else through the messages and the interactions that we're having with them. A common example that I see is where we may be allowing our kids to have sweets, but maybe never partaking in having those things ourselves. And this is something that kids will key in on when they notice like, oh, why do adults never eat sweets? Or why do all the kids get to have ice cream but mom and dad never eat it, or mommy never eats this, or whatever that situation might look like. And again, I'm saying all of this with so much compassion and knowing that there's a lot of nuance here too, definitely a lot of nuance that I can't get into in one episode. But I just want you to see that sometimes kids are hearing and picking up on contradicting messages where it's like okay, you can have this, but there may still be some stipulations around the sweets or around the food. And this is where we want to think about how can we make our yeses to our children truly be unconditional.
Speaker 1:A big area that I see is with stipulations where we might use or leverage sweets in order to get our child eat other foods. So it's like okay, you've had your sweet, now why don't you try a bite of this? Because it's not okay for you to just have, you know, candy for lunch or whatever that might be. So it's a subtle way of communicating this message that how you're eating, or eating sweets is not okay and or I'm not okay with it, and this is a very confusing thing for our child. It really creates dissonance in their mind. That's hard to reconcile where it's like oh, you offered this to me, but now you're telling me I need to eat something else.
Speaker 1:Or you know, another common example is policing again the quantity and we just talked about this where it's like we are offering and providing but we feel like we have to cut our kids off at a certain point. Or we might have certain rules for certain foods but not for others. So, for example, at a meal time, if your child wants another cookie, you might say you know, no, we've already had enough cookies, but you could have more of chicken, or you can have more broccoli. If that is the constant message that your child is hearing, that still puts the dessert or the cookie on a pedestal and sends a confusing message to the child with their like well, why can't I have more cookies, but I'm allowed to have more of these foods? So these are all really big things to be thinking about and really challenging things, because this particular point typically has to come back to us as parents and requires some self-awareness and self-examination as to how we're approaching these foods with our kids.
Speaker 1:Another thing to examine here is are there any hidden agendas?
Speaker 1:So are you offering sweets to your child with a specific agenda in mind? And this is something that I see come up a lot, where parents are like just tell me what to do, just tell me how frequently I need to be offering what's the plan? But there's an agenda attached to it, and that agenda might be that I want my child to eat less of the sweets at meals, or I want my child to not eat sweets anymore, not care about sweets, or maybe it has to do with your child's body size, where you would prefer your child to be in a different body than they currently are. There's reasons why you may have those agendas and those things and feeling or believing or wanting those things for your child are not inherently wrong. They're there for a reason.
Speaker 1:However, where it gets sticky is when that agenda is influencing how you're feeding your child and if you're now creating stipulations around how they're eating, it's not just about providing the dessert or providing the sweet, but it's also truly letting go of any attached outcomes or agendas that you might have with that. It's letting go of our prerogatives, it's laying down our expectations and being able to give our child an unconditional yes versus a conditional yes. It's saying here's our sweets with our meal and being totally okay with your child, maybe just opting for having the cookie and maybe not touching anything else. And look, I know that's way easier said than done. I totally get it, and as a parent in the trenches with you, I know that there's a lot of things that can come up and triggers for us as parents, but it's important to remember that those triggers and that discomfort that's coming up are our responsibility to manage and not our kid's job.
Speaker 1:And so this is where we really have to distinguish what is coming up for me and can I give my child an unconditional yes to listen to their body, to eat what they want and what they need from the foods that I've provided, and trust them and learn to trust them. And a helpful kind of just mantra or affirmation to just remind yourself is that I can trust my child. I'm learning to trust my child and even if I haven't fully been able to trust myself or that's the narrative that you're working through is that I can't trust my body, you are learning to extend that trust to your child so that they can embody that sense of trust within themselves and that you can preserve that trust and communicate this message that I trust you, even when it looks completely different from what I think it should look like. I'm learning to trust you and that is one of the most powerful gifts that we can give our children that really does preserve their intuitive eating abilities. Again, I know this is so much easier said than done and this is hard work. This is the hard work that you're doing and this is why I love these conversations, because it's not just about the strategy. It's about what goes behind the strategy, what is happening beneath the surface here, because you can follow the strategy. But if you are not doing the active work yourself on your own relationship with food and how you feel about your body and rewriting the narrative and challenging the stigmas that you grew up with, it's going to be challenging to execute these strategies. So I hope that just helps you see a little bit of the bigger picture here and gives you some things to think about. I know that this can be a challenging topic, something really that comes up again more frequently than you might think and I just want you to know that you're not alone.
Speaker 1:So a special thank you to this mama who sent in this question, and I do want to mention that I do have a service available. So if you are looking to get some individualized help and are wanting some assistance troubleshooting maybe a sweet obsession in your home or in your child, I would love to help you. So I offer what I call sweets audits. So basically I kind of do an audit on your family situation and your eating situation and help you troubleshoot and figure out what your sweet situation is in your home and help you come up with a game plan to resolve any sweets obsessions or preoccupations that may be going on in your kiddos. So if you're interested, I will stick a link to the sweets audit in the show notes or you can email me again, hello at crystalcargiscom and just let me know that you're interested in that and I can send you more information and would be happy to help support you with this.
Speaker 1:I definitely want you to know that if you're navigating a preoccupation with sweets in your own kiddo, I know it can be challenging and there is so much hope for you and your family that this is something that can definitely be worked through and resolved so that you can support your child and just building a really positive relationship with all foods, including sweets. So I hope this was helpful for you. Thank you so much again, mama, for sending in this great question, and thank you for tuning in and for being part of this community. I so appreciate you being here and cannot wait to connect with you next week. Thank you for listening to this week's episode of the Lift the Shame podcast. For more tips and guidance on your motherhood journey, come connect with me on Instagram at crystalcargis. Until next week, mama, I'll be cheering you on. Bye for now.