Your Kids May Overeat Their Candy: Here's Why You Should Let Them

Are you ready to revolutionize the way your household perceives and interacts with candy? If so, our comprehensive discussion on understanding and navigating the world of sweets with your children is a must-listen. By breaking away from the societal stigmas surrounding sweets, we elucidate the significance of nurturing a healthy relationship with food, particularly candy. Rather than demonizing these treats, we highlight the importance of teaching our children to self-regulate their intake.

As we venture through our own experiences with food, we shed light on how these can shape our approach to introducing sweets to our children. We delve into the concept of creating a safe space for our children to explore various foods, especially sweets. This inclusion of sweets on special occasions like Halloween or birthdays is instrumental in aiding our children's understanding of self-regulation and trust in their bodies. As we transition into the holiday season, we share key insights on how to navigate these candy-centric occasions. We encourage trust and learning through experience, fostering positive relationships with food. Join us as we debunk societal food myths and foster a new generation of intuitive eaters.

Show Links: 

• [FREE Halloween Workshop]: "Rewrite the Script on Halloween Sweets to Help Your Kids Self-Regulate Sugar!"

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.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

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 feeding 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 lift the shame together. We have a special guest with us today.

Speaker 2: 0:42

Why don't you tell us your name?

Speaker 3: 0:43

Eleanor.

Speaker 2: 0:45

Eleanor, how old are you?

Speaker 3: 0:46

Five.

Speaker 1: 0:48

And what is your favorite thing about Halloween?

Speaker 2: 0:52

Trick or treating.

Speaker 3: 0:53

Trick or treating.

Speaker 2: 0:55

Let's eat Halloween decorations, oh yeah, so what do you like about trick or treating?

Speaker 3: 1:01

Like putting candy in buckets, knocking on doors, seeing Halloween decorations saying trick or treat.

Speaker 2: 1:09

And what's your favorite candy?

Speaker 3: 1:13

Kit Kat.

Speaker 2: 1:14

Ooh, those are yummy, aren't they? And what do you want other kids like you to be able to do on Halloween?

Speaker 3: 1:24

Trick or treat seeing Halloween decorations.

Speaker 2: 1:27

Can eat lots of yummy candy. I can't wait, but don't get tummy ache. Don't get a tummy ache.

Speaker 3: 1:33

How do you get a tummy ache If you eat too much candy, you get a tummy ache. So don't eat too much candy. How do you know that? Because if you eat too much candy, you'll get tummy ache.

Speaker 2: 1:46

Has that happened to you before?

Speaker 3: 1:47

No, Wait, it has.

Speaker 2: 1:51

Oh, so then what did you do when that happened?

Speaker 3: 1:54

Just want to go to the bathroom.

Speaker 2: 1:58

And then what happened?

Speaker 3: 1:59

And then, if you had better, your body helped you feel better.

Speaker 2: 2:03

I'm so glad to hear that. Well, thank you so much for your great advice. Welcome.

Speaker 1: 2:10

Hey Mama, welcome back to the show. That was an impromptu conversation with my youngest, who loves to wander in while I'm recording, and so I thought I would just have her join instead of fighting it right, and it was interesting to hear what she had to say. That was completely unscripted and it got me thinking about this idea of how quick we are sometimes to tell our kids don't eat too much candy, you're going to get sick if you eat too much candy, and so I thought I would talk about that a little bit for today's show. I actually had a different topic in mind, but, given the impromptu conversation that came up with my daughter, I thought it might be good to address this, because it frequently comes up, especially around Halloween.

Speaker 1: 2:54

If you've been following along, we've been doing a mini series here on the podcast about kids and all things sugar, as sweets are commonly demonized in our dieting culture, and it can be really challenging as a parent to know how do I navigate candy and sweets with my children, especially if we want them to learn how to self-regulate and have a positive relationship with sweets and all foods. And yet we are also bombarded with so much conflicting messages, so much fear mongering around letting our kids eat sweets, letting them have candy to their hearts content. It's really challenging as a parent to navigate this. You might find yourself feeling stuck in this conflict where, on one hand, you do want to normalize sweets for your child. You want them to be able to learn how to self-regulate them so that they're not on a pedestal and not something that they become obsessive about. However, on the other hand, you might worry about the impact of sugar on their health or their behavior, or wonder about all the claims that are out there today. Is there any legitimacy to them and if so, what does this mean for my child? You might have conflicting feelings about your child eating sweets due to your own relationship with food or your history with food.

Speaker 1: 4:12

Many of us can subconsciously project our own experiences around food on our children. So, for example, if you've had a difficult relationship with food and if sweets were something that were chaotic or challenging in any way, or you never learned how to self-regulate it, it can be easy to bring those experiences into your feeding relationship with your child, where you assume that they may also have the same experiences that you did. I know this is something that I had to work through myself, sweets were a big part of my eating disorder and something that were really challenging for me to normalize. And, because of my history, this was something that I found myself projecting onto my kids as they were getting older and starting to have more exposure to sweets. There was this assumption that I had a chaotic relationship with these foods. So there was a worrier concern that my kids would also deal with the same thing, or this belief, this internalized narrative that we may carry, that if I can't trust myself with food or I can't trust myself to eat sweets, then what's to say that my child can be trusted, or how can I trust my child to have a normal relationship with a food that has historically been very chaotic for me?

Speaker 1: 5:29

So, as you can see, there are a lot of things coming up which can make it hard for us to extend full trust and permission to our children, especially around candy-centered holidays, where there is a novelty in this experience of having a higher volume of sweets available. So you might find yourself being intentional about incorporating candy or incorporating sweets at various times. You're trying to expose your children to these foods and offering them more frequently, and maybe you're wanting to do things differently so that they can have an opportunity to learn how to self-regulate these foods, to build a positive association with eating them. However, what I tend to see is this kind of dipping your toe in the water scenario where it's like we want our kids to have these experiences but we can't fully extend trust and permission to them. There might be micromanaging or restricting happening on a very subtle scale, and part of that is because it can feel challenging to relinquish that control. It can feel difficult to learn how to trust our children fully, especially if you're still learning to trust yourself or if you're still trying to entangle many of the different messages that you're being bombarded with. It's a challenging thing to do.

Speaker 1: 6:50

One of the biggest ways I see this coming out is in the way that we communicate with our children, in the ways that we have conversations with them about food and their bodies, and they can kind of become these many lectures, which often have a hidden agenda attached to them that wants to micromanage how much our kids are eating or minimize the volume of sweets that they're actually taking in, and this tends to come out more prominently during candy-centered holidays again, like Halloween. I've talked about this on different episodes, but I'm a huge proponent of letting our children have full access to their Halloween candy or whatever it might be, if they're going to a birthday party and getting a big bag of candy to come home with. If it's Halloween or a different holiday where there is exposure to a large volume of sweets, I definitely recommend letting our children have an opportunity to eat what they want from what is available to them, especially because they've already seen it, they've had access to it. They see the full volume of what is there, and for us to allow our children to have that experience but then not permit them to actually eat and enjoy part of that experience can be a subtle form of restriction. It can communicate a message to our children that we don't really trust them, that they have access to this candy but we have to be the ones to police it or gatekeep it, and this is where we can unintentionally send messages to our children that they can't be trusted or that we don't trust them, and trust is such an essential component of our children being able to learn how to trust themselves.

Speaker 1: 8:34

The other thing here is that we want to remember that eating is a very embodied experience. So what do I mean by that? Children are intuitive eaters already. They are born with innate capabilities to self-regulate what they need. That is one of the most beautiful things, and sometimes I think it's easy to forget that, even though our children have those skills, they still need experiences to develop those skills, to actually learn what foods feel good in their bodies and what foods don't, or the volume or the quantity or the times of day. Our children need those experiences over the course of their lifetime, and eating and eating intuitively is a skill that our children are developing, and this is why I advocate for allowing our children to have these real life experiences like candy from a birthday party, candy from trick-or-treating, where they're able to have an experience that's something different from the typical day to day, but something that's also part of normal life, so that they can learn how to eat in a manner that feels best for them in different scenarios.

Speaker 1: 9:48

And this is where I think it can be really challenging as a parent when we see our children in different situations, it's easy to come into those situations thinking that I know what's best for my child in this situation. However, when it comes to food and eating, the only person that's living in our child's body is our child, and this is where I see this conflict happening, where we want to still micromanage and we still might say things or we might make insinuations that can make it challenging for our child to actually listen to what's happening inside their body, because they're getting outside information which may be conflicting with the internal cues and the things that they're registering in their bodies. So let me walk you through a real-life example of this and yes, it has happened over the course of Halloween in different ways with different children of mine and my youngest, who you heard from. I thought it was actually very interesting that she said too much candy can make your tummy hurt, because that is something that she discovered on her own. And I have made a point to not tell my kids that because, again, I understand that they don't need lectures from me. They need safe opportunities to discover and experience what feels good in their bodies and what doesn't, especially in these situations like Halloween, where they have their trick-or-treating candy and they're being allowed an opportunity to explore it and eat and eat what they want from it before we put it away.

Speaker 1: 11:15

And there have been times where my children did eat their candy to a point where they got sick and it is hard to watch, it's very uncomfortable as a parent and I can think of a couple specific instances with my kids where this has happened. And this has happened with my youngest on Halloween before, where at the time she was four and really starting to get into Halloween and all the candy and really excited about all the different things. We came home from trick-or-treating and, like we always do with our children, we let them sort out their candy after we've checked it, we let them trade with each other and we also let them eat what they want from their Halloween candy. This is something we do with them every year and for my youngest at the time it was a newer experience for her in that she was more aware of what was happening and definitely into it and she was going full speed into her Halloween candy. I mean tearing multiple pieces open. She was biting into things and opening the next one before she even finished it. I mean there was a lot of pieces around that were uneaten and I could see from her pace that there was some overeating happening. And it's hard. This has happened before with some of my older children, so in that sense I was a little bit more prepared for it, but it never makes it easy and I also knew that, as hard as it was for me to watch that.

Speaker 1: 12:38

It was also an important experience for her to learn about what feels good in her body and what doesn't. And I've never said to her or any of my other kids that eating too much candy is bad for you or it's going to make you feel sick as much as I feel like those things are burned into my brain because those are things I heard growing up about food and sweets in particular. I've always wanted to be intentional about letting my children have this space to explore Because, again, they need experiences to discover what feels good and what doesn't. They're not going to learn that based on us telling them things. They're going to learn that based on feeling those things. And, sure enough, my youngest did eat to a point where she felt uncomfortable and she verbalized that and she was saying how much her tummy was hurting and that she didn't feel good. And of course, sometimes as parents, we can internalize that as a failure on our part. Like I am responsible for this, I allowed this to happen and this is where it takes some intentional reframing, because these messages are very intertwined with diet culture and there's often misconstrued ideas around.

Speaker 1: 13:52

Letting our kids have these eating experiences with sweets and I get it, letting our kids have access to candy and making sweets accessible in the home is very counter cultural and it can feel very counter intuitive. As a parent, too, it doesn't feel like something that is conducive to good health, based on the standards that diet culture has established for raising kids or raising healthy children. This is where I think it's really important to take a step back and remind ourselves of the big picture goals that we are essentially working towards when we are implementing these approaches that do feel counter intuitive. We want to think about the long term goals. We want to raise children who are competent eaters, who can trust their bodies and listen to their bodies and not have a chaotic relationship with food, who aren't growing up and going to college or to a friend's house or living on their own and not knowing how to feed themselves or going hog wild over sweets now that they have free reign access to it because they never had those opportunities growing up.

Speaker 1: 14:58

And this is where the reframing piece really comes helpful and into play, where we're thinking about why we're doing these things. It's not just becoming permissive as a parent and just saying I'm going to let my child do whatever they want whenever they want. That's definitely not what this is about and that's not conducive to raising a healthy child or effective, positive parenting. It's more about learning to be responsive to the children in front of us understanding them, understanding what they need, understanding what experiences would be helpful for them to discover their own bodies and what feels good in their bodies, and being cognizant of their environment and what they're being exposed to, especially with food. Are we allowing them to have the safe experiences they need to get curious about their bodies and their appetites, without any shame or guilt or stipulations attached to it, because those are the things that will help them, in the long run, develop a more positive relationship with food, one that is not overshadowed by guilt or shame or, second, questioning their bodies or their appetites at every turn.

Speaker 1: 16:05

So, going back to this story with my youngest in previous Halloween experience, where she did eat she did overeat candy to a point where she didn't feel good. Her tummy was hurting. She expressed that, she verbalized that, and this is where we have an opportunity as parents to decide how are we going to respond, how are we going to navigate this so that this situation is something that our kids can learn from, even in which they can gather data and information about that experience to apply it to the next eating times or the next eating experiences. And this is where I think a lot of us growing up have received feedback from parents or caregivers or people that interacted with us as children, where we were demeaned or put down or spoken to in a negative way because of the eating experiences we had that maybe didn't go well. Eating is part of normal eating. It is a part of eating intuitively, where we are troubleshooting and figuring out what feels good and what doesn't.

Speaker 1: 17:09

And it's very easy to demonize overeating and this is where many of us can or did in our history, internalize shame around these experiences. And so, with your own children, while it can be easy to recycle those things or we're saying those same things that we heard growing up like see, I told you that was too much. Too much candy, too much candy is going to hurt your body or hurt your tummy or not make you feel good Instead of resorting to those things that we grew up hearing, this can be an opportunity to get curious with our kids, to have some open ended discussions and also just provide them the safety and reassurance that they need to know that they can trust their bodies as the best experts of what they need. And this is where I think so many of us repeatedly hearing these types of messages or lectures from well-meaning people in our lives form the narrative that our bodies can't be trusted, that our bodies are not the ones that can guide us through these situations, that we have to now depend on or listen to external rules, and so we start dissociating from our own bodies. And this is where those innate intuitive eating abilities that we were all born with can become severed, which is why I do think it's important to examine that narrative.

Speaker 1: 18:24

What are we following? What is guiding us in our eating choices? And while it can be so easy to recycle those things, I know that you are a cycle breaker and you want to do differently for your kids, and here, coming up in Halloween is a great opportunity to do that. And so with my daughter, when this happened with her, I just asked her an open ended question, after empathizing with her situation, like oh man, I'm so sorry. I know that doesn't feel good. Why do you think your tummy hurts? And when we can ask those open ended questions it really puts it back on them to kind of reconnect what just happened and self discover what was happening in their body leading up to that experience. And when I posed this question to my daughter, she made the connection right away and said I think I ate too much of my candy and so I'm just going to go ahead and answer that question, instead of again saying things like I told you so or you shouldn't have done that, just allowing more curiosity and discovery.

Speaker 1: 19:20

Because when our children make this self-discovery, we don't want to demonize overeating or we don't want to demonize the food itself, and we can do that by sticking to those open-ended questions, asking reflective questions and again providing reassurance. So with my daughter that looked like something along lines of yeah, there was just so many yummy candies. And I know it can be hard to decide what you want to eat Sometimes I eat too much and my tummy hurts too and just those reassuring statements can help our kids know that they're not alone and that they didn't do something inherently or morally wrong. When we can sit in it with them, that can be so supportive and then just transitioning to what can help us feel better, or what can help you feel better, and posing it as an open-ended question rather than providing the solution right away. Of course, as parents and caregivers, we just want to fix it. We want to help our kids feel better, and when we can allow a little bit of space for them to explore that discomfort, it's amazing what they can come up with.

Speaker 1: 20:23

And in that moment my daughter did say I think I need to drink some water, and then later I think I need to go to the bathroom, and that's why I thought it was so funny that she remembered that and said those things earlier when I had that little conversation with her, that she remembered what made her feel better in that moment. And that's where we can offer support and reassurance and our safe presence for them, to let them know that they're not alone, and walk through it with them and let them move through it so that it doesn't become this negative association but something that they were able to learn from. And what's amazing is how our children can remember these experiences and it does resurface in future-eating experiences, and this is something that I've seen with my own children time and time again, when they've had those experiences to understand you know what? That didn't feel good last time. So let's do things a little bit differently. When they can make those discoveries on their own, it is so much more powerful for them because that becomes embedded within themselves, and that is a lot different than listening to a lecture or listening to someone else tell you how you should do something. When they can actually walk through it and learn from it, it's so much more powerful for them. And this is where I want to encourage you.

Speaker 1: 21:43

With the holidays on the horizon, many different sweets experiences coming up, I want you to consider and ask do I trust my child? Am I allowing them to have experiences rather than lectures, to discover what feels good in their bodies and what doesn't? Is there something that's causing you restraint in how you're approaching sweets with them? Do you feel uncomfortable seeing your child eat a certain amount of candy or sweets? Do you feel compelled to stop them? Do you feel triggered by it? Do you feel it necessary to intervene, to put limits, to put restraints on it? Those are some hard questions to ask, but things that can promote some self-awareness about what might be coming up for you. And, instead of projecting those things onto your child, can you instead make it a situation where they can have a learning experience, lean in with curiosity what does your child need to figure out what feels best for them, rather than resorting to control or criticism? How can you support your child in this way?

Speaker 1: 22:46

Now, I do want to clarify that there is a lot of nuance to this topic and, for the sake of this episode, I was focusing more so on Halloween experiences and trick-or-treating and the high volume of sweets that comes with that. However, I am not suggesting that we always give our kids unlimited sweets at every eating time and not have any structure or supportive way in which we're approaching food with them. That's definitely not what I'm saying, and that's why I just want to reiterate that there is a lot of nuance here, and when we're thinking about the long-term strategy of how we're approaching sweets and food in our home overall, we do want to consider what is both supportive, within flexible structure, and also responsive to what our kids need in order to develop a more positive relationship with food, because all children are different. All children have different temperaments, different needs, different personalities and ways that they interact and experience the world, and it's important to adjust for that, and so I do want to acknowledge that feeding is not a one-size-fits-all approach, that there is definitely a lot of nuance here. I, more so, just wanted to highlight on what I observe as typical responses from adults to children. Around holidays like Halloween, where there is higher access to sweets and candy available.

Speaker 1: 24:07

It's easy to default to this food police mode, where we feel like we have to be the gatekeepers of how much our children eat and don't relinquish control for fear of our kids overeating. And what I want you to think about is that overeating is sometimes the experience that our children need in order to learn about what feels good in their bodies and what doesn't. If you are fearful of your child overeating, whether it is sweets or just food in general, you may be resorting to subtle forms of control which do have the potential to backfire. And this is where it takes a lot of self reflection and curiosity as a caregiver to assess what am I doing and how am I approaching feeding with my child. Is it from a place of fear? Is it a place from distrust or the belief that I can't trust my child to regulate? I have to be the one to regulate for them? Those are important things to be aware of because, again, that can lead to controlling feeding approaches, even if very subtly, which does have the potential to disrupt our children's innate intuitive eating abilities.

Speaker 1: 25:20

This tends to come up around Halloween, which is why I wanted to address it in today's episode. If it's been your default to control or portion or have rules around your child's Halloween candy, what might it look like to expand on that or give them a different type of eating opportunity that would allow them to self explore that and realizing that overeating is a possibility for our kids? We also have to understand that Halloween in itself is a novel experience. It's not in our kids' everyday norm where they get this high volume of candy all in one sitting and there's just a lot of other things going on. There's the excitement of dressing up and trick-or-treating or getting together with friends or family. There's a lot happening and that can also contribute to the ramped up energy around sweets and candy. But I just want to pose the question Instead of trying to get your child to avoid potentially overeating at all costs and possibly engaging in controlling feeding practices in order to do so, what would it look like to give them more permission to lean into these situations with curiosity, to give them unconditional trust that you believe in them, that you know that your kids have the ability to figure this out with a safe experience to explore that and, yes, they might overeat, but no, it will not be the end of the world.

Speaker 1: 26:46

In fact, it can be an invaluable lesson for them in their lifelong journey of discovering what feels good in their bodies and trusting their bodies as the best expert of what they need. And I realize that feeding our kids brings up a lot for us as parents. It can cause so many things to resurface for us, and this is one of those times where watching our child overeat can bring a lot for you. Up to the surface, it can be triggering, it can be distressing. We want to remember, though, that when these things happen, those are our responsibility to learn how to manage and explore, rather than projecting those things onto our children.

Speaker 1: 27:23

So this is the conversation I just wanted to invite you in today. I hope it gave you some things to think about. I know it's a nuanced and layered topic, so if you have any questions or insight or feedback, I'm always all ears. Would love to hear from you If you would like some more real time conversations with my kiddos to hear how we talk about food and bodies. Let me know to you I'm happy to explore that and see what that would look like.

Speaker 1: 27:47

Also, just a friendly reminder that I am hosting a live Halloween workshop on how to help your kids self-regulate their candy and just make the most of this eating experience so that you can alleviate any stress that might be coming up for you. I will link that in the show notes where you can register for free. I'd love to see you there, as always. Thank you so much for tuning in. I'm so grateful for you and thankful that you're here and part of this community. 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.