Giving sugar to a 12 month old

yeah i think habitual isnt great but Ethan until one had nothing due to not being allowed any wheat,dairy, nuts,fish,egg etc...but this Christmas he has a bag of 10 choc coins and he's had about 4 and i let him have the occassional choc thing ..lol as the others said mostly if im caught but he's still in a cot so not so bad:) and his hearing at a million miles is awesome :)

he has biscuits when out sometimes.. and i'm not that concerned though he has started to not like veges...serves me right for saying he'd eat anything but goes mad for fruit.. he had a drink (few mouthfuls)of pure juice once but i am apart from that one time not giving him juice until he is much older..for us i just think water and milk are enough.. and i worry if he gets juice etc he wont want water etc anymore:) it also helps his sleep isnt affected by chocolate or he wouldn't ever have any:) hehe

Edited by Four_eyes

daizy you arent a terrible Mum!!!:) i think second and subsequent babies its often different..you relax a bit more!:) as long as they are eating lots of good food too surely it's ok:)! i just meant if people are giving their kids choc etc instead of good food all the time!:)

Tom has never touched cake till his first birthday...James has already had it.

Tom hadnt had chippies, sweets, biscuits etc....James has (not sweets).

Sigh............

As for the dried fruit...our dental nurse said that as long as they wash it down with water then it gets diluted so not so bad.

I also get amazed at how many 1 year olds have sweet food.

I'm really strict and think what they don't know won't hurt them and so far so good, they see me eat chocolate and if i hand them some bread instead of eating my food they are happy. They have had diluted juice on a plane ride once and a piece of chocolate muffin for their 1st birthday and that's it.

The only sugar they have is in their yoghurt otherwise it's homemade food that has no sugar.

In saying that my sister feeds bad food to her child all the time but that's her decision and I don't say anything because she's a great mum in every way and just because she lets her son have sweet food doesn't make her a bad mum.

DD gets choc bisciuts occasionly ( cause daddy does) and has recently taken to marshmellows. She never had any crap until she was 1. She eats really well the rest of the time . She won't drink fizzy or juice, just has milk or water. She also will not sit still so a little extra sugar ain't gonna hurt
To each their own I guess.

To be quite honest then I do run the risk of them not eating planer healthier food but here is our story.

We never really limited McKayla and wont really do it with Andrew either. At 4 and a half months she was on food and at 6 months I made her some jelly and custard (yeah yeah I am sure some are having heart palpitations now). My child screamed for the cauliflower we were having and didnt eat her jelly (see now you can calm down).

She had licks of ice cream some chippies and a few biscuits before she was one. And here comes the shocker. This child demolished a whole chocolate cupcake on her first birthday.

She would drop a sweet to get an apple. She goes about 80% at a party for the healthier stuff first. She complains the day we dont have fruit in the house. And yip I still dont really limit. I just dont allow artificial colors as her behaviour changes with it.

I gave her a kinder surprise before Christmas and told her she can have it now or on Christmas and yip she chose rather to open it on Christmas.

Now other side of the family was the health police. Nope the child didnt have birthday cake no sweets ect. Fast forward another year to a party both kids attended. Mine ate from healthy and the not so healthy table. Other kid went nuts and couldnt stuff their mouth fast enough with all the baddy stuff to the point that the parents got embarressed.

Lesson in all of this: Everything in moderation. If you give treats and they see you eat stuff in moderation then they will grow up not craving all the bad stuff but incorporate it into a healthy diet. Biggest thing for me is that your diet yourself is healthy as well and you dont go gorge yourself on sweets and biscuits and chocolate while you expect your child to eat very healthy.

And just two weeks ago at a party she was looking at all the food and asked the host but where is the healthy stuff.

My kids eat "junk" in moderation, neither had really tried it before one, and its not habitual but I don't believe in making foods "bad" as I believe that casues problems later in life.

That said both my kids have a varied palette and will 99% of the time choose rice crackers over bikkies (unless its 100s and 1000s bikkies, lol) and fruit over lollies. They love fruit and veg, esp berry fruit which is plentifull at this time, so yay.

I think you can tell the kids who are never allowed to have sugar at birthday parites, they are the ones who go hyper when they have a marshmellow and you hear their mums say thats why I never let t hem have sugar... maybe if they had "treats" once in a while, they would be used to it....

SMoody wrote: Lesson in all of this: Everything in moderation. If you give treats and they see you eat stuff in moderation then they will grow up not craving all the bad stuff but incorporate it into a healthy diet. Biggest thing for me is that your diet yourself is healthy as well and you dont go gorge yourself on sweets and biscuits and chocolate while you expect your child to eat very healthy.

Very well put, we do need to be the example to our children