Child Constantly Craving Sugar? Helpful Language to Talk About Sweets
Sweets and sugar can be a stick subject for many families, and if you’ve found yourself in this boat, you’re absolutely not alone.
If you’re working on normalizing sugar and sweets for your children and in your home - well, my friend, you’ve come to the right place.
Part of this approach is taking a bird’s eye view of feeding our children.
Yes, of course, nutritious foods are important for our child’s health and well-being. But what might be even more important is how we feed our children. Taking steps to intentionally develop a positive and trusting feeding relationship* with our children is instrumental in helping them grow up to feel positive about food and their bodies.
Legalizing sugar in your home is an essential component to supporting your kids in having a healthy relationship with all foods.
In a nutshell, these means you’re taking intentional and proactive steps to establish an equal playing field for all foods in your home and not elevating one food group over another.
Why is this important?
The bottom line is we want to preserve our children’s natural intuitive eating abilities.
Our kids are born with the programming they need to self-regulate their intake from a variety of foods, including - yes, sweets!
However, when certain foods are demonized and other foods are pushed on our kids, this can start to disconnect them from the internal wisdom they need to self-regulate their food intake and to grow at a rate that is right for them.
Ultimately, when sweets are restricted, too tightly controlled, or strictly limited, this can make them feel like they are a “forbidden fruit”. What does that mean?
Well, simply put, any foods that feel forbidden or off-limits can instantly become more desirable to a child.
Studies have found that restrictive feeding overrides children’s internal satiety signals and increases desire for forbidden foods, in this case sweets.
On the other hand, when children are allowed access to a variety of foods and see sweets they enjoy eating alongside other foods they’re used to having, it helps create an emotional equality among all foods.
If you’re curious about this approach and interested in learning more, be sure to check out this blog post here: “Should You Give Your Kids Dessert With Meals When Your Child Won't Eat Dinner?”
For the purposes of this blog, I want to specifically touch on something fundamentally important to supporting our children around food and how they feel about eating sweets, and that has to do with our language.
Why Language Around Sweets and Food Matters
In the grand scheme of things, language might not seem like a big deal. But in reality, children are forming thoughts and opinions about food and their bodies based on the language they hear around them.
If you think back to your childhood, how were sweets and desserts described to you?
Most of us have heard anything sweet referred to as “junk food”, “sometimes foods”, and other categorizing terms, like, “bad”, “unhealthy”, and “guilty pleasures”.
If you grew up hearing sweets referred to in these terms, like I did, you might not really know any different. And it’s easy to recycle the things we’ve learned about food to our own children.
This is where we have an amazing opportunity to try something new with our children in the way we approach food, and that has to do with our language - especially how we talk to our kids about sweets.
The reason this is important is because children internalize messages they hear about food and bodies from very young ages.
Developmentally, children are literal thinkers - meaning, they don’t understand all the nuances about various subjects until they get a bit older. As literal thinkers, they translate the things they hear at face value.
For example, when children hear someone say, “I am so bad for eating these cookies”, they may translate these messages to mean they are in fact “bad” for eating or desiring those foods. Hearing polarizing phrases and labels around food, especially desserts and sweets, can create negative associations around these foods unintentionally.
A child might start to experience guilt or shame around eating sweets because of the messaging they’ve picked up around these foods. For some children, an unhealthy obsession with sweets might form from fear around not having sweets or permission to eat the foods they enjoy.
This is not said to shame any parent or caregiver, because ultimately, we’re all doing the best we can with the resources and information we have at the time.
This is however, an opportunity to create more awareness around a topic that often receives little attention. Again, we tend to recycle the things we’ve learned as children, so this a chance to do things differently in support of our children’s relationships with food and their bodies.
3 Areas We Can Improve Language Around Sweets
Here are 3 main categories we can examine when it comes to our language around sweets in effort to detach any negative associations around these foods:
How We Refer to Sweets in General:
First, it’s important to look at how we refer to sweets when we’re talking about them in general. It’s really easy to lump these foods into categories, like referred to above: “Junk food”, “Treats”, “Sometimes Foods”, etc.
But anytime we’re separating sweets into these categories, we’re subconsciously creating rules for how we relate to these foods. We can also unintentionally put these foods up on a pedestal or create shame/guilt around eating them.
For example, the word “treat” is commonly used to describe sweets, but if we look at this through our children’s eyes, it’s easier to see how much more desirable sweets can become when we refer to them as “treats”.
A treat sounds exciting and enticing - I mean, who wouldn’t want a treat, no less our children who associate sweets with “treats”.
On the other hand, using words like “junk food” can also create negative associations around food, especially sweets. It might be easier to lump all things sweets and desserts into the junk food category, but this can inadvertently create shame, fear and guilt around eating these foods (whenever the opportunities do present themselves).
Again, children are literal thinkers, from a purely developmental perspective. So from their point of view, eating food considered “junk food” can mean they’re “junk”, unwanted or undesirable for eating something labeled as “junk.
This is where it’s important to remember that little ears are always listening, and how we talk about food is sending unconscious messages to our children. We don’t want our children to connect any negative messages with food or their bodies, and the best way to prevent this is to take a more neutral approach to our language and how we talk about food.
Step back and ask yourself - how are you communicating about sweets in general, especially to others in your family? What is your language around these foods?
Remember, this is an opportunity to practice awareness and try something new in effort to bring more harmony in your home around food.
2. How We Talk About Ourselves Eating Sweets:
To piggyback on the last point, another important area to consider is how you might talk about yourself when you’re interacting with sweets.
Let me explain further:
What are your general thoughts and feelings about eating sweets yourself? Do you feel worried about eating these foods? Do you try to stay away from sweets? Do you measure your success and worthiness based on how and what you eat (or don’t eat) during the day?
If you answered yes to any of these questions, please know you’re not alone. And again, the intention of this post is not to shame you for where you’re at in your relationship with food - I can’t stress this enough.
What I do want you to be aware of is how your own feelings around sweets might project in the way you communicate about sweets with your own children.
If sweets are something you’re worried about eating or trying to stay away from, how does your language about sweets reflect this?
Common phrases kids might hear their parents and caregivers share may include things like:
“I’m trying to be good, I can’t eat that right now”
“I shouldn’t have eaten that cookie after lunch, now I’m paying for it.”
“I messed up and was bad at the party - I overdid it on the sweets.”
“I need to make sure to squeeze in an extra workout tonight to make up for all those brownies I ate earlier.”
These are things you may have heard growing up from your own caregivers. And honestly, this type of language is all around us because our society is so steeped in diet culture.
The problem is the messaging. How do our children translate the things they hear and in what way are they internalizing these messages?
Attaching “good versus bad” to sweets can make these foods into a moral issue, where children may now base their own worthiness on how or what they eat.
If a child hears an adult lamenting about how bad they are for eating something sweet, this can communicate that they too will become bad for eating sweets. This attaches guilt and shame to sweets, which can trigger a lot of chaos around desserts in general.
A child might have opportunities to eat sweets but may not feel safe in doing so because of messaging heard about sweets from the caregivers around them.
3. How We Talk to Our Children When They’re Eating Sweets
Perhaps one of the most impactful areas, in terms of our language, is how we communicate and talk with our children when they’re eating sweets.
Meaning, what are the things you might say to your children when they’re allowed to eat sweets or when they’re engaging in sweets in any way?
Sometimes, as parents or caregivers, we might allow our own discomfort around our children eating sweets to project in the manner in which we communicate with them about sweets.
For example, if your child is dishing into her candy bag after a birthday party or you’re observing your child eat some dessert at a holiday gathering, do you feel inclined to comment or perhaps micromanage what they’re eating?
This can look like comments and/or statements such as:
“Too much of that is going to make you sick”
“You need to watch how much you’re eating or you’re going to get a tummy ache!”
“Too much sugar is so bad for you.”
“You’re going to be bouncing off the walls if you eat all of that!”
Again, these comments can come from a place of good intention and well-meaning for our children. You might sincerely feel worried about how much they’re eating or uncomfortable and unsure about how to best navigate this scenario.
Another thing in regard to language is how we respond or communicate to our children when they ask or request sweets.
For example, are your children frequently hearing “No” when they ask about having candy, cookies, or whatever their favorite sweets might be?
Are they perhaps getting a lecture in response to their requests about why they shouldn’t be wanting for or asking for sweets?
And just so you know, my solution here is not to give in to your child’s every sweet request either - that wouldn’t be productive for either you or your child. I’ll get more into how you can effectively respond in the next section.
But first, I just want you to be aware of your messaging around sweets and how you might be responding to your child’s interest in sweets. When a child frequently hears “No” around sweets, that can actually make the foods more desirable and something your child may begin to fixate on.
On the other hand, if I child feels ashamed around how they’re eating or how much they’re eating, this can also unintentionally create guilt around sweets. Trying to micromanage how much sweets our kids undermines their ability to eat and self-regulate what they need from the foods we offer them. This can make it harder for them to trust themselves or learn how to eat in a way that feels best for their bodies.
So now that we’ve covered these three major areas to consider our language around sweets, let’s look at some strategies that can help you promote a positive relationship with all foods for your children in your home.
Maintaining a Neutral Stance With Sweets
I have no doubt you’re reading this because you’re interested in learning more about how to support your children in building a healthy and positive relationship with food. That alone is HUGE, and your desire to do so speaks volumes.
This isn’t about getting things “perfect” because let’s be honest - we’ll never get there. It’s simply about having more awareness about our own thoughts, behaviors and feelings around food and striving toward progress in creating more positive connections with food and our children.
With that being said, there are many things we could talk about to support you in this effort. However, when it comes to language around sweets, I want to highlight 3 key steps that could help you and your family navigate sugar in a more effective and positive way.
Let’s dive in below:
Understand Your Role:
First, it’s important to examine what your jobs are when it comes to feeding your children and what your child’s jobs are when it comes to eating. In a nutshell, I like to break it down like this: Parents provide, child decides.
As a parent, you are responsible for deciding what you’re doing to feed your child (including when and what you’ll offer for dessert), and your children are in charge of deciding what and how much to eat from the foods you’ve offered.
Why does this matter? Essentially, when you can learn to focus on your jobs with feeding and trust your children to do their parts with eating, this can help diffuse a lot of the power struggles at mealtimes, especially around desserts.
If your tendency is to micromanage your child at mealtimes and to use both verbal/non-verbal cues to do so, this can be a step in the right direction.
This can be especially helpful if you find yourself leaning toward commenting about what or how your child eats at mealtimes. My recommendation is to focus more on connecting with your children at mealtimes and make it less about the food.
The less food talk there is (especially comments about what or how your child is eating), the more space you’ll create for positivity around food and mealtimes in general. For more support on how this applies with sweets at mealtimes, be sure to check out this post here: “Feeding Kids Sweets 101: Knowing Your Role When You Feed the Kids”
2. Use Neutral Language:
We can’t get through this post without addressing helpful tips for talking about sweets themselves, because it’s going to come up one way or another.
Now, instead of categorizing sweets with the typical language we’re used to hearing, “junk food”, “treats”, etc. I recommend taking a more neutral approach (especially for the reasons we described above). One easy way to do this is simply to call foods (and sweets) by exactly what they’re called.
For example, “We’re having cookies and milk with snack today” instead of, “We’re having a treat with snack today!”. Or, “We can buy some lollipops next time we go to the store” instead of “We’re not buying that junk food, we already have enough”.
This is especially important when talking to your child about sweets. Just call it by its name, and this can help diffuse any negative energy around it. Without any labels that imply hidden agendas.
This draws out the emotional charge that’s so easily attached to sweet foods. In this way, you give your kiddos the opportunity to learn how to eat all foods based on their internal self-regulators, not external rules or influences. This can provide the structure and support kids need to build a healthy relationship with sweets.
3. Validate Requests and Lead With a Yes:
As I alluded to earlier, constantly denying a child’s requests for sweets can make these foods feel more desirable. But the solution is not to always give in to their every demand either. So what are some better options?
Simply put, I recommend “leading with a yes”.
Meaning, you want to reassure your child in your reply that those foods will be available in the near future and that you will be intentional about incorporating them on the family menu. However, you’re not going to give in to what they want at that moment either.
It’s a healthy balance of validating your child’s request, offering empathy and understanding, and also setting healthy boundaries.
So if it’s right before dinner, and your toddler is tugging on your pant legs and asking for the cookies in the pantry, instead of “No, we’re not having those right now”, you could say something along the lines of, “Yes, I hear you saying you want some cookies.
Those are yummy, we’ll have some with our dinner.” Or if you hear your teen rummaging through the freezer for the ice cream stash, instead of “No more ice cream, you need to get out of there”, you can try something like, “Honey, the kitchen is closed right now.
At snack time, you can dish out yourself some ice cream if you'd like to eat some at the table.” It’s a subtle shift in language responses to help your child feel seen and to assure them sweets are allowed and available. But you’re also setting healthy boundaries around sweets, too.
For more specifics on this, including different scenarios, be sure to check out this post here: “Child Only Wants to Eat Sweets? Here are 11 Simple Ways to Respond”
For many reasons, sweets can be an emotionally charged subject.
You can help diffuse any negative energy around sweets in support of your child building a healthy relationship with food by taking a more neutral approach with sugar. This starts with language, which is not always easy, but can definitely be powerful in creating shifts in your home around sweets.
If you’re needing more help or support with this, be sure to check out the Simplify Sweets Academy for the step-by-step system you need to end the sugar crazies in your home.
I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below: what are ways you hope to incorporate more neutral language around sweets in your home?