Child Obsessed With Sweets: How Much Sugar is Ok For My Child to Eat?
Many of the parents I work with on raising healthy children often ask, “How much sugar is it okay for my child to eat?”, or, “How much sugar is healthy for a child?”
What I hear beneath this question is fear and confusion around the topic of kids and sugar, where parents often feel caught between two ends of the spectrum.
On one hand, most parents don’t want their kids to feel restricted from sweets and desserts and to be able to enjoy childhood favorites, like popsicles and lollipops.
On the other hand, there is unspoken fear about the potential consequences of a child eating too much sugar. What will it do to their health? Or their behavior? Or their body size?
While grappling with these questions, there’s ongoing search for clarity. For the “right” answer. For specific numbers and serving sizes. For hand-held direction: “Give this much, but not that much!” For the exact equation which will strike a balance and prevent the scales from tipping in either direction.
Sugar is an emotionally charged subject for many reasons, which unfortunately leaves parents attempting to feed their kids from a place of fear and control. There’s also an overwhelming amount of information out there about kids and sugar, which can make it confusing to understand what may be the right thing to do. Coupled with the predominance of the diet culture we live in, this is a recipe for confusion.
Let me share a secret with you: there is no right answer.
There’s not a perfect sugar serving size guide or recommendation. No chart, which will break it all down for you. I mean, don’t get me wrong - those things exist. But I would argue they only muddy the waters, making things more confusing than they already are.
The truth is every child is different.
Every child’s needs are diverse and can’t be watered down to oversimplified nutrition facts and serving sizes. In fact, your child is the best source of information you need to navigate this. To unlock the elusive equation on kids and sugar requires trust and intuition on your part as a parent.
To put it plainly, in order to figure out an amount of sugar which is suitable for your child, you need to put your own agenda on the backburner so you can clearly recognize what your child needs without being clouded by your own sugar biases.
What exactly do I mean by that?
Getting to the Root of the Question
Let’s be real.
Sugar is an emotionally loaded food and topic of conversation. It often is a point of discourse for parents and professionals alike.
You may have a tumultuous relationship with sugar, or maybe it was a chaotic food for you growing up. Maybe it was something you were restricted from eating as a kid, and now as an adult, you feel out of control with it. Or maybe you’ve been given unsolicited advice from well-meaning individuals - either family members, friends, or professionals.
Statements like, “Too much sugar is bad!”, or, “Don’t let your kids eat too many sweets, it’ll make them hyper!” are often thrown out casually in conversations.
These types of experiences and conversations around sugar create a dichotomy around this food: Something that is labeled as “bad” automatically demonizes it, making it an emotionally ridden topic, which becomes laden with guilt, shame, confusion and chaos.
All this to say, there is probably a lot more than meets the eye behind your question: “How much sugar is okay for my child to eat?”
I completely get it and understand why.
If there is something you feel like you don’t fully understand, like sugar, then the unknown can create a sense of fear. Fear, especially when it comes to our kids, can trigger a need for control.
This triggers a false idea of, “If I could only control the situation, I can create the right outcome.”
There is always more than beneath the surface when it comes to food and feeding our kids. It’s important to take a step back and ask yourself what outcome you might be trying to achieve by controlling your child’s sugar intake and to understand if this is something reasonably within your control.
When it comes to feeding our kids, the danger arises when we try to control something outside of our abilities. This will always end up backfiring in the end.
For example, let’s say sugar is something you don’t feel comfortable eating or giving to your child. In effort to deal with the discomfort, you might put limits on sugar for your child. Maybe you periodically allow sweets, but only within a context you feel comfortable with. The strict limits around sugar may unintentionally create an obsession around sweets for your child. Your child may begin asking for more, or feel preoccupied about the next time they are able to have sweets.
Ultimately, trying to control exactly what or how much our kids eat is outside of our feeding responsibilities as parents. Overreaching into their eating territory can quickly turn into a dangerous situation.
Rather than asking this question about your child’s sugar intake from a place of fear and control, it can help to focus on the big picture to help change your mindset around this situation.
A more important question is to ask, “How much more access to sugar does my child need in order to feel neutral about these foods?”, or, in other words, what amount of sugar does your child need to develop a more positive relationship with these foods?
What Your Child Needs to Have a Healthy Relationship With Food
Ultimately, a more important goal than trying to control the amount of sugar your children consume is to empower them to become the best experts of their bodies; to be able to effectively self-regulate an amount of sugar that is right for them, no matter what situation they may find themselves in as they grow up.
You can control their sugar intake now if you really wanted to, down to the very serving size, but this would do nothing to teach them about the amount of sugar that feels best in their own bodies.
In many situations where sugar intake is too tightly restricted, it leads to overconsumption of desserts over time and increases risk of disordered eating.
If you notice that your child seems preoccupied or obsessed with desserts, or is just generally more interested in sweeter foods, this can feel concerning.
Again, sugar is an emotionally charged food. The tendency is to restrict, or have more control over something you may not feel comfortable with.
But the answer may very well be that your kids need more exposure to sugar in order to: 1) Increase neutrality around these foods, and 2) To give them more opportunities to learn how to self-regulate an amount of sugar that feels best in their bodies.
While I may not be able to give you a specific answer to the question, “How much sugar is okay for my child to eat?”, I can give you a framework to help empower you to support your child in building a healthy relationship with all foods.
Every child is different, and depending on your child’s situation, may need more recurring exposures to sweets and desserts in order to feel more neutral about these foods.
Remember, moving your child to feeling neutral about sweets will help prevent obsession over these foods in the long run. Decreased obsession around food will also help prevent disordered eating. This will also help your child be better able to self-regulate desserts and sweets.
Research has also found when a neutral approach is taken to all foods (including desserts), this helps children make more health promoting choices over time. This means having a healthy relationship with food is essential for your child to build overall healthier outcomes overall for their physical and mental well-being.
One of the foundations for building a positive relationship with foods means approaching food neutrally.
When a child doesn’t have a divided relationship with food, where some are good and some are bad, she is better able to enjoy a variety of foods and learn to eat amounts that feel best for her body.
Because sugar tends to fall into the “bad” category, this is often a problem spot for parents and kids alike.
In order to help your child have a healthy relationship with all food, sugar must be approached neutrally.
How can you accomplish this?
Preventing the “Dessert Novelty” Trap
As we’re talking about the big picture goals with sweets, it’s also important to mention what else you may want to prevent from happening with your child and sugar. Another long term goal is to avoid creating a novelty out of any food, especially desserts and sweets.
What does this mean exactly?
Novelty is a thing or experience that has a sense of newness to it.
For example, when your child gets a brand new toy for Christmas, it’s a thing of novelty. Until she starts playing with it repetitively, it loses a sense of novelty. Once the newness wears off, it gets added to the toy pile, with all the other used toys.
A side effect of restricting or too tightly controlling sugar with kids is the unintentional creation of novelty around these foods. When a child is not allowed to have sweets often, these foods become a novelty. Both the foods itself and the experience of eating sweets are a change from what’s normal and expected.
The danger of dessert novelty is the emotional charge that comes with this. Think about your kids tearing into their Christmas presents and the heightened emotions about them. Engaging in an experience which only comes around so often is bound to be fraught with anticipation and delight.
Sometimes, kids get so wrapped up in the actual act of opening presents, they could care less what they actually got. I remember one Christmas, my 3 year old threw a tantrum and cried when she didn’t have any more presents to open, even though she had a bunch of new gifts and toys to play with.
Now imagine if kids opened presents everyday. I’m certain the specialness around unwrapping gifts would wear off until it gradually became part of their normal, everyday routine.
What does this have to do with desserts? There are many parallels to learn to help you see this from a different perspective.
You see, when kids don’t have regular exposure to desserts or only have sweets on special occasions, those foods become even more desirable. There’s more anticipation and build up to actually having them, just like a child anxiously waiting for Christmas morning to come.
As long as desserts remain a novelty for kids, they’re more likely to develop behaviors around these foods which may feel chaotic, out-of-control. In fact, kids are more likely to overeat desserts with limited exposure or emotionally eat, which can create a problematic relationship with these foods over time.
The dessert novelty trap ultimately causes a child to disengage from their natural intuitive eating abilities because now there is scarcity and speciality wrapped around a food.
But if the food itself is neutralized, a child is better able to tune into and honor her own self-regulators. YES, even with sugar. Many parents I work with think their children are able to self-regulate their food intake but not sugar. If sweets and desserts are too tightly controlled but other foods aren’t, this can create this discrepancy.
So how can you help your child have a more neutral approach to sugar?
It starts with increasing frequency of sugar exposure. Just like the example above of opening presents, when a child understands sugar is a regular part of her life, it squashes the novelty around dessert, making them less scarce and special.
Importance of Habituation With Sweets
One helpful concept to consider when thinking about kids and sugar is this idea of habituation.
Habituation can be defined as the diminishing of a physiological or emotional response to a frequently repeated stimulus.
Basically, the more we are exposed to a repeated stimulus, the less we will have a heightened physiological or emotional response to it.
Think about it like this: How did you feel the first time your significant other said, “I love you”? You likely went weak in the knees with thrill and excitement. Now fast forward after a few years of marriage and kids under the belt of your relationship, hearing, “I love you”, might not elicit the same response.
Now what might habituation look like when it comes to your kids and sugar?
Foods that feels forbidden to your child will remain exciting and enticing, because these foods have not yet been subject to the habituation effect.
The habituation effect is what happens when you are repeatedly exposed to the same stimulus. Gradually, the novelty of it begins to wear off. Just like the example of your child getting a new toy. They may play with it repeatedly until they’ve played with it so much, it’s no longer exciting. The newness of it has worn off.
In the case of eating sweets and desserts, the same effect can apply with repeated exposure. The more your kids eat sugar, the less enticement it offers. Gradually, it becomes just food. Will it still taste good? Absolutely. But it becomes no big deal.
It becomes neutral and emotionally equal to other foods.
Meaning, the more your child is exposed to sugar, the more relaxed they will feel around these foods.
The more able they will be to eat based on what their bodies’ needing, versus an emotional pull related to the restrained access to the food itself.
If you’re worried about your child being unable to stop eating any dessert, like ice cream or candy, this is a good indication that they may need to eat it more.
If your child seems obsessed with eating sugar, it’s important to look at underlying causes influencing this; restricting access to sweets can actually fuel the obsession or appear as though your child has an addiction to sugar.
The question then, is understanding where your child may be, in terms of how she relates to and feels about sugar, and the amount of exposure she needs to feel more neutral about it.
Your child may need more access to eating sugar in order to create habituation around it and to therefore, feel more neutral about eating these foods. Again, this is a necessary step to helping your child build a positive relationship with all foods.
Putting It Into Practice, Practical Tips
Once you begin to shift your mindset around the topic of sugar and kids from “How much do I need to control”, to “How much exposure does my child need?”, you can start to put together a more effective approach to help support your child in reaching the big picture goal: developing a neutral relationship with sweets.
So when you put this into practice, what does this actually look like?
First, it’s important to note that the application part of this will look different for every family. Depending on your child and the unique circumstances you may be in, your child may need more or less exposure to sugar in order to feel more neutral about sweets.
In order to create habituation around sugar for your child, they will need consistent exposure to these types of foods. The frequency to which you expose and offer your child sugar, or dessert-based foods, may depend on a few different factors.
While every child and situation is unique, diverse, and individualized, here are some general guidelines to keep in mind when you’re trying to assess the frequency of sugar exposures your child may need.
I’d also like to preface this by sharing, as a dietitian and mother of 5, my children regularly have exposure to desserts. In our home, we have desserts on a daily basis, sometimes multiple times per day. I can safely say my children have reached a habituation around these foods, which is quite amazing to see. Meaning, when they go to birthday parties or get an influx of candy on holidays, they’re able to self-regulate their intake and eat an amount that is right for them.
As a mother who experienced a rather tumultuous relationship with desserts and various forms of disordered eating, I’m thankful to see my children feel at peace around these foods.
I know regular and consistent exposure has helped them be able to listen to and trust their bodies, no matter the situation they may find themselves in. I understand how hard it can be to trust this process, especially if you’ve struggled with disordered eating yourself or have had a difficult time trusting yourself to eat foods, like desserts. I have also seen firsthand what can happen when we fully trust our kids to eat and enjoy a variety of foods, and it’s a beautiful thing to see them have food freedom at such a young age.
I’ll share more about this, but first, let me share this framework with you which can help you discern the level of sugar exposure your child might need in order to develop a peaceful and healthy relationship with all foods.
Again, certain factors may require more frequent sugar exposures in order to help neutralize these foods for a child. In other situations, a child may not necessarily need many opportunities to be exposed to sugar.
How do you know whether or not your child needs a higher frequency of sugar access and exposure?
Here are some factors to consider:
High Sugar Frequency
Indicators that your child may need a higher frequency of sugar exposures in order to feel more neutral about them may be:
Your child was previously restricted from sweets and desserts
Your child seems to be preoccupied or obsessive with sugar
Your child repeatedly asks for sweets throughout the day
Your child may have a hard time focusing on other things outside of sweets
Your child may be hoarding or hiding sweets
Your child is unable to leave any sweets behind when eating them
Your child is in circumstances or situations where there is a higher influx or prevalence of sweets, including parties, special events, holidays, etc.
Your child may get upset or throw a tantrum when desserts are not available or are taken away
Your child may only eat the dessert portion of their meal and not show interest in other foods
Average Sugar Frequency
Your child expresses enjoyment of sweets
Your child periodically requests sweets or favorite treats
Your child is okay going without sweets at any given meal/snack
Your child demonstrates excitement or anticipation of having something sweet to eat
Your child will eat sweets and other foods interchangeably (ex: if a cookie is served with dinner, your child will eat their cookie along with other foods on their plate)
Low Sugar Frequency
Your child hasn’t yet been introduced to many sweets (such as a baby/young toddler)
Your child doesn’t frequently ask for sweets or desserts
Your child is content to go days between sugar exposures
Your child may not be aware of specific desserts, like candy, cookies, etc.
Implementation: How to Increase Sugar Exposures
If your child has shown some of these signs from the average to high category, they may need more exposure to sugar and sweets in order for them to feel more neutral about these foods.
What might this look like on a practical basis?
While every child’s situation will be unique, here are some suggestions:
Make the sweets your child is asking for more accessible:
If your child is particularly fixated on a certain dessert or candy, the first step is to make it more accessible to your child.
This means having it on hand more readily to incorporate with your child’s regular meals and snacks. This doesn’t mean giving into your child’s every demand when sweets are requested (more on this below).
Allow your child to have access to sweets more frequently:
Once you have the desired sweets, it’s time to start offering them more frequently. You might include a dessert with 1-2 meals/snacks that your child is having daily.
Serving the dessert with other foods will help your children equate the two on the same playing field, so they’re not elevating sweets on a pedestal. They might eat the dessert part of their meals/snacks first, or the dessert may be the only part of their meal they eat. This is okay.
The important thing is to be consistent with this approach to help your child gradually feel more neutral about desserts. Once they can trust desserts are readily available and part of their regular meals/snacks, they will feel more interested in exploring other foods (outside of the dessert) and will feel safe to leave desserts behind on their plates once they’re satisfied.
Offer desserts to your child without waiting for them having to ask:
In order to help your children feel more neutral about desserts, they need to trust these foods are available. If your child is repeatedly having to ask you for sweets, this may be a sign they need more exposure.
Instead of waiting for your child to ask, offer them sweets unexpectedly with a meal or snack. This might look like allowing them to pick out a couple pieces of candy to have with lunch, or allowing them to have cookies with milk for a snack.
Keep desserts in their view:
If desserts are hidden from your child, this creates the perception that these foods are not available or accessible. It also makes these foods more “special” in your child’s mind, since they don’t see them available like other foods.
Naturally, this will cause them to be more drawn to them, even obsessive about them. This is something you want to avoid whenever possible. Keep desserts and sweets in plain sight for them, but be sure to have agreed upon rules.
For example, you might show your children where the candy is kept and also tell them when it’s snack or lunch time, they can come and pick out a couple pieces to have with their meals. Make sure they understand if they’re unable to stick with the rules, then the candy will have to be put away.
This helps establish boundaries with your children as well
Let them periodically pick out a dessert they’d like to try:
Allow your kids to pick out a dessert or candy they’re interested in trying to incorporate into their meals and snacks for the week.
This can also help them build more neutrality with desserts and trust the accessibility of foods they’re interested in trying.
You might let them pick out a certain cookie, cereal, or candy on a grocery trip that they’re able to try during the week. This helps them trust food is always in their future by dissipating the deprivation factor.
Allow opportunities to have a more unlimited amount of a dessert:
This is important for kids to learn how to self-regulate their intake. It’s helpful for kids to also have opportunities to eat sugar in higher quantities so they can learn how to self-regulate and eat an amount that feels best for their bodies. I recommended using the structure of snacks to do this for your children.
For example, you might put out a plate of cookies with milk as a snack option and allow your child to determine how many cookies she wants to eat.
This can also be something you do after a candy-focused holiday, like Halloween or Easter, where you let your child have her candy bag alongside a glass of milk for her snack. She can pick out as much candy as she wants to eat during her snack time to eat.
If you are allowing these opportunities for your children, it’s important to not police them while they're eating. You might have a tendency to stop them from eating a certain amount, but this will defeat the purpose and not allow them to self-regulate on their own.
You can trust their capability to learn to eat an amount that feels best for their bodies. For more help in this area, be sure to check out this posts here: “Kids Candy: Growing Healthy Children Need to Eat Candy, Too”
For a child who may be in the low sugar frequency category, here are some things to keep in mind:
Remember we’re naturally drawn toward sweeter tastes. A baby’s first food, milk (either formula or breastmilk) is sweeter in flavor. Incorporating sweeter foods into the variety of foods your child is eating can be helpful, like fruit, sweeter vegetables (like squashes, sweet potatoes), yogurt, etc.
Continue to offer your child a variety of foods without pressure to eat one food over another. When you notice your child takes an interest in a certain type of dessert or food, this is when you can slowly begin to incorporate it into your food routine so they understand and trust that it’s available.
Be careful about hiding or restricting anything from your child as well, as this can create the opposite effect on your child.
Focusing on Your Feeding Jobs
There is NO moral attachment to these above categories. This is simply a loose guideline to help you discern where your child may land and to help you figure out a more concrete plan for approaching sweets with your child to help them feel more neutral overall about these foods.
It’s also important to note here that your child may change categories depending on circumstances.
For example, my kids often hang out in the average sugar frequency category. During candy focused holidays, like Halloween or Easter, my kids may move up to the high frequency category. Meaning, they need more exposure to sugar during these times when candy and sweets are more prevalent in order to feel more neutral about them and comfortable eating them.
This is all okay.
The goal is to be in tune with your children and their needs so you can adjust accordingly.
The goal is to adjust the frequency of sugar exposures to what your child needs to help them build habituation with desserts and to feel more neutral about sugar overall.
Remember you’re still in charge of what you serve your child - this is part of your responsibilities with feeding.
You want to proactively integrate more safe opportunities for sugar exposure if you notice your child showing signs of the high sugar frequency. It’s important to try to stay one step ahead of them to prevent any preoccupation or obsessions with sweets. This DOES NOT mean give in to your child’s every demand.
Increasing access to sugar is not the same thing as giving into your child’s every sugar request or letting her have free rein to the fridge and pantry all times.
This is not helpful food parenting, either. In fact, this is a surefire way to create chaos around food - for you and your family.
Your child still needs structure around food, and as the parent, it’s your job to provide that structure. However, within the structure of the meals and snacks you provide your child, you can incorporate more or less access to sugar, depending on their individual needs.
As an example: Your child may be in the average sugar frequency category. You may periodically have desserts with dinner and let your child pick out a piece of candy with their lunch almost daily. But then Halloween may come around. Your child is now faced with a huge influx of candy. There may be more desserts at school functions and parties, etc. You notice your child asking for sweets more frequently and seeming more occupied with her candy bag. Use these clues to implement a plan of attack that will strategically help your child feel more neutral about sweets during a higher influx of sweets. So you might allow her to pick out more pieces of candy to have with lunch AND dinner for a few days. You may also allow a snack time where your child is allowed to eat as much candy as desired. (More about that here: Kids Desserts: Healthy Habits to Help Your Kids Manage Sweets and Treats.)
Through all of this, it’s important to stay focused on your jobs with feeding and trust your child to do their part with eating.
This may look drastically different from a handy-dandy chart that breaks down the specific servings for your child, but those are often problematic to begin with.
You know why?
It doesn’t account for the amount of sugar exposures your child may need to feel neutral about these foods, to develop habituation around these foods.
Ultimately, I want you to know that you can trust your intuition as you navigate through this with your child.
I also want you to know that you can absolutely trust your child to eat an amount of sugar that feels best for their bodies. If your child hasn’t had many opportunities to eat desserts or was previously restricted from sweets, desserts may remain a novelty for them for a while, but this will gradually decrease overtime as they build habituation with eating desserts.
In order for this to happen, it’s essential that you trust your child. This is crucial to building a trusting feeding relationship with your child.
Interference with self-regulation defeats the purpose of this whole process. You might feel the urge to say something, to give your child “the look”, or to minimize sugar exposures to a level that you feel comfortable with. But this won’t allow you or your child to achieve the more important big picture goals that are essential for your child to build a healthy relationship with all foods and not go crazy with sugar down the road.
If you need more support in this area or would like a customized plan for your child and family, please connect with me today - I’d love to hear your story and give you some guidance in this area.
I’m also hosting a virtual workshop all about this. Sign up below to get on the waiting list so you can get all the details when they’re available.
What questions do you have about this?