Klayfish
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- May 19, 2016
I'm with you on that, but at the same time, I don't see a need to keep these things in the house.
(Correction: Monorailsilver) mentions that she'll come home and find "wrappers all over the house". Meaning, she's keeping the place stocked up with junk food and the kids are helping themselves.
I compare that to how I handled my kids. Cookies weren't forbidden. I just never bought them. When the kids were little, they truly thought that the only way to get a cookie was to have the nice cashier ladies at the grocery store give you one for being good. My son, in particular, got very clever about this at about age three, and would walk up to the older ladies and say, "You're pretty!" and smile widely, anticipating a cookie reward.
I've never in my life bought a box of pop tarts. They're not forbidden either, but I'm the one who buys the groceries and they're just not on my list.
Junk food is what you get when you go out to eat, not what you eat at home. As my kids got older, they would use some of their money to purchase it for themselves, but they quickly learned that once it's eaten, it's gone and so's their money. So, they learned to budget and only treat themselves occasionally.
Also, not to sound like an over-controlling ogre or anything, but as the primary cook in this household I do maintain a certain amount of control over my kitchen and I expect other family members to ask before grabbing food. Just a simple, "I'm getting myself some carrots, is that okay?" is fine. Most of the time I'll say yes. I just need to know, in case I might have been planning to use them in tonight's casserole. I don't want to start cooking at five pm and discover I'm missing an essential ingredient because someone binged on it.
Isn't that just semantics....they're not forbidden, but since I buy the groceries, I don't buy them, so they aren't in the house. What's the difference? If you teach kids good eating habits, I personally see no reason not to have that stuff in the house. To me, all of this is just common sense. Don't go to one extreme of letting them eat junk all day every day, but not going to another extreme of forbidding it in the house (no matter how you go about that).