Just Curious...Please Answer Honestly :)

Yep. Every night. My daughter is a sweet-freak and it helps them to eat their dinner. There's worse things in the world than a bowl of ice cream : )

I'd say you're doing a great job, and if it's just desert once a day, you're WAY ahead of most of us!!! There's so much sugar and high fructose corn syrup in EVERYTHING, that you're already 3 steps ahead. I wouldn't worry about it :)

We only have dessert after dinner every now and then (I would say once a week or a bit less). We do eat pretty healthy - lots of whole grains, fruit, veggies, etc. But I'm not opposed to them eating a treat every so often. If I stop at Starbucks for some coffee, I'll get the kids a cookie. It would be a sad life indeed never having any treats!

I think its perfectly fine! My kids get alot of healthy things but I allow some sweets throughout the day. When I tell them no I always tell them why. You cant have X because you had Y earlier and we need to eat sweets in moderation. Every night I have ice cream and I look forward to it! Its my reward to myself for eating so healthy the rest of the day! Even then its not bad for me! I buy skinny cow ice cream cups, put some light cool whip on it, cut up some fruit and put Bran Buds on it. Bran Buds are a cereal with a ton of fiber in it, 1/3 cup has 15 grams in it and I put it on alot of things my kids eat, just a few sprinkles but it helps keep them regular. You are teaching your kids that you can eat anything you want to, as long as its in moderation!

Sounds like you are very thoughtful about what your children eat. Dessert every night is not a problem if also as careful as you say.

We also consider fruit as dessert in our home, so as long as it is a small something and your children have already eaten their dinner, I do not see a problem with it.

I also do not see a problem with children having a few processed sweets or treats.

If we do not teach them how to treat them in moderation, they could gorge on them in the "real" world. Really good ice cream (especially homemade), a small cupcake, a fabulous cookie, is going to pop up at some point, why not be the one to be the treat giver once in a blue moon?

Yup, we have dessert very often. MOstly fruit or something similar but sometimes icecream, but made with almond milk, we don't do cow's products. We eat really healthy, almost no processed foods, no sugar and I nurse my kids long-term so I feel that it is a little treat that won't hurt at all. As long as it isn't HFCS all day long, than I don't think it will hurt at all. It's fun and makes them look forward to dinner :)

I always want something sweet after my meals, so why would I keep my kids from having something sweet. It doesn't always happen b/c I may not have anything sweet in the house. When we do, it may be fruit, homemade pie, homemade cupcakes, homemade cobbler, homemade cookies, homemade or store bought ice cream. I don't look at dessert as a reward, it is just a great way to end a meal :)

So far we haven't made anything taboo. I have heard research that makes it more tempting to kids and they have less control when they finally get some. My son likes fig newtons and fruit chews/leathers. Those are the main sweets he gets. Oh, and homemade banana bread. The only time we really say no is when it is right before dinner or in the morning. At the same time, sometimes his request is for bananas or other fruit, and he is a pretty healthy eater.

We don't always have dessert. I hardly ever go & buy dessert things, just because we are on a very tight budget & can only buy things we really need.

Sometimes my M. sends us home with cupcakes or cookies she's bought. As long as we have them, if my daughter asks she can have a little bit. But only after she has eaten dinner! (or lunch on weekends) I cut her off after a couple small cookies or so.

Now if she's been misbehaving, she may not get a dessert!

My son is only two and only gets dessert after dinner on special occasions. or if we go out for ice-cream (once or twice a month). But during the day if he asks for a cookie, once in a while, and he ate appropriately he can have one or two.

It sounds like you are conscious in what you give and that sounds just fine. I have dessert a few times a week but it is not as healthy as yours so I do it less frequently.

My kids have relatively healthy diets, eat fruits or veggies at every meal, and they get dessert every night after dinner too! If there is something else they want during the day that is really junky (like we were at a Medieval Fair the other day in the early afternoon and they wanted Funnel Cake) I told them that had a choice between that and having dessert after dinner. You are doing fine!

Hi Robyn, maybe not a desert everynight, but we did reward with a treat when the kids ate all their dinner. J.

we do dessert every night, unless she is acting up. Its anywhere from a small scoop of vanilla ice cream, to fuit, a cookie, really depends. I like something sweet after dinner so if she eats her dinner she gets sometihing sweet asd well.

I am so glad you asked this!! Growing up, I lived the same life as it seem your kids live. My M. still tells the story of a friend's M. asking to take me and my friend to McDonald's after kindergarten. I said I didn't want to go and just wanted to go home to have a tuna sandwich. :) There were always sweets around the house and had some sort of treat almost every night. I am very healthy, never over indulge, always been into sports, never been over weight and never had any food issues. I think raising kids that way is great and you're doing a great job!! I hope to raise my daughter the same way and with the same successful eating ideals.

Did I write this question myself?!? LOL.

Yes, we have gotten in the rut of a "mandatory"(by my son) dessert everynight. We do find that it helps to get him to finish eating his dinner (but the flip side is sometimes I wonder if he only eats 'just enough' so that he saves room for dessert - a couple nights ago, we had tacos for dinner and he declined a 2nd helping (as did my husband who had a hearty lunch). Then as I was *still cleaning up* from dinner, he said he was hungry! So the next day, I put the food on his plate, and expected him to eat it all. Took him a while to get through it all but he had to eat it before he could go play with the neighbor. Then when he was over there, she told me he declined ice cream because he was too full! (but he and I were hungry by then and had a fruit popsicle and a piece of toast with homemade strawberry jam before bed)

I make my own popsicles - sooo easy! throw fruit in a blender, add ice, scoop of lemonade powder or orange juice, maybe milk, ice, whirl and enjoy homemade smoothies/slushies, and all leftovers (often I have to make a 2nd blender pitcherful!) go into the popsicle trays. I love it because my husband and son devour them and I don't have to worry about how much (ok I squeak if my son has more than 2 at once!) they eat of it, because it is like eating a cup of fruit with a drink of lemonade.

So on days our son didn't eat dinner to my satisfaction, I only yield to fruit, toast/bread & jam, bagel, popsicles, cucumber, carrots, celery w/peanut butter, etc. But I do admit our standard dessert is ice cream......
It frustrates me because growing up, we did not have 'dessert' we had 'bedtime snack' and they were things like toast with sliced bananas and brown sugar (mm! my son wont try it tho), cucumber spears, bowl of canned fruit, popcorn, carrots, fruit, pumpkin date cookies that my M. made (those were the only cookies that weren't rationed since it was more "good" than "junk" LOL) that kind of thing. Ice cream was a treat, I don't think we had it more than once a week and probably not every week either.

I do have granola snack type bars and I am not a sugar nazi, and don't want to be because I have seen where some kids get NO sugar whatsoever at home and consequently they pig out (awful!!) whenever they are outside the home. Watch what you eat, control what junk goes in your home (and their bodies), but don't forbid it because the forbidden fruit is the most tantalizing.

For us we do it only every so often. But my kids are not big sweets kids. When we do dessert, I'll generally do an ice cream sundae bar or make smores or something with them. Sometimes they ask for a pie...it is so rare that they ask, or we may do it more often.

My kids only have dessert every once in a while. It's not b/c we are really healthy eaters, my kids also just expected to get desserts every night so we tell them it's a treat. As long as the desserts you give them are usually healthy like it sounds you are doing, I don't see a problem with it.

Whatever you call it - as long as the overall diet is healthy, then I see no issue with dessert.

If my son eats his dinner then yes he gets dessert.. We eat pretty healthy through out the day so I don't find anything wrong with that.. He'll pick either an ice pop, animal crackers, 2 cookies, popcorn, nut bar, etc.. Something like that will be his dessert choices...

We always had some type of dessert-y thing after dinner. Sometimes we would have some home made pie or something, but usually it was fruit, strawberry shortcake with home made "cakes", things like that.
My kids favorite was yogurt "sundaes".
I crumbled home made brownies or cookies and put them in a bowl with yogurt, banana slices and whipped cream.
Super easy, pretty healthy and a treat.
Home made milkshakes were another favorite too. Fresh fruit, milk and vanilla ice cream.

I don't think there's anything wrong with a treat after dinner as long as the kids eat their meal. It's easy to get creative with pretty healthy things.

We don't have dessert every day, but we do sometimes end the meal with frozen fruit and yogurt, or no-sugar added applesauce and vanilla yogurt with a sprinkle of cinnamon, or a smoothie made of fruit and yogurt and a tablespoon of instant pudding (these also make good popsicles).

In our family, we just dont care for sweets and desserts very often. So, on a daily basis, no.

I only have desserts around if we have guests around. We do go to the club for dinner on occasion and they are known for fabulas desserts and we might have something if we go there but for the most part, we don't eat sweets.

I don't think anything is wrong if a family serves dessert, it's just what you are used to and as long as you are eating healthy I see no reason for forbid it. I believe in eating whatever I want, in moderation.

If they eat their dinner, they can have dessert. I'm pretty lax. They still eat healthy meals and snacks. But if they don't eat great throughout the day... No, they don't get a dessert.

ETA- I love to bake and we all bake together. I try to use as much natural as I can possible... Baking it, I know there's no HFCS or other manmade "garbage", but there are times when I don't feel up to baking... So sometimes they'll get the processed garbage... It's just not all that often.

I agree with Caroline B.

We're not strict about it, but we tend to have desserts more around holidays and birthdays (pies, cookies, cake, cupcakes, ice-cream (hot fudge and whipped cream), etc) rather than every day. If my son's hungry before a meal, he can have some yogurt, a piece of fruit (banana, apple, orange, grapes, cherries, strawberries, blueberries, etc. If local fruit - what ever's in season) or a cheese stick.

We did the dessert thing on a nightly basis, before. They more than expected it. As soon as their last bite of dinner slid down their throats it was, "can I have dessert, now?" We started doing dessert every other night. Then I would purposely run out of icecream and they would have watermelon or cantalope, instead. Now they don't ask for it nearly as much. If they had a lot of snacks and dessert in the daytime I would absolutely forbid any dessert that night, unless it was fresh fruit, only.

i do allow my children to eat "junk food" but because i do dessert is iffy. they will ask for it sometimes and the answer is sometimes no or i will give them fruit as their dessert ir they may get ice cream or a popscile. but mine are 4 and 6yo and the 6 year old is not mine but her mother lets her eat whatever and she has more silver in her mouth then some adults that i know but my son has no cavities at all. and i take it upon my self to keep it that way because though he does a good job of brushing i still check and if he has cavities at this age i feel like that is my fault because he is so young. I do wan tmy kids to eat healthy but i have also heard that the high fructose corn syrup is ok as long as it;s in moderation. but i don't give my children dessert every night because i don't want them to expect it. but keep doing what you are doing because that works for YOU! and that's all that matters! good luck

Its nice to hear a parent that teaches healthy eating habits while there habits are still forming. I think as long as the dessert is healthy like a small bowl of berries. It is still healthy your just putting the word dessert in front of it.
Also check out superkidsnutrition.com its an amazing web site geared to healthy snacking for children.

Every day my son (7) has some sort of a sweet--cookies, ice cream, popsicle, whatever. He's a healthy eater and I'm not concerned about it at all.

We do just about everyday, but only after they eat their (usually healthy) dinner. I personally don't feel there is anything to be ashamed about having something sweet to enjoy.

My husband was "deprived" as a child of any sweets or sodas. Now at 37 he drinks lots of soda & I can have a hot plate sitting on the table with pot roast, real potatoes, veggies galore (all his favorite), but instead of sitting down to eat, he is in the pantry eating a bag of cookies like they were the last bag he will ever get. His twin sisters are the same way. Both of my SIL's are larger woman that have major eating issues with sweets. One will stop at several different stores to binge on sweets. One had gastro bypass surgery & the other had lap band surgery. Me on the other hand was never told as a child that I couldn't have sweets and although I like them I can control myself.

Obviously everyone is different but just something to consider that when you tell a child they cannot have something they want it even more & it sometimes can spill over into their adulthood.