parenting in the land of dessert

[Karen G]

The thread on bedtime snacks got me thinking. I have one child who
thinks dessert should be served at every meal and should always be ice
cream (although she might try some pumpkin squares or jello on an odd
night). I have been trying to make dessert not unusual, but not
mandatory in our home. We do not serve dessert every night and I try to
make it vaguely nutritional and with some variety.

So this is sort of what I do about this:
Dessert is always served immediately following the meal. In most cases,
the kids are full of other foods and thus eat a reasonably small portion
of dessert.

If we have a sweet meal (pancakes, waffles), we do not have dessert.

>From time to time, I serve pumpkin desserts or breads. We also eat
custards with some frequency. Ice cream is a local favorite and we make
homemade frozen yogurt and sorbets on and off to supplement the standard
white stuff from the store.

What do you all do about dessert--frequency, variety, etc?

Karen G

[just me]

"Karen G" > wrote in message
...
> The thread on bedtime snacks got me thinking. I have one child who
> thinks dessert should be served at every meal and should always be ice
> cream (although she might try some pumpkin squares or jello on an odd
> night). I have been trying to make dessert not unusual, but not
> mandatory in our home. We do not serve dessert every night and I try to
> make it vaguely nutritional and with some variety.
>
> So this is sort of what I do about this:
> Dessert is always served immediately following the meal. In most cases,
> the kids are full of other foods and thus eat a reasonably small portion
> of dessert.
>
> If we have a sweet meal (pancakes, waffles), we do not have dessert.
>
> >From time to time, I serve pumpkin desserts or breads. We also eat
> custards with some frequency. Ice cream is a local favorite and we make
> homemade frozen yogurt and sorbets on and off to supplement the standard
> white stuff from the store.
>
> What do you all do about dessert--frequency, variety, etc?
>


Until DS was four and visited with Grandma and Grandpa he didn't know there
was such a thing as dessert! He caught on too quickly. Ds is now 8. I
rarely serve dessert except on major holidays like his birthday <vbg>,
Thanksgiving, maybe Christmas. But, in an effort to get him to eat
everything on his plate I finally caved and started the rule that he could
have dessert if *all* of his diner was eaten in a reasonable amount of time
with little parental nagging to "take a bite", ifkwim! We have seen meal
time complaints and dawdling decrease to low levels. I am now trying to
figure out how to reduce the frequency of dessert, but am also dealing with
what appears to be a grwoth spurt supported by at least two hollow legs and
at least five hollow arms if one even hints that there might be ice cream or
apple sauce in the offing. Sigh. But he is not overweight and eats healthy
most of the time so I guess I shouldn't feel too bad about the introduction
of dessert [for him alone] into our home.

-Aula

[Rosalie B.]

x-no-archive:yes Karen G > wrote:

>The thread on bedtime snacks got me thinking. I have one child who
>thinks dessert should be served at every meal and should always be ice
>cream (although she might try some pumpkin squares or jello on an odd
>night). I have been trying to make dessert not unusual, but not
>mandatory in our home. We do not serve dessert every night and I try to
>make it vaguely nutritional and with some variety.

While I did not give my kids a bedtime snack, I also did not really
obsess very much about good nutrition. I'm sure that many of you
would think I was very remiss in respect to giving my kids 'proper'
food. Even though I was a SAHM, I did not spend much time on cooking
and often used shortcuts.

Skipping the pre-school years, what we generally had c 1968-1975 was

Breakfast - cereal, juice and milk. DH would have a hard boiled egg,
juice and milk

Packed Lunch (for school) - a sandwich, milk, potato chips or some
extra item and a cupcake or something sweet. DH would pack a salad in
addition to the sandwich and maybe some soup. I never sent the
children with anything like that because I was afraid the containers
wouldn't come back in a timely manner.

Dinner - some kind of meat dish (roast, steak, chops, chicken,
hamburgers, fish or casserole), and at least 2 and sometimes three
vegetables which might include potatoes if there wasn't pasta in the
casserole and also there might be a tossed salad or cole slaw and
milk. I don't really remember whether we had desserts at dinner or
not - probably did sometimes and didn't sometimes. We sometimes ate
at McDs on the way from one activity to another.
>
>So this is sort of what I do about this:
>Dessert is always served immediately following the meal. In most cases,
>the kids are full of other foods and thus eat a reasonably small portion
>of dessert.
>
>If we have a sweet meal (pancakes, waffles), we do not have dessert.
>
>From time to time, I serve pumpkin desserts or breads. We also eat
>custards with some frequency. Ice cream is a local favorite and we make
>homemade frozen yogurt and sorbets on and off to supplement the standard
>white stuff from the store.
>
>What do you all do about dessert--frequency, variety, etc?

We did have ice cream of course, and I would make sherbert from jello
or freeze sour cream with fruit in it. I would make a cake and take
one portion of it and make cupcakes for lunches. I sometimes made
pie, and I bought stuff for dessert.

DD#2's first child just didn't like any sweets at all. He would eat
meat and salty things, but turn up his nose at ice cream. Now that
he's 9, he does eat desserts and ice cream, but isn't that interested
in them.

grandma Rosalie

[David desJardins]

Aula writes:
> But, in an effort to get him to eat everything on his plate I finally
> caved and started the rule that he could have dessert if *all* of his
> diner was eaten in a reasonable amount of time with little parental
> nagging to "take a bite", ifkwim!

Can I ask why you want him to eat everything on his plate? Overeating
is a huge problem in America, and I personally think that a big part of
that is people allowing their food consumption to be dictated by how
much they are served, rather than by how much their body needs. I think
it's great if people learn to stop eating when they have had enough,
rather than being controlled by external forces.

David desJardins

[Banty]

In article >, Karen G says...
>

>
>What do you all do about dessert--frequency, variety, etc?
>
>Karen G
>

Good topic!

Dessert in my house has always been sort of occasional-special. Special
occasions like birthday cakes, occasional like hey look that's a great pie at
the farmstand. It's on-and-off, maybe twice a week with stints of more or less.

Which, IMO, teaches my son to enjoy food, but not live for food. Not to expect
to have foodstuffs around all the time, but not to get into a deprivation or
forbidden fruit attitude either about it.

Banty

[Cheryl]

On Fri, 10 Oct 2003 20:36:36 EDT, Karen G
> wrote:

>What do you all do about dessert--frequency, variety, etc?
>
We don't have dessert. It's just not necessary for us and DH has
never been a fan of it. If the children are still hungry after dinner
they know they are welcome to have yoghurt or fruit. If I'm still
hungry after they go to bed then I'll fix myself something. The
timings for our dinner and bedtime aren't usual though, we have dinner
around 5-5.30pm and the children are in bed by 7pm most nights so
there really isn't time for dessert.


--
Cheryl
Mum to DS#1 (11 Mar 99), DS#2 (4 Oct 00)
and DD (30 Jul 02)

[just me]

"David desJardins" > wrote in message
...
> Can I ask why you want him to eat everything on his plate? Overeating
> is a huge problem in America, and I personally think that a big part of
> that is people allowing their food consumption to be dictated by how
> much they are served, rather than by how much their body needs. I think
> it's great if people learn to stop eating when they have had enough,
> rather than being controlled by external forces.
>

We recognize the over eating problem in the world. We have also recognized
in our Dear Son a preference to eat only certain foods, not necessarily what
is served. This has been reflected in requesting dessert directly after
stating he was "too full" to eat the majority of his main meal. My
consistent response is that if he is too full to eat his main meal he is too
full for dessert or even an evening snack. So, he can have a snack or
dessert only if he eats his main meal and coincidentally is still hungry.
It is amazing how often that he then eats his main meal [and may or may not
request the dessert afterwards]. It is also interesting that there are
times when he looks at me, looks at the plate and says that he is still too
full to eat any more. We have learned what he is usually able to eat and
don't serve more than that. Seconds are available sometimes, depending on
what the cook did. But this business of eating only sweets and avoiding the
main meal is not ok, and that is what we are addressing.

-Aula

[Bruce and Jeanne]

Karen G wrote:

> What do you all do about dessert--frequency, variety, etc?
>

Sometimes I think my parents had it "easy". They would play their
"Chinese" card: "What? dessert? Chinese people don't eat dessert." So
growing up, I very rarely ate dessert after dinner (usually at friends'
houses).

We occasionally have sweet dessert (your pies, ice cream, cookies,
whatever) but usually we end dinner with fruit. Watermelon (or any
melon) was common during the summer. Otherwise, pomogranate (she likes
picking out the seeds), strawberries, bananas, apples, sliced oranges
are all options. We also top cantaloupe chunks or strawberries with
lemon yogurt.

Jeanne

[Colleen Porter]

Karen G > wrote in message >...

> What do you all do about dessert--frequency, variety, etc?

I am a big believer in dessert. I think it is important to an overall
diet, and can prevent snacking later. But that is all with the caveat
of *if* it is a healtful dessert, with a substantial protein and/or
fiber component. Every night for dinner we either have pudding
(homemade from skim milk), fruit pie (I love the prune plums that are
in season right now), cheesecake (generally made from tofu), or
custard.

When I bake a fruit pie, I use my own pie dough, and roll it very
thin, just enough to keep the fruit from sticking to the bottom of the
pan. I sometimes do a double-crust pie, but more often top it with a
low-fat oatmeal crisp.

We also have homemade cookies around most of the time, and they are
baked with less fat (substitute yogurt or applesauce, depending on the
recipe), made of part whole-wheat flour, with less sugar. But I tend
not to use cookies so much for dessert for formal meals--they are for
lunches, and our girls often have cookies for afternoon snack, with
milk.

I don't think eating commercially prepared desserts would have the
same effect on our bodies or waistlines, though.

We generally always have had dessert after dinner most nights, but I
really became fanatical about it about a month ago, when I decided I
really should lose 5 pounds. You can laugh if you want, but I have
always found those last 5 pounds to be the most difficult and stubborn
to let go :(

So the big changes I made were (1) I got religious about dessert every
night for dinner and (2) I stopped using fat-free salad dressings. As
a result, I've lost a pound a week for the last four weeks.

My children think this is a great deal of fun. "How can you lose
weight by eating dessert?" one asked.

It does take some time to bake the pies, etc., but I think it is very
much worth it. If I eat a reasonable dinner, and fruit pie with
low-fat ice cream, then I don't even think about food the rest of the
night. I don't feel full, but I don't feel hungry because the fiber
of the fruit and the protein from the ice cream tend to stabilize my
blood sugar.

Colleen Kay Porter

[H Schinske]

>Karen G wrote:
>
>> What do you all do about dessert--frequency, variety, etc?
>>

We always have fruit after dinner. When there's anything else such as cake or
cookies (once or twice a month), the rule is fruit first.

One way or another they end up with sweet treats at other times of day fairly
frequently, so I don't think we're all that draconian about desserts.

--Helen

[Penny Gaines]

Karen G wrote in >:

> What do you all do about dessert--frequency, variety, etc?

Personally (and I think this is probably a cultural thing) I think that
a meal is not really complete without some kind of dessert. A one
course meal just seems unfinished.

The things we tend to have are yoghurts, cakes, fruit (or other fruit based
pudding), mousse or cookies. We occasionally have rice pudding or fruit
pies.

--
Penny Gaines
UK mum to three

[Robyn Kozierok]

In article >,
just me > wrote:
>
>We recognize the over eating problem in the world. We have also recognized
>in our Dear Son a preference to eat only certain foods, not necessarily what
>is served. This has been reflected in requesting dessert directly after
>stating he was "too full" to eat the majority of his main meal. My
>consistent response is that if he is too full to eat his main meal he is too
>full for dessert or even an evening snack. So, he can have a snack or
>dessert only if he eats his main meal and coincidentally is still hungry.

We have this issue with one of ours as well. Our general approach is,
where practical, to save his dinner for later in the evening when he is
invariably "starving" again. We serve him what we feel is a minimal
reasonable helping of healthful foods (avoiding what we know he truly
dislikes) and expect that he eats that before moving on to "dessert" or
other snacks later in the evening. We don't typically serve dessert,
but he'll ask for cookies or snack crackers or chips, etc. without
having had what we consider a reasonable meal. In case he claims to
hate the dinner, we will usually allow him to have a healthful
alternative.

--Robyn (mommy to Ryan 9/93 and Matthew 6/96 and Evan 3/01)

[Kevin Karplus]

In article >, Penny Gaines wrote:
> Personally (and I think this is probably a cultural thing) I think that
> a meal is not really complete without some kind of dessert. A one
> course meal just seems unfinished.
>
> The things we tend to have are yoghurts, cakes, fruit (or other fruit based
> pudding), mousse or cookies. We occasionally have rice pudding or fruit
> pies.


We have dessert about twice a week---when my wife feels like cooking one.
Sometimes she'll just take some fruit juice and add gelatin to it to
make "jello"---a dessert that my son and I eat, but she does not,
other times she'll bake something fancy. Most often, dessert is some
sort of fruit thing.

Sometimes our whole meal would seem like a dessert to others---crepes
filled with berries or bread pudding are two examples that come to mind.

Sometimes we'll have several courses but no dessert. (Soup, salad,
pasta, bread, ...)

Our son has been known to refuse dessert because he wasn't hungry, as
well as the more common refusal to eat the main course but
miraculously have room for dessert. He evolved the idea of multiple
stomachs like cows: he claims to have a main-course stomach, a
dessert stomach, and a drink stomach (with occassional extra thrown in
as needed), to explain why he has room for dessert but can't eat
another bite of his main course.



--
Kevin Karplus http://www.soe.ucsc.edu/~karplus
life member (LAB, Adventure Cycling, American Youth Hostels)
Effective Cycling Instructor #218-ck (lapsed)
Professor of Computer Engineering, University of California, Santa Cruz
Undergraduate and Graduate Director, Bioinformatics
Affiliations for identification only.

[Hillary Israeli]

In >,
Penny Gaines > wrote:

*Karen G wrote in >:
*
*> What do you all do about dessert--frequency, variety, etc?
*
*Personally (and I think this is probably a cultural thing) I think that
*a meal is not really complete without some kind of dessert. A one
*course meal just seems unfinished.

One course meal? Who said anything about a one course meal?

-hillary, who will often eat some pre-meal nibbles (dried fruit, cheese,
chips and dip, whatever), salad, some soup, an "entree" of some kind...
and not have dessert (although if there is dessert around, I will
definitely indulge!)

--
hillary israeli vmd http://www.hillary.net
"uber vaccae in quattuor partes divisum est."
not-so-newly minted veterinarian-at-large :)

[chiam margalit]

Karen G > wrote in message >...
>
> What do you all do about dessert--frequency, variety, etc?
>
Our family has dessert after dinner once a week, on Friday nights. The
dessert is invariably the same, since we're limited to non-dairy
desserts after a meat meal. I make peach-blueberry crumble. It's
everyone's favorite and they will eat the entire pan in one night, so
no leftovers!

Dessert has always been one of those things that is 'special', like in
a fancy restaurant or at a friend's house for dinner. Although both
my children are excruciatingly thin, I'm not, and I'd rather they eat
things other than sweets to pack on the lbs. Not that I have anything
against sweets, I really don't. I love sweets. I really really really
love sweets. But I think it's just a bad habit to *expect* sweets
after every meal. My kids are both big fruit eaters, and will often
eat fruit after a meal. If there is ice cream in the house (unlikely,
but known to happen occasionally) and we've had a dairy meal, ice
cream is OK. But cakes and cookies? Nope, not right after dinner.

We also have never gotten into the 'midnight snack' habit so many
other familys have. My son is often starving after dinner, so he eats
a second dinner, and sometimes even a third dinner. But we just don't
snack at night as a rule. After school is a good time for snacking and
filling up with junky foods. Plenty of time to burn it all off.

Marjorie

[Scott Lindstrom]

Karen G wrote:

>
> What do you all do about dessert--frequency, variety, etc?

The most common dessert we have is probably a cookie or two.
That's maybe 1 or 2 times a week. DS doesn't like dessert
things (cakes, pies, etc) although DD will scarf those
things right up.

Scott DD 10 and DS 7

[Robyn Kozierok]

In article >,
Colleen Porter > wrote:
>Karen G > wrote in message
>...
>
>> What do you all do about dessert--frequency, variety, etc?
>
>I am a big believer in dessert. I think it is important to an overall
>diet, and can prevent snacking later. But that is all with the caveat
>of *if* it is a healtful dessert, with a substantial protein and/or
>fiber component.

Thanks for this post, Colleen! It is a very interesting perspective on
dessert and my mind keeps coming back to it. :) We are not in the habit
of having dessert, but your post has raised some interesting points.

--Robyn

[Penny Gaines]

Kevin Karplus wrote in >:

> Our son has been known to refuse dessert because he wasn't hungry, as
> well as the more common refusal to eat the main course but
> miraculously have room for dessert. He evolved the idea of multiple
> stomachs like cows: he claims to have a main-course stomach, a
> dessert stomach, and a drink stomach (with occassional extra thrown in
> as needed), to explain why he has room for dessert but can't eat
> another bite of his main course.

Actually, I have a lot of sympathy with your son. I often find that
I have had enough of the main course, but can fit in some pudding.

--
Penny Gaines
UK mum to three