Question for children owners
My GF has two lovely kids who get ever so spoilt with sweets. Well in my opinion anyway. There is always a ready supply of crisps and sweets in the house and they seem to get them whenever they want.I've always maintained that sweets and such like can be the cause of bad behaviour due to all the rubbish in them, but she says the bad behaviour when they do not receive them is far worse. Now I don't spend enough time with them to conduct sufficient experiments to conclude that sweets are indeed a cause of bad behaviour. What are your thoughts on the matter? Are they good or bad?
(The Archduke of South London I'm in your Girlfriend eating her organs, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 11:10, 20 replies, latest was 16 years ago)

My thoughts are that
Stuff like sweets and crisps are treats.
If they can have 'em whenever they want, there's no bribery tool.

Kids are simple minded creatures, like monkeys.
Get a monkey to do something good, reward it, and it'll be happy to do the good thing again.

Give the monkey rewards all the time, it'll expect them, and want even more, bigger rewards if it does a good thing.
( Cawl, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 11:14, Reply)

Your girlfriend is only making more work for herself in the future.
Not to mention dentists trips.
( girlinthehole, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 11:18, Reply)

My thoughts exactly
I think sweets and crisps should be banned from the house. The thing is they really like fruit so if she didn't have sweets they'd just as well eat bananas and peaches so I really don't get it.

As an aside the 8yr old walked into the bedroom when mom was changing and laughed..."You don't have a dinky winky mummy. You just have a black hole where your winky was and it's been sucked in". He ran out the room screaming "Mummy doesn't have a dinky winky, Mummy doesn't have a dinky winky!!" before she could answer.
(The Archduke of South London I'm in your Girlfriend eating her organs, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 11:23, Reply)

Kaol's got the hammer-nail interface.
A bad analogy here, but it's like dogs. If you treat a dog for no reason, you're more likely to get bad behaviour. But if you reward it for good behaviour, you instil that behaviour.

From my experience, kids work in a similar way. I wouldn't put the bad behaviour solely down to free access to treats, but rewarding good behaviour with sweets, crisps etc, and withholding them when they're naughty, is really the best way.

That was a bit of a babble, so hope it makes sense :)
( Noeli overtheshoulderboulderholderthingstraplatchboobs, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 11:43, Reply)

Thing with dogs
Is that I don't feel bad about beating them.

Monkeys... I'd think twice, as they can climb up you and bite you in the face.

As can children.

But yeah, you're right Mr. 31.
( Cawl, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 11:47, Reply)

children
should be banned.
(Halfy By light alone, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 11:49, Reply)

Are you doing that deliberately, Mr K?
:)
( Noeli overtheshoulderboulderholderthingstraplatchboobs, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 11:55, Reply)

Of course I am :p
*grins*
( Cawl, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 11:59, Reply)

Input from a dad
When I left Nurse Ratched I left behind a house full of junk food. Being on my own I bought a little of it, but not much- I couldn't afford it.

When I got settled into an apartmentI thought about it. My mom always said that the reason we never had junk food such as crisps in our house is that if it was there we'd eat it- and as she was always dieting, that was a problem for her. But for me it opened up a new thought: if it isn't there, then I can teach the kids to appreciate healthier foods. And so it was, and so it is now.

As for the way your girlfriend is using the junk food to stave off bad behavior- horseshit. If she can't control her children without bribery, she's not doing her job as a parent. I have NEVER resorted to bribery- if they misbehaved they were punished, if they behaved then all was happy and placid. What she's doing is rewarding bad behavior- if they don't get their junk food they give her shit until she gives it to them. VERY bad message to send to them- that they just need to be awful to get what they want. She needs to grow a firmer spine and lay down the law.

Good luck. And if she refuses to stop feeding them junk food... well, I suppose you'll have a decision to make.
( The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Mon 13 Oct 2008, 12:17, Reply)

the behavioural conditioning stuff is true
but I strongly suspect that there is a strong link between crap that is in food and behaviour

example: I quit smoking and would get twichy at work and unable to concentrate. I associated this with needing a smoke.

I gradually discovered that it didn't happen unless I ate crisps. Crisps that have MSG in them. Eating crisps that don't have MSG in them doesn't have the same effect, therefore that was the cause of my twitchiness.

Cutting that out has made things much better. I also discovered that eating an orange counters the effects.

Imagine this twitchy inability to concentrate in a small child.
( Vipros. clever got me this far, then tricky got me in, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 12:22, Reply)

sweets
bad for your teeth and confuse your body nutritionally , so not an ideal reward/treat , at the other end of things electric shock therapy has legal implications and a degree of social stigma attached , I try to make mine laugh as often as possible , even resorting to an ungainly chicken dancing in public spaces .
( horace wimp needs more than 49 characters to fully express hi, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 12:29, Reply)

Please people,
Think of the monkeys.
( Cawl, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 12:54, Reply)

I once saw a very interesting experiment,
a group of children were invited to a playgroup for a party on two different days.
One party had all healthy food and one sugary crap. This was all the parents knew and they were asked to guess which party it was based on the behaviour when the children were picked up.
What they didn't know what that the activities were going to be different.
At the sugary party the activities were all very sedate, at the healthy party all very lively.
All the parents guessed incorrectly which was which based on behaviour.


As an aside my folks had a similar attitude to sweets until I was about 6 when my mother suddenly stopped smoking and turned to very healthy eating. As a result I wasn't allowed to have any crisps, cakes, biscuits, sweets or chocolate. This resulted in me craving this kind of crap and as soon as I was old enough buying it and hiding it in my room. When I left home and went to Uni I could eat what ever I wanted and got fat.
Although I am reasonably careful about what I eat I still have a thing of hiding food.
Mr Bin however grew up in a house where chocolate and biscuits were always freely available. He likes the occasional chocolate bar but he doesn't have the issues that I do.
( Mrs Entity is in hiding., Mon 13 Oct 2008, 12:57, Reply)

Mrs Livesinacreakyoldhouse
I remember that experiment, it was more intricate than that, I was pretty surprised myself to see that the sugared up kids were behaving so normally.
( Bert Monkeysex is waiting for the mods to delete him, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 13:00, Reply)

I don't necessarily think that it's the sugar that makes them crazy
it's the other shit they put in there.

caffeine and msg etc. are worse for you than most people would think.

about the only things that I will abstain from :-)
( Vipros. clever got me this far, then tricky got me in, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 13:02, Reply)

I saw that too Mrs L
The results went against expectation. Wasn't one of the Supernanny brigade involved?

Edit: there is a fair amount of research (and personal experience) that states these kind of foods can create addictive behaviour. Processed fats, refined sugars and the like release reward chemicals that make us feel good, and repeated use reinforces the pathways which lead to the release of these chemicals. Which is why I feel physically drawn to the crisp aisle in Waitrose.
( Noeli overtheshoulderboulderholderthingstraplatchboobs, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 13:03, Reply)

I was brought up by
hippies who had their own healthfood business. I still behaved badly.

Although I dread to think how much worse I might have been on a different diet...

Mrs L, I went through that too, in my teens I rebelled and wanted nothing but chips and chocolate.

Funnily enough now though, I've turned into my mum... I find myself in the kitchen listening to Bob Marley while cooking all the same good healthy stuff she used to make.
( warmfuzzies Isn't here, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 17:45, Reply)

@Mrs L
I was thinking that when I read the original post but you beat me to it.

food as a reward is a bad idea. a bad, bad idea.
(happylittletulip helpless and delicious, Mon 13 Oct 2008, 19:50, Reply)

I agree with those above that she is teaching the kids to use bad behavior to get a reward.
I don't think it is about the sweets at all, it is about simple behavioral training. She is teaching them that if they misbehave long enough, she will give in, whether it is with junk food or letting them do whatever they want. To break the pattern, she will have to chose to refuse to give in. It is hard to hold your ground to change behavior in kids and the frequency of the misbehavior will increase for a while until they finally realize that they can't win.

I think using food as a reward or punishment is setting a kid up for problems later in life. She needs to find a more neutral object or an activity or desirable behavior as a reward. Something along the lines of, they behave and they get to go to the park to play (exercise). Another simple example is that I used getting to wash their hands with their favorite soap as a reward when potty-training.

As for the sweets and crisps, I grew up in a family that believed having a house cram-packed full of all kinds of food, especially junk food, was a sign of prosperity. You couldn't go visit my relatives without constantly being asked if you were hungry. (My house was the only one in the family to only have 1 fridge and no extra pantries.) As kids, my generation had free access to eat whatever we wanted, yet more often that not, the junk food would spoil before it ever got eaten. These days, I have all kinds of junk food in my house and my kids would rather have yougurt or string cheese or cereal for a snack. Like my aunts and uncles before me, I throw away more stale junk food than we eat. The junk food in our house isn't contingent on behavior.
( flirting with badgers What? It sounded good at the time., Mon 13 Oct 2008, 23:26, Reply)

Thanks for all the replies
We have the weekend "off" as the kids are with their dad. Perhaps we'll go to the zoo and study the monkeys.
(The Archduke of South London I'm in your Girlfriend eating her organs, Tue 14 Oct 2008, 10:21, Reply)