Are you in the ‘clear your plate’ generation? As a child, were you told that you’re not allowed pudding until you’ve finished everything on your plate?

And what are the rules around pudding for your children?

For the families I work with, pudding is more often than not a contentious issue – one parent will generally want to offer pudding no matter what and the other is of the opinion that a child shouldn’t get pudding if they haven’t eaten their meal.

My response? Let them eat cake!

More precisely, remember that in the division of responsibilities, your child is responsible for what and how much of the food is on offer that they eat. By pressuring them to eat everything on their plate or to eat all their vegetables to get pudding, we’re not allowing them to take responsibility and we’re inadvertently putting pudding on a pedestal. We’re saying that pudding is the prize at the end of the meal and we have to go through this chore of eating vegetables to win it.

Now, I’m not saying pudding should always be cake and other sweet foods, in our house it’s usually fruit and/or plain yoghurt, but there is nothing wrong with a little bit of something sweet every now and again. Isn’t it lovely to go for coffee and a cake with a friend?

To level the playing field even further, you might even like to consider having small portions of the dessert on the table with the main course. This approach has worked really well for some of my families with the children eating a wider variety of foods.