Hi Belinda, hope its going well. We have a 14 mnth old, 6 year old and 8 year old. Our baby is fairly easy to keep sugar free as she never really had it to start with (gosh how much fructose did I feed my poor first two kids- apple puree, custards etc ick!). The 6 year old and 8 year old have adapted remarkably well now (for over a year)- I went straight to glucose/dextrose for them- getting rid of juice from their breakfast routine took about 2 weeks before they just asked for water! (amazing). Getting them back to plain cereal without goodies was tricky, but I went back to good old porridge with glucose syrup instead of honey. Now they eat plain (weetbix, puffed wheat etc) with Rice Malt syrup and they love it just as much as the old days. I found offering hot chips and other 'hot treats' like sausage rolls and Wendys hotdogs instead of icecream worked well while out shopping... they still try to eat too much fruit (e.g. they still want to eat 3 apples a day) and its hard to limit them after fruit has been drilled into us all for so long as such a good thing. On the whole I've probably got rid of 70-80% of the sugar from their diets without being too much of a sugar 'meanie'. They rarely get through a lollybag from a party these days... i just throw out the rest when they're not looking and they don't even notice! They have become very sugar aware themselves, which is interesting! Goodluck, and its as David says, the kids adapt remarkably well (thank goodness for all the recipes!).
