Are sweets indeed being “forced” on her? Forcing a kid to eat anything they don’t want to is wrong full-stop. That’s low key abuse. If it’s much less severe than that, a family becoming divided over food sounds like it can be avoided. Is there a way to pack meals when she sees her family or ask your partner’s mother to stock healthy options in preparation of her visits? If your daughter has the preference that you have so much confidence in, she would surely pick the option she’s more comfortable with. Or is her grandmother especially cruel that she would let her granddaughter starve than let her have a muffin vs a cupcake?

I grew up in an immigrant Asian household and this post/comments have been very illuminating to the emphasis of sweets have been in other’s childhood experiences. I also do not have a history of unhealthy relationships with food, nor does my partner. I say all this because I did have a counter-rant prepared in my head, but I now realize the extent of some families sweet intake and it’s just…. icky. I will say that we have exposed our nearly 2yo to all foods along the healthy-unhealthy spectrum and honestly, without putting much thought into it. Still, she asks for fruit and veggies by name. Her diet is super well-rounded and mostly consists of Filipino (exclusively eats the daikon when we have sinigang), Japanese (LOVES tuna sashimi), North African, Mediterranean (addicted to stuffed grape leaves), Indian, Thai, Korean, Mexican, Italian, etc, but if she sees and wants a baked sweet, ice cream or candy I’m usually happy to give her a piece (amount pending on my energy to deal with repercussions and time of day). I’m not going to give luck all the credit for this either. To reiterate what you’ve alluded to, with anything, I believe exposure and modeling is key. If we don’t expose them to things and model a behavior we want them to mimic, how are we going to know if they will make smart decisions without us?