When Good Things Become Idols: Teaching Kids Moderation Without Shame

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Hello, friends. Today's podcast question says:

"I have three girls ages 10, eight, and two, and I noticed that they always want sugar or candy. I want to allow them to have it, but I don't want them to overconsume it or to regret me if I don't want them to have any at all. Do you have any advice for moderation and boundaries? Thanks."

This is a question I'm sure many parents have thought through and are wrestling with. Just upfront, I am not a licensed nutritionist, so I'm not going to be giving dietary advice for your children. However, what I am going to do in this podcast is help us think through how to guide our children biblically anytime we see an area in life where good things are getting out of control and becoming an idol.

So that's the question we're going to dive deep into today on the Foundation Worldview Podcast, where we seek to answer your questions so that you can equip the children God has placed in your care to carefully evaluate every idea they encounter and understand the truth of the biblical worldview.

I'm your host, Elizabeth Urbanowicz, and I'm thrilled that you've joined me for this episode today.

Four Steps for Keeping Good Gifts in Their Proper Place

As we think through this question—how do we guide our children biblically anytime we see an area in life where a good thing is getting out of control or becoming an idol?—I think there are four steps we can walk through with our kids:

1. Recognize God as the giver of every good gift
2. Thank God for this good gift
3. Set boundaries that keep this gift in its proper place
4. Reevaluate and make changes as needed

What I'm going to do is walk us through this process twice. First, I'll walk us through it with the question about kids wanting sugary treats. Then I'll walk us through it again with another example.

Applying the Four Steps to Sugar and Sweets

Step 1: Recognize God as the Giver of Every Good Gift

James 1:17 says:

"Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change."

In this situation where children are wanting sugary treats all the time, the first thing we need to do is talk about God's goodness whenever we make a sweet treat, purchase candy, or have something sugary.

We can say, "Isn't it so kind of God to give us taste buds that can taste sweetness?" Have you ever thought about that before? God didn't need to create us with taste buds that could taste sweetness, but he did. That is an incredible gift.

Or we can say something like, "How incredible is it that God has provided us with sweet treats?" Have you ever thought about that before? God literally could have just made one type of substance for nourishment. He could have just created one thing and we ate the same thing every day. It could have tasted the same—or maybe God could have created this so that we didn't have taste buds at all—but he didn't.

Instead, God created all of these different flavors and aromas and textures to be included in our food. So anytime you have a sweet treat with your kids, talk about how incredible it is that God has given us taste buds to taste sweetness and how amazing it is that he provided us with these sweet treats.

Step 2: Thank God for This Gift

Before partaking in a treat or candy, thank God for it. Now you don't have to stop for a full blessing of a meal, but just a heartfelt prayer of gratitude.

For example: "Okay, we just stopped at the donut shop. We're going to eat our donuts. Who wants to stop and thank God right now for our donuts?"

And just offer up a quick prayer of thanksgiving: "Thank you, God, so much for this sweet treat. Thank you for giving us taste buds to taste the sweetness of this donut. Thank you for providing us with the finances to buy it. We are so grateful for it."

Make this a habit—anytime you're partaking in a treat, offer a prayer of gratitude.

I think I've shared before on the podcast that because I'm single and I work for myself from home, I eat the vast majority of meals on my own. So I'm not sitting down at the table with others and offering a blessing for the meal. Frequently what I do is, as I'm looking at my plate or my bowl or whatever, I'll pray with my eyes open while I'm looking at what I'm about to eat.

I'll pray something like: "God, thank you so much. Thank you for providing these grains of rice. Thank you for giving people the skill to grow it and to harvest it. Thank you for providing me with the finances to purchase it and the skill to be able to cook it. Thank you so much for the texture of this or the flavor of this."

It's so important that we're actually grateful for what God has given us.

Step 3: Set Boundaries That Keep This Gift in Its Proper Place

First Corinthians 6:12 says:

"All things are lawful for me, but not all things are helpful. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be dominated by anything."

In Christ, we have great freedom, but we want to make sure that we are choosing things that are helpful for us—things that are not dominating us, not enslaving us, not turning into an idol.

You're going to want to discuss why you're choosing certain boundaries. For the person who wrote in this question, you may decide that your kids are allowed to have one sweet treat each day of the weekend—Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Or you might decide that they're allowed to have one sweet treat every day. Or it might be one sweet treat once a week.

Whatever boundaries you place around sugar in their diet, talk about why you're placing that boundary: "We're just going to have one sweet treat Friday, one sweet treat Saturday, and one sweet treat Sunday. And the reason we're doing this is we want to remember that these treats are a gift from God. We want to make sure that these treats are not becoming an idol—that our bodies don't need this sugar in order for us to be happy."

You can also talk about what can happen if you consume too much sugar. Talk about how it's such a gift that God has given us these sweet treats, but if we consume too much sugar, that causes our body to create excess fat. And that's not healthy—to have excess fat around our heart or in different places around our body. We can also talk about blood sugar: if we eat something really sugary, there's so much sugar in our blood and then it suddenly drops, and that's not really healthy for our system.

So just set healthy boundaries to keep this gift in its proper place and explain to your kids why you're doing that.

Step 4: Reevaluate and Make Changes as Needed

If you see that sugar is negatively impacting your kids' behavior after they have it, or it's negatively impacting their interactions with others, reevaluate.

I know that for myself, when I was teaching at a private Christian school just outside of Chicago, one day a week this fast food chain Culver's would bring in cheeseburgers and custard. Parents could pay for their kids to get Culver's every Thursday—a cheeseburger and custard.

My approach with the kids was this: "Your parents have purchased this for you. This is a good gift from God. But if after you eat that custard, you come into class and you cannot control your body—you cannot sit still when I need you to sit still, or you cannot concentrate on reading when you're supposed to be reading, or you're suddenly disrupting the class—if that happens, your custard is going to have to remain in the freezer until it's time to go home."

Anytime I had a kid who would misbehave because of the sugar in their body, I'd say, "I'm sorry, but for the rest of the semester, your custard's going to need to stay in the freezer."

So reevaluate what's happening. If you need to make dietary changes, make dietary changes as you see necessary. If sugar really impacts your kids in a negative way, say, "Okay, you know what? After you have sugary treats, you're too silly and you're not obedient. So we're going to have to cut back on this. Maybe it's just one sweet treat one night before you have your family movie night or before you have a family game night, or maybe it's just once a month—whatever restrictions are needed to keep this in a healthy place."

Keep coming back to this, because the limits are going to change in different seasons. Obviously when your kids are in high school, you're not going to be able to have the same restrictions on their diet that you had when they were in the early years or in elementary school. So keep coming back, just helping your kids figure out what healthy limits look like.

Applying the Four Steps to Media and Entertainment

Now I'm going to walk us through those four steps again, but with another example: media and our kids engaging in shows or movies. How can we make sure that our children are engaging in media in a way that keeps that good gift of entertainment in its proper place?

Step 1: Recognize God as the Giver of Every Good Gift

Recognize that it's God who's given directors creative vision. It's God who's given set designers and graphic artists the skills to create amazing backgrounds and special effects. It's God who's given actors the ability to act.

When you're watching a show or a movie, just talk about these elements: "Wow, weren't those amazing computer-generated images? Isn't it so incredible that God has given some people the skill to design those kinds of computer-generated images?" Then you can talk about the actors and the great job that they did.

Recognize God as the giver of every good gift—he's the one who's given these people the talent to create this show or movie.

Step 2: Thank God for This Gift

Thank him for giving us shows and movies as a form of entertainment. Thank him for placing us in a time and a culture where we actually can watch a movie or a show.

I recommend before or after watching a show or movie, just spend time thanking God: "Thank you, God, that we have this time for a family movie," or "Thank you, God, that we get to watch a show."

Step 3: Set Boundaries That Keep This Gift in Its Proper Place

How can you as a family choose to engage in media without becoming addicted? Entertainment is a good gift from God, but spending a large portion of our lives on entertainment—that's turning entertainment into an idol and wasting time that God has given us, time that we can never get back.

Talk with your spouse: What does this look like? Maybe it means your kids can engage in 30 minutes of media a day. Maybe it means there's no media throughout the work week, but you can engage with one family movie per week.

What does it look like to set boundaries that keep this gift in its proper place so that engagement with entertainment is actually a good and helpful thing? Something that's not causing you to waste your time or causing isolation.

I highly recommend that you do not allow your children to engage in entertainment on tablets on their own. Engaging in entertainment—especially in the younger years, the elementary years, the middle school years—should always be done as a family.

Step 4: Reevaluate and Make Changes as Needed

Circle back and think through: Do we need to make some changes to what we set as our boundaries?

I know this is something I have to do in my own life. Again, I'm single. I work for myself from home. So sometimes after a long day of work, I just want to sit on the couch and watch a show.

But there was a season in which I was realizing, "You know what? My one show in the evening has quickly turned into two shows. Should I really be engaging with media for an entire hour every day?" Because over an entire week, that's seven hours. Over an entire month, that's 30 hours—which is more than an entire day of my life.

I had to step back and say, "You know what? Relaxing with a show that's wholesome can be a good thing, but it's taking too important of a place in my life." So I've had to set different boundaries.

You might find that you need to fast from media altogether just to break the habit so that you can cut back in a healthy way. And again, this is going to be a continual conversation as your kids grow, because the media restrictions you place on your kids when they're three are going to be different than the restrictions you place around them when they're 12 or 16.

Summary: Four Steps for Any Good Gift

So again, as I've recommended throughout this podcast, here are four steps for anytime we see our kids maybe engaging in something and see it turning into an idol—when we want to keep it in its proper place:

1. Recognize God as the giver of every good gift
2. Thank God for this gift
3. Set boundaries that keep this gift in its proper place
4. Reevaluate and make changes as needed

Continue Your Journey with Foundation Worldview

If you found this content helpful, I'd love for you to join our Foundation Worldview community so you don't miss out on future resources like this. When you sign up for our email list, you'll receive practical, biblically-grounded guidance for the everyday parenting challenges you're facing—from managing screen time to navigating tough conversations about faith and culture. Join our community today and get equipped to raise kids who understand and live out a biblical worldview.

As we leave our time together, my prayer for you is the same as always: that no matter the situation in which you and the children God has placed in your care find yourselves, you would trust that God is working all things together for your good by using all things to conform you more into the image of his Son.

I'll see you next time.