What’s your attitude toward food for your toddlers?

My wife grew up in a household, where food was simply there, like they can take or leave dessert, they don’t really like to snack throughout the day. She’s never said anything like oh I can’t eat that because I don’t wanna get fat. She’s never ate something and then regretted it.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately. I grow up in a household where we treated food as a reward. Withholding dessert when we were “ bad “ was also a way my parents used to control our behavior. I find myself when I lose patience saying things like “if you don’t do x, you can’t have dessert tonight.” And I don’t like being like that. I’m not actually sure there’s anything wrong with it but then I’ve seen that it is affecting their thinking around food when they randomly saying things like “ if we’re bad we’re not gonna get dessert” and I’m like that’s not true. And then all the time I’ll eat like too much dessert or two desserts then be like oh shit shouldn’t have done that. So I also get feelings of food shame, not bad, but happens, and prefer my kids not to have that if possible.

I feel like as they get older the challenges change. Like our first was a good eater now they seem pretty picky and they’re kind of graze at dinner and then complain about being hungry after bath. Which sometimes is definitely like a stall before bed tactic, but then also isn’t because they’ll wake up and be like I’m hungry. So now we just sort of oblige. My current approaches to say “go to bed. I’ll check on you in 10 minutes and if you’re still hungry, I’ll get you something to eat”

Anyway, getting a little long here, but spent a week with my extended family on vacation and and clear we all have different coping mechanisms, and I’m watching in real time as I and my siblings do and say things to our kids that conveys values around food. Like my one sibling their older kid was upset because the younger one got a second ice cream so then he was like I’ll take you out just you and me for ice cream tomorrow. But for me, I’d just be like sorry little dude I know it’s rough when things don’t feel fair.

TL;DR don’t know if I can’t not pass down my baggage with food to my kids but would like to know how or even if you all think about that stuff