My kids almost never asked for candy, but then my mom started offering them candy all the time and now they are hooked! And so now they ask for it constantly.

There's absolutely no cost to them for asking, so I figure it makes sense for them to beg and beg all the time. But I can't stand begging, so now I just say they can have candy if they drop to the floor and give me 10 pushups ha. I was surprised though because my son immediately hit the floor and squeezed out 10 pushups like they were nothing'! The pushups were genuine too, not from the knees.

My daughter has low muscle tone and so she can barely do 1-2 pushups even from her knees. But she makes such a huge production out of moving up and down like 4 millimeters, and I do honestly think that she believes she's really doing pushups. So we let her have candy too after her ten "pushups."

So they both get candy now and then as a special treat, and then if they ask for more... they have to drop and give me 10 pushups. I'm not sure this is the world's best system, but it's definitely cut down on the begging! We used to have strict boundaries around this stuff, but my mom kinda blew all that up with her "anything goes" approach to grandparenting.

I am curious what responses you all have to the candy begging, just because I'm pretty sure that coercing pushups is not the world's best parenting solution!