I used to give my kids whatever they wanted, especially my daughter as she was a very fussy eater, At 15/16 months old she was having that sunshine banana breakfast where you mix with milk, for lunch i was lucky to get 2 bites of bread and butter into her so it was usually a bag of snacks, and for dinner she would have a jar of baby food. Not much i know so i used to give her chocolate and sweets on a daily basic just to get something into her. Over night she just totally changed and started eating everything she could get her hands on.
Anyway to make a long story short ( i have a habit of rambling on ) my son at 6 years old got his first filling i was mortified, even though my kids brush their teeth twice a day i was obviously giving them too many sweets, crisps, fizzy drink ect, dentist not impressed when i told him how many sweets they had each week. If they asked for something i would give it to them as a sort of reward for eating their meals, "finish all your dinner and you can have afters" and on many occassion in the car stopping at a garage ( like someone has already mentioned ) saying i would get them, sweets, crisps, drink just to get them to shut up and stop arguing for 5 mins.
The shame and embarrassment i felt from knowing my son had a great big black horrible looking filling in his mouth was enough for me too change the way i approached the "treats".
Now treats are fruit, cheese strings, yogurts ect ect It took a few looks of "what do you mean i cant have that chocolate bar" and a few heated words at the check out when for the 100th time i said no but it finally sunk in.
Now i walk into a shop and my kids will ask if they can have grapes, oranges, watermelons, my daughter actually asked me for a bag of mushrooms once lol They still chance their arm every now and again, and once a week they are allowed to go to the shop and get 1 thing of what ever they want ( apart from those stupid push-pop things and all the other 20 different products which are all the same, which i didn't allow them to have in the first place, €1.50 for a bit of sugar and dye.....go get a bag of buttons)
The only exceptions are at parties, i cant stop them having a party bag when every other kid has one, at christmas and when we are on our summer holidays.
See i told you i rambled on, so much for a short post......
Last thing... (promise) my son still has that 1 filling in his mouth a reminder to me i think, thats why it's waiting so long before it falls out, ( 9 years old and has only lost 5 teeth!!! ) but it's still the only one that he has.