YTA. Cake is a staple for a birthday. You choosing to give her a diet option, when ll other kids her age get cake on their birthdays tells her there’s something wrong with her. She’s five years old! This is where she is starting to develop a relationship with food and her body. She needs to see food as something to nourish your body and not something that’s bad. Limiting what she eats like this can lead to eating disorders in the future.

I know that because I was this kid. We only drank diet soda and that stupid light ice tea which gave me migraines and we later found out the fake sugar in it was recalled because it was really bad for you. I knew about calories and my mom would count calories on everything. Do you know what happened? I started binging and hiding food in my room, became morbidity obese by the time I was 15. I hated my body. Couldn’t go outside. I never went to the beach or pool parties with my friend. Starting at the age of 4 (when I was at a normal healthy weight) I remember being self conscious in bathing suit and it only got worse. I only wore baggy clothes. And by 16 I decided to start being like my mom. Started dieting obsessively and lost over 100 pounds and not in a healthy way. When I got to a healthy weight I realized I wasn’t losing weight any more and started starving myself. I went days without eating and then several weeks at a time without eating more than a yogurt or a single protein bar a day. I ended up underweight and kicked off my graduation trip because I was a liability. It was horrible.

To this day I still don’t have a normal relationship with food. I can’t remember a time where I wasn’t either morbidly obese or too thin to fit into a size 0. No in between because of parents like you. Teach her to recognize her hunger cues and just cook healthy meals and have healthy options in the house. Don’t police food like that and don’t make her feel singled out because of her weight. Also don’t think your boys are immune from EDs just because they’re boys. They might have similar issues one day too if you continue to treat them like that. Have healthy meals at home, have healthy snacks around. Tell them they can have the desert after the healthy thing. Chances are the healthy thing will fill them up and they won’t want it. Restricting like this just causes issues.