Treats fall into the My Pyramid “discretionary calorie” category—that is, the extra sugars and fats you can get away with. You can use your “allowance” to eat more foods from any recommended food group, eat higher-cal forms of foods (eg sweetened yogurt or sweetened cereal), add butter, salad dressing or sugar to foods, or eat junk food, like candy .

Kids ages 2 to 3 can have about 165 discretionary calories per day, and kids ages 4 to 8 can have about 170. Girls ages 9 to 13 can have 130, and boys the same age can have 195. Those freebies add up quickly: a cup of low-fat chocolate milk is 165 calories, 1 ½ ounces of cheddar cheese are 170, 2 graham crackers are 120, 2 large chocolate chip cookies are 135 and a can of soda is 155 calories.

Keep in mind. When you see lists like the ones above, it’s easy to get hung up on anxiously calculating amounts and counting calories—not a good way to foster a healthy relationship with food. “Watch out for food battles,” cautions Dr Christine Wood, a San Diego pediatrician and author of How to Get Kids to Eat Great and Love It (Kids Eat Great Inc.) “Bribing, nagging and forcing can turn meal time into a battle zone. The kid’s job is to decide how much he is going to eat. The parent’s job is to offer good choices of food.” She also points out that kids go through phases—if your son is growing a lot, he may eat a lot; if your daughter is teething, she may eat less than usual, so don’t get fixated on particular amounts on a daily basis.

Still, portion size is important. Parents are often surprised at how small a portion really is, notes Kristi Ludwig, a registered dietitian at Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston. “The amounts we see in restaurants and in ads make us think that a portion is much bigger than it actually is.” And not surprisingly, if kids (and the rest of us!) are given bigger portions, they eat more, according to a recent study from the Baylor College of Medicine. That overeating contributes to supersized kids.