Eating habbits...

[JakeW]

So how strict or lenient are you when it comes to food on the table for your child? Are you of the old fashioned way where they must eat everything on their plate, or else no dessert or whatever reward is waiting for them? Or do you take the route that so as long as they're taking in their calories for the right foods, you let it slide?

I wanted to share my personal opinion on eating habits and the experience I went through. I never liked certain foods. Peas, Brussel sprouts, and alfalfa were probably the three worst foods I have tasted and still do. I was never force-fed, but many close friends I had contact with were. And it always tended to backfire.

My method is: Try it, but actually try it, if you don't like it, it's okay. You do not have to eat it. When my son gets older he will understand it more. That's just me as a father. I'm not going to force them to eat something they don't like because it's just not sensible. You can reset your taste-buds all you want but certain foods just won't mesh with your body. Everyone's taste buds are different. What might taste sweet to you, might taste bitter to them.

My little boy Connor who is 2 and a half hates mashed potatoes, even with gravy. He will gag at the sight of it, or play with it, so I don't worry he doesn't like it because there are other healthy foods that have protein, iron and vitamin C. And I don't mean that sugared junk pediasure. My son loves beets, apples, oranges, and fish, or other sea foods.

That's how I do it. If he doesn't like something, I'll approve it but I'll try to find the right food substitute that has the vitamins or minerals he needs.

So what is your method, I'm curious? Do you have a picky eater?

 

[cybele]

I don't ever serve up a 'plate' of food, never have, never will. I put all the dishes out on the table and everyone is free to take as much or as little as they like. Only want one potato? Cool. Want three? That's cool too. Don't feel like some of the rice today? That's okay. Want to put your salad inside your bread roll instead of eating it on the side? Wonderful, enjoy that.

We do have rules, most of them basic ones,

- As you choose your portions, you need to eat everything on your plate, I'm not interested in this eyes bigger than stomach nonsense, because I despise food wastage. If you are not sure, you take a small amount then have seconds if you feel like it.

- Everyone eats at the table.

- No complaining if there is something there you don't like. We usually have an array of things on the table (8 people in one house tends to do that) for example, tonight we had a bowl of tortellini, a bowl of salad, some garlic beans, a block of feta and some leftover quiche from last night. If you don't like, for example, garlic beans, then don't take them and no one is going to make you take them, but I don't want to hear about how disgusting they are, because that is just rude.

Dessert isn't an everyday occurrence in our household, so it rarely comes up.


As for fussy eaters, I had a lot of problems with Azriel when he was little. He had issues with textures, smells, feels, anything with a strong taste. There was about a year there where anything bar water crackers, celery sticks, bread sticks with hommus and dried apricots was a struggle. (I always called it my 'bad karma' for how much of a complete asshole I was to the other women in mother's group with Dita, I acted like such a superior cow because Dita was the world's easiest eater and treated the other women like imbeciles when they said they were having minor eating problems with their kids.)

Anyway, it ended up with us seeing a behavioural dietician and putting him on a food desensitisation program. It took several years, but his eating eventually got to a point where he was eating proper meals (and was no longer deficient in just about every vitamin). He still isn't the world's best eater, he is a very bland eater, for example, tonight he only ate the tortellini and the salad. He has a few other 'food quirks' that are not typical of a 16yr old boy, like he will only eat vanilla ice cream, he won't touch a milkshake if his life depended on it, he doesn't like most pastries, he will only eat plain chocolate, so no chocolate bars as they all have some type of filling, no sauces that aren't tomato based, most veggies he doesn't like cooked, but will eat raw, if we order pizza he will only eat margherita. But in the end, what he does eat is good, it's not like he is living off junk food (if anything, most of his food aversions are junk food) and he is healthy, and that is what matters.

 

[pancras]

I learned an approach from a friend that has been 100% effective with the 2 kids he raised and with both of mine so far.

The idea is to provide motivation with directed parental attention. My wife and I give lots of positive attention to healthy eating during meals. We give attention to each other's healthy eating and that of our kids. If a kid does not eat something we just ignore the behavior, act completely uninterested. We don't make a fuss or try to get them to eat. We do try to make sure the food is generally tasty and well prepared.

We let them choose and provide the reward of positive attention for healty choices. We don't try to talk them into eating anything, or force them. That would be giving the reward of attention to unwanted behavior and we find that that is quite likely to backfire.

We typically don't serve the kids plates. With toddlers who cannot serve themselves we just give them a small amount of a new food on the plate. I read that too big a serving can lead to more resistance.

Anyway, this have proven to be 100% effective at preventing finicky eating, but my sample size is too small to really prove anything, I guess.

If someone wants to try it, I would like to see if it works for others.

 

[yunihara]

We do a similar thing. We have a lot on the table, although it does stem from cultural habit, but there's a lot to choose from and we don't mind what they take as long as they're getting a balanced meal. We're organic, vegetarian and always have been, so healthy foods have never been an issue. We do make choices for our two year old, as he would get overwhelmed selecting his own things from the table, but we offer a little bit of something new along with things that he likes. Luckily for us, none of the children had ever been particularly picky. We never give rewards or dessert for eating. I think that puts all too big an emphasis on sweets, and I would like my children to eat because its family-time and its necessary. Actually, I think dessert only happens at our house when there's a birthday lol.

Agree with eating only at the table and not complaining about something that is served. I also think its important to not force anything when it comes to food, I think that just leads to more resistance.

 

[akmom]

Our dinners are fairly simple. It's always a protein, a vegetable, and a carb. Sometimes they're combined, like pot pie, which is all three. But it usually ends up being three separate foods, because it's easier to meal plan that way.

For the kids, I actually put their meal on a kid plate which is divided into three sections. I give them small portions of everything, and they're free to eat it or leave it. But, they cannot have seconds of anything unless they eat everything on the plate. Otherwise they would just fill up on carbs and skip the vegetables.

If it's a new food, yes they must actually try it. That doesn't mean making yucky faces at it, or just licking it, or taking a bite so small that there is no way they could taste it. If they're being resistant, sometimes I have to spoonfeed them the proper size bite. But most of the time, it's not a new food, and they can eat it or leave it. There's only so many foods we typically eat; it's not like we are sampling new things all the time. So it's pretty rare that they haven't actually tasted it before. And generally I only cook those things I know they like.

But if they don't want to eat for whatever reason, I don't force them. I figured out a long time ago that kids truly won't starve themselves to death. A hungry kid will eat if there's food in front of him. If they're continuously not eating, we limit fluids other than water. Some kids like to fill up on fluids and then get hungry an hour later, which is annoying.

 

[mom2many]

I just put the food out there, if they eat they eat, if they don't they don't.

There are things I know that they do not like, and on those nights they are free to have a bowl of cereal or a pb and j, but mine will eat anything for the most part. The youngest eats like a bird, but she isn't picky.

 

[pancras]

The discussion about rules got me to thinking about how we handle rules.

Strategy #1:

1. Tell the kids the rule.
2. Attempt to enforce the rule by punishment, yelling, or other coercive methods. Or perhaps bribes.

Strategy #2:

1. Don't tell the kid the rule.
2. Take steps to encourage the kid to follow the rule. Take steps to discourage the kids from breaking the rule.

We have a "rule" of sorts about complaining. But we don't inform the kids that we have such a rule. We don't attempt to enforce the rule if it is broken. Instead, we tend to be unresponsive to complaints. Complaints appear to fall on deaf ears. Complaints are certainly not conversation starters, much less debate starters. They tend to get no attention whatsoever from us parents. The fact that we have not informed the kids of the rule means that we don't have any credibility on the line when we merely ignore complaining. The kids can't get our goat by complaining, they can't get attention by complaining, they can't use complaining to game us, they can't use complaining to get us diverted away from effective parenting and into an argument.

We don't react to complaints, and they don't happen very often, but we secretly consider complaints to be somewhat useful information. They can have some impact on how we prepare foods in the future. We want to find healthy dishes that the kids will eat.

Also, complaints tend to prompt us to focus attention on another kid or on someone else who is not complaining, someone else who is eating what was served.

 

[pancras]

I read somewhere that it sometimes takes lots of exposures to a new food for a kid to warm up to it. Parents give up too soon. It's worth serving/offering a new food or dish dozens of times.

 

[scarletjones]

Eating habits are really important to be dealt with because it concerns your health and development. Children with bad eating habits are just killing themselves as they get ill at very high rate .

 

[jollysmith123]

I think to let the kids to finish up the food served is very difficult as they are very choosy and basically don’t like nutrient foods. I, therefore believe, we should offer favourite dessert of them on finishing the plate of food being served. We can also make them eat by comparing the health of their favourite icon as how are they being so healthy and let them eat all the healthy stuff.

 

[yunihara]

IMO, I feel like offereing dessert as an award can lead to eating disorders as a child grows older. I've never liked bribing in the first place, but using food as an award seems a bit counter productive too. They only eat healthy stuff so they can have sweets after? They get a reward for doing something they should be doing without one? I also don't think its necessary to get a child to eat an entire plate of food. They should learn how to understand their body and eat until they're satisfied, not full. Maybe its because I've never had any serious issues with eating with my kids, but we've only ever offered mostly fruits & veggies, make our own baby food and that sort of thing. There's never been other options, so they eat nutrient heavy foods.

 

[pancras]

My dad taught me that there were Skeletor foods and He-Man foods. He use to quiz me on my ability to classify foods as He-Man or Skeletor. He told me that Tony the Tiger (on the Frosted Flakes box) was Skeletor in disguise.

But I think the best thing my parentrs did was to give us lots of positive attention for eating veggies and other healthy foods. They believed in catching us being good, not scolding us for being bad. I think my dad was taught this approach when working part-time in a university day care during college.

 

[akmom]

I agree mostly with Yunihara, but it's also a matter of eating a balanced meal, not just a healthy meal. If I serve whole grain bread and fresh vegetables, and they only eat the bread, then they're not getting a balanced meal - even though the bread is healthy. If I serve scrambled eggs and fresh fruit and they only eat the fruit, then they won't get enough protein. So to some extent... offering healthy choices is only part of it. There is some strategy involved in getting them to eat balanced too. We accomplish that by restricting "seconds" until they eat everything. Even then, sometimes they'd rather gobble up the fruit and remain hungry, versus finish the other stuff on their plates!

 

[Mattbatson]

yeah, we don't force our son to eat anything specific either.
the nutrients to be gained from any certain food can be found in many other food's.
We are lucky that our son enjoys tomatoes and broccoli...believe it or not.

and we also do not have dessert after dinner.

he gets ice cream, his favorite, usually when we are out doing something/having fun/beach/etc...and certainly not everyday.

moderation

 

[cybele]

I personally don't like the idea of painting certain foods as 'bad' and others as 'good'. It's all food, it's just that some need to be eaten more often and others less often.

It's probably a more recent thing for me, both Sunny and Lux have made comments from time to time in the past two or so years about 'bad' foods, or something being 'bad' for you that has really made me a bit more aware of how I speak about food. Also, it has forced a bit of conversation about fad diets (DH's and my way of dealing with things like this is to just 'happen' to start discussing it at some point or another and gage the responses).

 

[lolly jone]

well i used to force my older girl until i discovered it is wrong. anyway she was easy to be forced on the opposite of my boy who never eats what he doesn't really like
though he is thin, i am more happy for he is enjoying what he eats