ARTICLE TOOLS

E-mail story

Comments

Printer friendly version

iPod friendly version

Share This

Text Size: A A A A

Taking Sides: Kids Stuff

Advice for parents: Avoid food fights

By: Mark Kennedy
(Contact)

By: Karen Nazor Hill
(Contact)

Included in this article

MARK KENNEDY: An early childhood expert once told my wife and me never to get in food fights with our children. Not flinging food, of course. She simply meant that getting into arguments with your children about every morsel they eat (or don’t eat) is a losing proposition and a prescription for family strife. Her advice: Provide nutritious food options and let your kids take it or leave it. This way hunger becomes the enforcer. What’s your philosophy on getting young kids to eat, Karen?

KAREN RAZOR HILL: I agree with the expert. From the time babies begin to eat, they will tell you what they like and dislike. It’s up to us to provide them with healthy options, and by doing so, we are teaching them good eating habits. There was a teacher at my children’s school who made every student clean his or her plate at lunch. Children would hide their unwanted food in their milk cartons, stick it in their pockets or try to throw it away when the teacher wasn’t looking. The first time she did it with one of my children, I met with the teacher and, in essence, told her what the early childhood expert told your wife. My children never had to clean their plates at school.

MARK: Our older son, now 7, has become a bottomless pit. He will eat around the edges of his prepared meals, but he seems to be constantly hungry. Even after dinner at night he’ll return to the kitchen for servings of fruit, yogurt, anything he can find. The fact that he eats 24/7 yet never seems to gain weight leads me to think that he’s actually burning up all these calories. So I don’t feel guilty letting him eat a lot of nutritious snacks. We draw the line however at too much candy, and he doesn’t drink soft drinks, either.

KAREN: Your 7-year-old is a very active boy, and he’s constantly working up an appetite. Most adult athletes I know do the same. My youngest daughter, a swimmer, is always hungry. She swims an average of two hours a day, in addition to walking about eight miles a day, so she’s always hungry, too. And she never gains weight. I never made my children (now adults) eat everything on their plates, and I never made them eat something they despised. I just made sure they always had healthy options.

MARK: My boys eat so much now, I can’t imagine how I’ll keep them fed as teenagers. How did you manage the bigger-than-life appetites when your children were teens?

KAREN: The grocery bill was typically our most costly monthly expense. My advice is to keep an ongoing grocery list and adhere to it when you go grocery shopping. The hardest part of cooking for a big family was making sure that at every meal you offered something everyone liked. Spaghetti, for example, was a family favorite, but it was also a challenge. We had one who didn’t like mushrooms. Everyone else loved mushrooms. So we always had to decide whether to include mushrooms and let the mushroom hater pick out the mushrooms or serve it as a side dish. The majority typically ruled. Today, by the way, the mushroom hater loves mushrooms.

Comments