Would you expect anything else from someone with his username?
Yes, I noticed that too. Interesting combo.
Well clearly there are people who think otherwise. The point of the op was that parents felt their ability to impose their will on how much their children eat is worth psychological abuse. Even the nice dad of the article is still evaluating his skill as a father by his success at getting the “to comply” with his will.
Getting parents to realize that the goal is not getting compliance, but helping develop the skills within their kids to be their own competent experts, paying attention to satiety cues, stopping once no longer hungry, not needing external validation over food behaviors and by extension body image, becoming kids and adults willing to try a variety of vegetables, fruits, grains, and more, is hard.
I have two girls, ages 10 and 7. It’s sometimes a struggle to get them to eat healthy food, or to eat at all (cultural messaging about female thinness is omnipresent and you better believe they’ve noticed). But the idea of enacting violence on a surrogate object to compel obedience, on any subject? That’s truly awful, and is especially horrifying for the straightfaced calmness of its advocates.
The whole idea is sick. It would be funny as a joke among adults, the idea that anyone does this to kids is horrifying.
My parents only threatened my stuffed animals over keeping my room clean. Even then, it was not a threat of torture, but a threat of taking them away.
As far as the clean plate thing goes, I was encouraged to clean my plate, but not forced to, but if I didn’t, then I best not complain about being hungry the rest of the evening. My mother put food on the table, but she wasn’t really all that good a cook. It was bland, and later I learned fairly violating of ServSafe standards.
Have a friend that was raised with the clean plate thing. I always have to be very careful as to what I cook for him, as he will force himself to eat every last bit of it, 'cause that’s how he was raised. I didn’t know that when he first came over for a dinner, and I’m generally pretty generous with portions. Everyone else had finished what they wanted, and we were getting ready to do some other activities, and he just sat there, slowly shoving food in his mouth even though he was clearly full. He also doesn’t want to portion his own food, and wants someone else to decide how much he should eat. He’s in his later 30’s now, and still carries on these habits.
The one I watched, the dad (I presume) offered a spoon of food to the baby, and the baby shook his head. The dad then offered Mickey a spoon of food, and made Mickey shake his head “no.” The dad then held Mickey down and repeatedly punched him in the face. Then he offered the baby another spoon of food, which the very wide-eyed baby ate.
I’m not sure exactly how the baby parsed that (and I’m not sure I’d characterize fear as “selfish”) but I think the intended message of the dad in the video was, refuse to eat and you get beaten, like Mickey. But babies aren’t necessarily great at cause and effect, so I’m sure it could have just been a general reaction to the violence against the stuffie, and fear of the dad in general.
Yeah, those weird food issues were one of the two reasons we stopped hanging out with them. Reason #2 was the way they treated each other. These two had been married for years and years and treated each other like crap - snapping at each other, correcting each other in pretty nasty tones, etc. They weren’t abusive per se, but seemed to have no respect for each other. It was uncomfortable and so apparent even the kids noticed, which is saying something.
Everybody missed the entire point. This is not about eating, the OP link was about “aggressive and violent” techniques to modify ANY behavior, not just eating. The person objecting was still in favor of eating persuasion, but opposed the teddy bear mutilation as a method.
I thought it was man get out.
But Mange tout is French for “eat all”.
Have you had a picky eater child? Their eating has nothing to do with being hungry. They will walk away very hungry if they have to.
I’ve never heard of people starving to death due to walking away from all available food. I suppose there might be a few kids with severe sensory issues who might do that. But i honestly think that the US epidemic of picky eaters has to do with the US availability of ample calories. I heard an interesting article on the radio that it might be partly due to giving our kids a lot of milk – you don’t really need much more if you have plenty of milk to drink. And a lot of parents give their kids juice and soda, too, so they’re never really hungry.
(And I AM a picky eater. I’ve walked away from meals hungry as an adult. But only because I know I can eat later.)
I have experience that is relevant. It still doesn’t make bribing a good idea. I’d prefer to not get into too much personal stuff about my kids, though.
One day my skinny two year old told me she didn’t want to eat something because she was afraid she’d get fat. I have no idea where she picked that up. It surely wasn’t from her parents. But hell yes, they’ve noticed.
We gave her an age-appropriate lecture on the importance of children getting enough nutrients. And we told her that if she was hungry she should not be worried about eating too much, at least until she stopped growing. And about how kids need to eat a variety of foods to be healthy.
That really freaked us out.
But we never pressured the children to eat more than a taste of any particular food. (What a friend called a “no thank you portion”.)
No they dont starve to death. and most get over it. But for some few it is the road to anorexia and other eating disorders, which are not to be taken lightly.
I’ve no idea what the statistics are, but it seems to me self-evident that grazing and snacking between meals, or just taking in lots of extra calories in sugary drinks, is bound to have some effect.
To reiterate - the course to anorexia is INCREASED in risk by trying to force a picky eater to eat when they say no. This is indeed not to be taken lightly. You want to avoid going down that path: DO NOT TRY TO FORCE THEM TO EAT. Instead do as @puzzlegal suggests, encourage eating if hungry and stopping if not, controlling that a variety of healthy choices are available as part of the whole family meal routine, little chance to fill up on empty or highly processed calories, especially added sugar foods, and, the hardest part, then looking away, trusting them to eat enough.
Yes there are case reports of children with autism with malnutrition from marked and persistent food aversions resulting in very restrictive diets - but even in that population it is extremely rare. And then the plan (managed by feeding experts) does not include battles or threats, even implied.
When my daughter, now a college freshman, did that we rolled with it and turned her on to chef salads with various calorie and protein laden toppings and veggies. She is our youngest and with all the offspring we have never had problems with raw or cooked broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, beans or pretty much any others that mom and I both liked. The issues come from one or the other of us not liking something. Then it is more hit and miss as to which child likes what. Most of their food came from the stovetop or oven and not the microwave.
Do you have a cite for this? Cites have been provided for the connection between requiring kids to do things like cleaning their plates and later in life eating disorders or obesity. I’d be interested to see that failing to bribe “picky” kids to eat has been connected to anorexia.
Our pediatrician helped us think of it as not such a big deal, and to not focus too much on growth percentiles and such, and so far that seems to have been the correct approach. Our issue wasn’t pickiness – my kids eat a large variety of food – but was connected to low weight.
I wasnt saying you should not bribe or encourage, but dont force and dont ignore.
I’m sorry, but trying to parse all of the negatives in that has me confused. So you are saying yes, ok to bribe, right? “I wasn’t saying you should not bribe (…)” But you also think kids should not be forced to eat, and that their eating issues should not be ignored? Do I have that right?
The only parts I disagree with are that bribing to eat is OK. And from your earlier post, that a failure to bribe a picky eater can lead to anorexia. As to that latter point, are you backing away from it now?
ETA, posting on my phone, I accidentally apparently replied to myself rather than DrDeth. No way to fix that now…