Mistakes I have observed in child rearing

[Illuminatiprimus]

These points on diet are really good too. I spent quite a lot of time with my grandmother when I was growing up and as she’d come from a very poor background her approach to food was quite no-nonsense. She would expect me to finish everything that was on my plate but she wasn’t in the habit of giving me that much. Also if I was adamant I didn’t want what was being offered or didn’t need it her response was “okay, the next meal is breakfast, you sure you’re done?” and if I said yes that was the end of it. My mother followed a similar approach and I’ve grown up with a very laid back approach to eating (both variety and amounts).

Contrast this to my two younger brothers who have been brought up with a dinner routine I wouldn’t wish on anyone - elbows off the table, no talking, no TV, we’re having a NICE FAMILY DINNER DAMN IT!, one of them being yelled at to speed up, the other to slow down, one being told to eat more because he’s too thin etc. It’s one of the least fun experiences I’ve had eating dinner with my father and his family, and funnily enough I’ve never had any problems with dinner times when I’ve looked after them and prepared/served dinner when I take the same relaxed approach to food that I was raised on.

One of the themes running through any child with an eating issue in the parenting programs I watch is how stressful meal times are for everyone involved because the parents are obsessing with what/how much is being eaten and when etc, and how it just makes the process harder, not easier. Children don’t let themselves starve, as long as you’re making the food available they’re not going to drop dead of hunger because you didn’t force them to eat.

[Anne_Neville]

@Annie-Xmas

When they are hungry, they will eat; when they are not hungry, they will stop eating.

But you can teach a person to eat when they are not hungry. Those of us who were raised to “clean your plate” were taught that it’s good to keep eating regardless of whether we’re hungry or not. And a lot of us live with the consequences, in the form of overweight and its associated health problems.

@AngelSoft

In an attempt to keep me from getting overweight like she was, she’d constantly stop me from eating when she felt I’d had enough. Her common and most hated phrase for me was “You don’t need that.” Didn’t matter if I was really hungry or not, she wouldn’t let me have something if she felt I had eaten enough already. Boy oh boy did that backfire

That’s another good way to teach someone to eat when they are not hungry.

For kids or pets, it’s almost always easier to train correct behavior from the start, rather than later trying to un-train bad behavior. Don’t teach your kids to eat when they aren’t hungry. You or they will eventually want to un-train that behavior, and that’s hard. If that were not the case, 65% of the US adult population wouldn’t be overweight or obese.

@norinew

The biggest mistake I have observed is making threats and then not following through: “If you keep on throwing a fit, I’m going to remove you from this store!”, then the kid keeps throwing a fit, and the parent keeps shopping.

This teaches the kid that the parents mean nothing they say.

Most dogs can figure this one out. I’ve seen estimates that a dog’s intelligence is comparable to that of a four year old child. If your child is four or older, guess what…

[Anne_Neville]

A nutritionist on “kid food”:

@Marion Nestle

By the time kids are 2 years old, they generally can and should eat what you eat. If your own diet is balanced and varied, you can give kids the same foods. You just have to cut or mash the foods appropriately, serve smaller portions and don’t add sugar or salt.

I could see saying “this is grown-up food” or “this is big kid food” as a reverse psychology technique to encourage a kid to try a new food. Captain Cook supposedly did something like that to get his men to eat sauerkraut (to ward off scurvy). He restricted it at first to the officers’ mess, which made it more desirable to the rest of the men when they did get access to it.

But if that’s what the people who brought chicken nuggets to someone else’s house for their kids were trying to do, it wasn’t working very well.

On getting kids to try new foods:

@Marion Nestle

Some kids take to new foods like ducks to water, but what if yours doesn’t? Research consistently shows that a child’s willingness to accept an unfamiliar food depends on the number of times the food is offered. You might have to offer a food at 20 meals before a child will taste it. Few parents are prepared for this level of persistence, but that’s what it sometimes takes.

Start by presenting tiny portions of everything served at family meals, give the child time to play with and taste the foods, and remove anything not eaten after a short while. This, of course, requires having family meals to begin with, and healthful ones at that. It also requires patience

IANAParent, but I do cook, and I know that how a food is prepared makes a huge, huge difference in how much anyone is going to like it (and any food can be made unpalatable by being cooked badly). If your kid won’t eat raw carrots, try giving them braised or boiled carrots instead. Try buying and preparing fresh vegetables instead of frozen or canned, or vice versa. I thought I hated Brussels sprouts until I was well into my 20s. All I had ever had was frozen ones cooked until they release that awful stench. Then I tried fresh Brussels sprouts that were not overcooked, and, what do you know, I liked them. The same thing happened to me with asparagus. I hated asparagus until well into my 20s, because all I had had was slimy canned asparagus or off-tasting too-crunchy frozen asparagus. Oven-roasted fresh asparagus in season is totally different from frozen or canned asparagus, and is something I actually enjoy.

Of course, you should prepare foods in a variety of healthy ways. You could probably get a kid to eat a lot of things by deep-frying them or adding a lot of salt or sugar to them, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea.

[The_Mermaid]

@mswas

Cry it out really is the answer, and at 9 months old that’s the perfect time to get her into it. Trust me, you’ll prefer it. My daughter puts herself to bed now because we let her cry it out at 9 months old.

I totally agree with the philosophy but the name stinks. I think if parents will think of it as allowing the child to develop better sleeping habits it would be more palatable. The child is sleepy and frustrated and honestly doesn’t know how to comfort themselves. Crying is a symptom of that frustration, it is not the problem. Make sure their physical needs have been met and leave them alone until they learn how to sort it out.

[norinew]

@Anne_Neville

A nutritionist on “kid food”:

I could see saying “this is grown-up food” or “this is big kid food” as a reverse psychology technique to encourage a kid to try a new food. Captain Cook supposedly did something like that to get his men to eat sauerkraut (to ward off scurvy). He restricted it at first to the officers’ mess, which made it more desirable to the rest of the men when they did get access to it.

But if that’s what the people who brought chicken nuggets to someone else’s house for their kids were trying to do, it wasn’t working very well.

On getting kids to try new foods:

IANAParent, but I do cook, and I know that how a food is prepared makes a huge, huge difference in how much anyone is going to like it (and any food can be made unpalatable by being cooked badly). If your kid won’t eat raw carrots, try giving them braised or boiled carrots instead. Try buying and preparing fresh vegetables instead of frozen or canned, or vice versa. I thought I hated Brussels sprouts until I was well into my 20s. All I had ever had was frozen ones cooked until they release that awful stench. Then I tried fresh Brussels sprouts that were not overcooked, and, what do you know, I liked them. The same thing happened to me with asparagus. I hated asparagus until well into my 20s, because all I had had was slimy canned asparagus or off-tasting too-crunchy frozen asparagus. Oven-roasted fresh asparagus in season is totally different from frozen or canned asparagus, and is something I actually enjoy.

Of course, you should prepare foods in a variety of healthy ways. You could probably get a kid to eat a lot of things by deep-frying them or adding a lot of salt or sugar to them, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea.

Something else relevant is to change the name of a dish from one they find unappealing to one they find appealing. My 9YO mudgirl despises beefaroni, but the very same dish, marketed under the title “Cheeseburger Casserole” (“with extra cheese”, I tell her with a wink) often gets requests for seconds.

I have nieces who would not eat “tomato sauce” but would happily slurp up “marinara sauce” and disdained “chili” but would happily eat “hamburger and bean stew”.

It also truly helps when you let the kids help prepare the food. Nothing mudgirl likes more than squishing up the meatloaf! So when I serve it, proudly announcing to the family that she helped cook it, she’s much more likely to eat it than if I just did it on my own! I even let her contribute her own ideas to my cooking. One night, I was making super-simple Teriyaki Meatballs (using bottled teriyaki sauce and frozen meatballs) when she noticed the bottle said honey teriyaki sauce. So she suggested that we drizzle a little honey over the whole thing before popping it in the oven (she loves honey). I doubt that we added enough honey to change the flavor much, but the idea that I let her make a decision about the cooking was good enough. She ate it up.

[cwthree]

@Chimera

Posted all around my workplace we have bad photocopies of what is obviously a macrame’ sign that says;

“Unattended children will be given an expresso and a free puppy.”

I’ve seen “Unattended children will be given liquid sugar and a free drum set.”

[Anne_Neville]

@norinew

I have nieces who would not eat “tomato sauce” but would happily slurp up “marinara sauce” and disdained “chili” but would happily eat “hamburger and bean stew”.

This works on adults, too. Restaurants put a good deal of effort into selecting names for their dishes. You see polenta on restaurant menus, almost never cornmeal mush.

Just like many adults like foods better when they’re presented elegantly, many kids like foods better if they’re presented as fun (restaurants and companies that sell food aimed at kids spend a lot of time and money on this, too). Foods with sauces on them are not fun, but the same foods dunked into the same dipping sauce are. Foods in the shape of something your kids like are fun. I’m pretty sure I ate Chicken and Stars soup as a kid only because I was a little astro geek. I didn’t like the chicken noodle by the same company. Some kids might even find vegetables with non-standard colors (like purple potatoes) more fun than standard potatoes. (I’d want to stick with natural color variants if possible.)

My 9YO mudgirl despises beefaroni, but the very same dish, marketed under the title “Cheeseburger Casserole” (“with extra cheese”, I tell her with a wink) often gets requests for seconds.

Beefaroni = barfaroni, as any second grader can tell you.

It also truly helps when you let the kids help prepare the food. Nothing mudgirl likes more than squishing up the meatloaf! So when I serve it, proudly announcing to the family that she helped cook it, she’s much more likely to eat it than if I just did it on my own!

Letting kids help with the cooking is good in more than one way. It makes them more likely to try a new food. It teaches them not to be afraid of the kitchen and cooking. An older kid or adult to whom the kitchen is a mysterious and scary place is going to have a much harder time learning to cook than someone who helped with the cooking as a kid is. It teaches them some cooking skills that they can use as adults. You’re passing on a piece of your cultural heritage to your kids. And if you can manage to keep it a low-stress experience (be like Alton Brown, not Gordon Ramsay), the kids might enjoy it.

[CheapBastid]

@norinew

It also truly helps when you let the kids help prepare the food. Nothing mudgirl likes more than squishing up the meatloaf! So when I serve it, proudly announcing to the family that she helped cook it, she’s much more likely to eat it than if I just did it on my own! I even let her contribute her own ideas to my cooking. One night, I was making super-simple Teriyaki Meatballs (using bottled teriyaki sauce and frozen meatballs) when she noticed the bottle said honey teriyaki sauce. So she suggested that we drizzle a little honey over the whole thing before popping it in the oven (she loves honey). I doubt that we added enough honey to change the flavor much, but the idea that I let her make a decision about the cooking was good enough. She ate it up.

I wanted to echo this great piece of information, ownership and interaction changes the experience.

I’ll add something that seems to have helped our picky eater. This (obviously) requires a child of an age where things can be talked about, but we talked about preconceived notions and the ‘automatic yuk’. Our kid has really started taking a moment while tasting to ‘let the mouth decide’. YMMV.

[norinew]

@CheapBastid

I’ll add something that seems to have helped our picky eater. This (obviously) requires a child of an age where things can be talked about, but we talked about preconceived notions and the ‘automatic yuk’. Our kid has really started taking a moment while tasting to ‘let the mouth decide’. YMMV.

Ahhh, yes. I’ve worked this in to the meatloaf recipe. My fave recipe uses diced mushrooms. Now, mudgirl, left to her own devices, would never knowingly eat mushrooms! BUT. . .when letting her help me make the meatloaf, I told her the mushrooms were “our little secret” and she couldn’t tell, because her big sister, who has loved my meatloaf in the past, might not eat it if she knew it had mushrooms. Mudgirl agreed to keep the secret, and happily ate the meatloaf, mushrooms and all!

@Ann Neville

Foods in the shape of something your kids like are fun.

This is wonderful, too. I got my kids to try lots of different sandwich fillings by making the sandwiches into “butterflies” (which means you cut the sandwich diagonally, twice, to form four triangles; then you arrange the triangles on a plate in such a way that it forms two ‘butterflies’).

[Anne_Neville]

Don’t use food as a reward or punishment.

If you use food as a reward, it’s likely that the kid will reward himself/herself with food as an adult. It’s obvious how that can lead to a weight problem. Don’t withhold food as a punishment, either. That’s likely to make kids eat too much or eat too much of unhealthy foods like desserts as an adult, the same way that rewarding kids with food is.

If you make your kid eat a food as a punishment, either it’s a food that some people would willingly eat, or it isn’t. If it isn’t, forcing your child to eat it is bizarre and sick, and is considered child abuse in some places. If it is, you’re torpedoing the chances of ever getting your kid to like that food. Deliberately creating food aversions is not the way to get a kid to eat a varied and balanced diet. I would say that “hot saucing”, or punishing a kid by feeding them hot sauce or hot peppers, is a mistake, too. Hot peppers and hot sauce are a way to make food taste better without adding fat, sugar, or salt. You want your kid to like foods that aren’t loaded with fat, sugar, and salt, for obvious health reasons.

If you don’t already know how, you should learn to cook foods that are flavored with things other than fat, sugar, and salt. Garlic, herbs, spices, and hot peppers are all better, health-wise, than lots of fat, sugar, and salt. Try fresh herbs. You can grow fresh herbs in a flower pot on a balcony, and your kids might like helping you buy them, plant them (most kids love digging in a garden or flower pot), care for them, and get a few leaves or sprigs for cooking. Most herbs require very little in the way of care unless they’re on an apartment balcony that doesn’t get rain, or you live in a desert or a seasonally-dry climate like California’s where it doesn’t rain in the summer.

Don’t demand perfection in your kid’s diet. There will be some foods they will never like. If nothing else, they may develop a food aversion from eating something and being sick afterward. They probably will like at least some unhealthy fatty, sweet, and salty foods, since the desire for those seems to be innate in humans. As long as they’re eating a healthy and balanced diet and aren’t one of those super-picky eaters who will only eat a few specific foods, they’re probably fine. Teach them to politely decline foods they don’t like. If they do start eating a food they didn’t like before, don’t make a big deal out of it. Just give it to them the same way you would to a kid who has always eaten that food.

Don’t throw away toys as a punishment. Give a toy a “time-out”, yes. Put the toy away somewhere and make the kid “earn” it back somehow, yes. But don’t throw toys away permanently as a punishment. That’s likely to make an adult who has trouble with clutter, because it’s hard for them to throw anything away.

Make sure your kids know that there is nothing they could possibly say that would make you stop loving them. Telling kids “your parents won’t love you any more if you tell them about this” is a tactic used by people who abuse kids. You don’t want your child being abused and afraid to tell you about it.

[Illuminatiprimus]

@Anne_Neville

Make sure your kids know that there is nothing they could possibly say that would make you stop loving them. Telling kids “your parents won’t love you any more if you tell them about this” is a tactic used by people who abuse kids. You don’t want your child being abused and afraid to tell you about it.

I forgot to mention this one when talking above about stressing to your children how much you care about them. You’re totally right, how many children suffer in silence because their abusers tell them lies like that?