Parents, Is anyone self-demand-feeding your kids?

In My Humble Opinion
21

We let my son pretty much eat what he wants when he wants it. This works because we don’t really have a lot of junk food in the house. My husband and I don’t drink soda and I’m not much of a snacker, so we usually just don’t have a lot of stuff in the pantry. So, my son is addicted to apples, cheese, yogurt, etc.

I am, however, under no illusion that he’d eschew candy if it was given to him. I think if we set him down in front of a bag of sugar, he snarf the whole thing. This is evidenced by the cordial incident. My husband likes cordial - it’s kind of like Kool-Aid. We never let our son have any, so he was happy to drink his water while Dad got his sugar fix. One afternoon, my husband poured my son a little cup of cordial. It was all over. For days, my son would throw a tantrum when he realized all he had in his cup was water or milk or juice. He made elaborate plans to jump the baby gate in order to get into the cupboard where the cordial bottle was kept. He finally forgot about it, but we now have a special, dark hidey-hole where the cordial resides and my husband can only drink it after my son’s gone to bed. He sometimes sneaks some while he’s awake and has to go down to the laundry to drink it. It’s like he’s a teenager sneaking a few tokes off the bong in basement. Pretty funny.

22

Actually, it is not candy that is in danger from my daughter. It is butter. We do prevent her from eating that. Also raw sausage. She went to the fridge the other day got something out and went out on the deck and sat down. Hubby found her gnawing on a chub of raw breakfast sausage. Another time it was butter. Both times we retrieved the remains and told her that those are not to be eaten raw (the sausage) or by itself ( the butter).

She does sometimes ask for frozen vegetables, and raw ones too. She asked for more hollandaise sauce tonight by name! She also served herself at least two extra helpings of broccoli, which she did eat. Last time we went to the doctors she was in the 75th percentile for weight and the 90th percentile for weight and seems to have kept the same proportions.

I wonder how much is just inherent differences and how much has to do with nurture.

23

I suppose, for the sake of discussion, it is worth discussing the “more to it” of this approach. I’m still formalizing my understanding of it, but from what I understand it, these are the pillars of demand feeding:

  1. Hunger is the only valid reason for eating. Never ever use food for comfort or reward.
  2. “bad” foods should be treated no differently than good foods.
  3. If they ask for x, you ask “are you hungry for x?”. If they say yes, give it to them. You want to link hunger to eating, and get them to listen to what their body is asking for.
  4. They need to feel that their supply of their favourite foods is safe. no-one else will plunder it, no matter how long they leave it around. It will always be there for them when they want it. When it runs low, it will be replenished.
  5. When they are o longer hungry, they stop eating. No rules about finished what’s on your plate, no stories about kids starving in Africa. As they are eating, periodically ask “are you still hungry?”

Also, you don’t have to make all foods equally accessible. We have no candy in the house other than chocolate (if she asked for some, we’d go get some). Conversely, we often just put out a plate of carrots or cucumber or pepper cut up. No pressure to eat it, it’s just there. It always gets eaten.

24

BabyFancyPants is however, just past two. My kids are five and six. And at five and six they get exposed to a lot of food I don’t feed them. It was much easier at two.

Although I think some kids are predisposed to being good eaters, and some aren’t. One of my girlfriends used to brag about her oldest who (having been raised with healthy choices and demand feeding) had a very healthy relationship with food, ate all sorts of things, and didn’t even like candy. Well, child #3, raised the same way, will be found sitting with the sugar bowl in one hand and a spoon in the other, hates most fruits and vegetables, and is, in general, difficult to feed. Another girlffriend has problems with her nephew (at the health problem level) because he will only eat a small subset of foods (can’t remember what they are) and isn’t getting some basic nutrition. They are concerned its impacting his brain development. They’d feed him anything he wants (getting him to eat ANYTHING is the first part of the challenge, getting variety beyond the four things he’ll eat is the second).

25

We feed our child, who is the same age as babyfancypants, much in the same way, but I still feel like his eating is parent-directed.
I’ll ask him if he wants broccoli, peas or cheese for lunch, and he’ll choose any one which has already been pre-approved by me.
He’s still in a repeating stage at this age, though, so it’s easier. He’s not thinking up his own foods, he just considers whatever he sees or has suggested to him.
The flip side of that is that is that by next week, probably, he’ll be demanding cookies because that’s what Cookie Monster talks about, so I’m not so sure whether that’s a thought out food choice or just repeating what some cool character said, KWIM? Advertising and peer modelling can be kind of powerful during the elementary and late preschool years, I imagine.

I noticed that when we switched his car seat to forward facing, at age 22 months, I could no longer sneak a Happy Meal on the road because he’d be begging for “FWIES!”, which he doesn’t even really like and never noticed before, so yeah, he’s suggestible based on what we eat.

I was raised with all sorts of food restrictions and rebelled like crazy when I was old enough to make my own choices. I also know kids who were allowed to eat whatever they wanted and ate junk 99% of the time.

My own husband’s Mom just let it go when he, as a baby, didn’t take a liking to vegetables, and I have to say, I don’t think I could be a bystander in that situation. I’d jump through hoops, and keep trying, to make sure that my kids ate some sort of vegetable.

So while I don’t think this is a universally workable way to feed every child, through every part of his life, I do think that if it is working for a family that it’s a wonderful, healthy, low-key way to approach nutrition.

26

Well, a modified version of this works for us. We don’t let the kids request which foods they want for a meal, but we let them choose which foods they want to eat out of the meal we prepare. If they decide they don’ t like any of it, they don’t have to eat it. No repercussions, no “It’ll still be there in the morning.”

Afternoon snacks are usual a fixed choice - carrots, apples, crackers and cheese, popcorn on occasion, popsicles and ice cream bars when they are running around outside in the summer.

However, we are not healthfood nuts. They have Mcnuggets, fries, icecream, cookies, pies, s’mores, cake, chips, etc. All occasionally with no big deal made out of them.

They generally eat well, no more picky than other kids, less so than some. Forces us to work a little harder at the meals and shopping to make sure they have decent choices at home.

Little crying or whining about food because they know the rules about food and the rules have been consistently enforced. And they have been enforced mainly because they are easy. Eat it if you want to eat it, shut up about it and don’t eat it if you don’t want to eat it. What you see is what you have a choice of. Sometimes they choose not to eat at a meal, but oddly enough, skipping a meal has not caused them to starve to death.

Try to emphasize to the older ones why we eat food - Meat helps our muscles, bread gives us energy, etc. We teach them that if all you ate was sugar that you would not be helping your bones grow, etc. WE always end up throwing out Halloween and Easter candy.

But if we let them, they would eat Sunchips for every meal. At least they’d get their fiber. Those things have almost as much fiber as Metamucil wafers. And they taste good! And they are made with whole grains! A snack food! How come it took 40 years for the snack food industry to pop out those things?

Man, I’m tired and rambling. A ramblin’ ramblin’ raaaaaaaaaamblin’ guyyyyyy.

27

My parents had the rule you can eat only what is served and you must eat what you take.

Thus in a meal of ham and corn, you may eat only the ham or corn. But if it’s on your plate, you have to eat most of it. Shaghetti and meatballs: you can leave the noodles but your gotta eat all your meatballs. :stuck_out_tongue: