Using Parties Right!

At first blush, the only thing parties can teach your kids about eating is how to overdo it.  But excessive, junk-food fests offer themselves up for teaching kids other very important habits.

Parties are ideal for teaching children Higher Order Habits.  Higher Order Habits are the skills kids need to know if they’re ever going to navigate through the maze of eating events out there. They're Higher Order because these habits are way more important in the long run than the practices -- such as vegetable-eating -- that most parents get hung up on. 

In my last post, Party Hardy!, I argued that party food should be saved for parties. This is an argument based on the principle of proportion because:

• Eating the standard party fare -- pizza, cupcakes and juice --  during regular life teaches kids the wrong lessons about how frequently this kind of food should be consumed.

But I also made the recommendation because:

• Party food also shapes kids' taste buds in the wrong direction: towards high fat, salty, sweet things and away from the healthy stuff you're always trying to promote like broccoli, asparagus, mango and grapes.  

Of course, you can't control when parties happen and you have to let your children eat when they do attend parties. That's why the only way to teach your kids about proportion -- the principle of eating foods in relation to their healthy benefits -- is to shape how often they eat party food outside of parties.

You can use parties to teach your children these Higher Order Habits …

Treats Now or  Treats Later:  Use parties to teach your kids that we eat foods in proportion to their healthy benefits, not in proportion to how much we like them. When your children start to whine and beg for pancakes, donuts, candy, or any other cr*p, on the day of a party, let them choose between eating these treats now or waiting to have treats later. Young kids will be tempted to choose now – and then choose now again when they’re at the party – so this approach takes some creative parenting to get young kids to choose later (but I’ve seen kids as young as 3 or 4 willingly hold off).  Older kids naturally get the point and will defer their junky moment until the getting is good at the party.

Arrive Ready:  Parties can also teach kids about moderation. Sure, eating before a party is one way to get the healthy stuff in (and it’s a trick adult dieters use all the time) but if your child is the kind who would eat now and then eat again later — and let’s be honest here, how many of us would skip the pizza and the cupcakes just because we weren’t that hungry? — then omit the pre-party prep, even if you’ve loaded it up with peas. It’s not like the vegetables will inoculate your kids against the sugar, salt or fat!  Teach your kids it is OK to enjoy their parties and that the best way to enjoy the food that comes with them is to be hungry, but not ravenous, when party-time arrives.

Avoid Getting Stuffed: Tiny tummies fill up fast, so when your tykes start wolfing down the pretzels and pizza help them learn to pace themselves by reminding them of all the food to come. On the other hand, if you’ve got kids who would prefer to skip the pizza and go straight to cake, let them. Healthy Food First isn’t a practice that works under the best of circumstances, and at parties it’s particularly impractical because the pizza’s no nutritional winner.  But even if it were, teaching kids that healthy food is the barrier to fun teaches them the wrong lesson. Instead, teach kids to eat what they want, but not to overdo it.

Since parties are an ever-present and non-negotiable part of childhood, you might as well use them to teach your kids to eat right.

After all, wouldn't you be happier -- and maybe even a little bit healthier -- if you had learned the right party habits when you were a kid? So set your kids up for a lifetime of healthy eating by teaching them to how to party while they're young. Then sit back and let the good times roll.

~ Changing the conversation from nutrition to habits. ~