I’m not talking about the “draw some ketchup happy faces on your kid’s plate” kind of fun. I’m just talking about garden-variety fun. You know, where your child actually enjoys eating.
Recent research from Switzerland shows that eating enjoyment reduces picky eating. In other words, feed your picky eater some fun, and your picky eater might just stop being so picky.
The more children enjoy eating, the less picky they are.
That’s what the research shows. It makes sense too. Many kids simply shut down when they feel stressed about eating.
The research also shows that:
There is oodles of advice out there on increasing the fun factor—gardening, cooking, grocery shopping, food art, sandwich cutouts, you name it. But fun added on top of pressure isn't fun at all. In fact, in my experience, pressure cancels out the fun.
That's why you've got to eliminate the pressure first. Then, you can add in any kind of fun you like.
Parents rarely consider how putting on the pressure is problematic.
These are the kinds of questions researchers ask parents to determine how likely they are to put on the pressure.
Read: The Pressure Cooker Problem , The Dinner Dance: When Is Enough Enough? and A New Approach to Teaching Tot to Try New Foods.
Of course, pressure might not actually cause a picky eating problem; it might be the way parents react to a picky eating problem instead.
This is a case when it doesn’t matter which came first, the chicken or the egg, because there’s no question that pressure reinforces pickiness.
Remember, picky eating is rarely a real reaction to the food.
I'm sure you intuitively know this because picky eaters are totally erratic in their eating behavior: Loving today what they hated yesterday, and hating today what they loved yesterday. That’s why you can’t feed your way out of a picky-eating problem.
So back off the pressure and put your energy towards producing a happier eating environment instead.
Read The Road Less Traveled.
~Changing the conversation from nutrition to habits.~
============================================
Source: van der Horst, K. 2012. “Overcoming Picky Eating. Eating Enjoyment as a Central Aspect of Children's Eating Behaviors.” Appetite 58: 567-74
]]>Researchers are sneaking up on a surprising answer: YES!
Actually, you’re probably not too surprised. Everyone knows that the multi-billion dollar advertising industry exists because images can pack a powerful punch.
Well, now there is mounting evidence that parents can tap into the advertiser's advantage without spending quite so much money. You may be able to reduce your toddler’s fear of the unfamiliar by showing them pictures of food in books.
And while this technique might not work for all kids, the results are lining up to be most favorable for the most resistant kids.
Researchers distinguish between two types of toddler resistance: Neophobia and Picky Eating.
Most toddlers I know exhibit a combination of the two conditions, making the distinction between neophobia and picky eating seem like a moot point for many parents. But it’s not.
Delineating between the different factors that make feeding our little fiends so much fun can actually make things easier. (Think of it as increasing your arsenal so you can mount a stronger attack.)
Visual cues seem to be an effective way to fight back against the unfamiliar.
If you’ve got a kid who is gripped by a fear of new foods, i.e. you’ve got a kid who is highly neophobic, start thinking about pulling out those picture books.
Makes sense: Most people eat with their eyes.
Study 1
Researchers discovered that increasing the number of times kids see unfamiliar fruits and vegetables could improve how much they say they like a food before they taste it. In other words, assessment on sight tilts in favor of "yum" over "yuck." But, the kids still have to taste the new food in order to actually like it.
Study 2
Researchers found that 2-year-old toddlers were more interested in looking at pictures of fruits and vegetables that they had never tasted but had previously seen in picture books compared to pictures of fruits and vegetables they had never seen before.
Researchers interpreted this finding to mean that looking at pictures in books increases children's interest in (and perhaps openness to) unfamiliar foods.
Study 3
Parents of 2 year old toddlers were asked to read their children a picture book every day for 2 weeks. The book featured:
Children then took part in a taste test. They were offered plates, one of fruits and then one of vegetables, each containing a combination of:
You're probably not surprised to learn that the children tasted more of the familiar foods than the unfamiliar foods. However:
Seeing is a crucial part of eating.
It’s easy to overlook this point, but every time a child tastes a new food, he’s seeing it too (unless you use a blindfold!).
And kids size up new foods to make sure they match their ideas about what acceptable food looks like. Read:
Advertising works through creating positive messaging, but it also works through creating visual familiarity and appeal.
This research shows you can do this too. Just another reason to love BOOKS!
~Changing the conversation from nutrition to habits.~
========================================
Source: Heath, P., C. Houston-Price, and O. B. Kennedy. 2011. “Increasing Food Familiarity Without the Tears. a Role for Visual Exposure?” Appetite 57: 832-38.
]]>Serve a fruit or a vegetable at every meal and every snack every day.
Of course, you’ll never attain that goal, but it doesn’t matter. Just by setting the intention you will drastically increase your toddler’s consumption of fruit and vegs.
You could also strive to serve a fruit AND a vegetable at every meal and every snack every day.
That would be even better.
If you have a child who barely touches a fruit (forget about the vegetables), you’re probably laughing at me right now.
That’s OK. I can take it. And I’ll get to you guys in a moment.
For the rest of you, those parents among us whose kids haven’t totally fallen off the deep end yet, think about this: Most parents feed their infants a fruit-and-vegetable-dominated diet.
In other words, I am not really suggesting anything too radical. I’m merely proposing that as your infants turn into toddlers that you keep up the good work.
Yes, I know that it is a lot easier to feed infants fruits and vegetables than it can be to convince a trepidatious toddler to open up at the sight of spinach, but stick with me here.
One reason infants are so accommodating in the Fruits-and-Vegetable department is that they don’t know any better.
It’s not just that most infants haven’t yet been introduced to all the wonders of the world—sweets, treats and chicken nuggets—that makes them so accommodating. It’s that eating fruits and vegetables is their custom, their routine, their norm. Fruits and vegetables are their primary go-to-foods.
Most parents I know, inadvertently move their toddlers away from this way of eating by relying on rusks, cookies, puffs, crackers, and other toddler stuff more than they actually need to.
10 reasons to serve fruits and vegetables at every meal and snack every darned day.
1) Kids can’t eat what isn’t being served. Every time you don’t serve a fruit and vegetable is another time when your child won’t eat a fruit or vegetable.
2) Eating is a matter of math: The more frequently you expose your kids to fruits and vegetables the more normal these foods will seem.
3) Putting fruits and vegetables into your feeding structure stops most of the conflict: When it comes to eating everyone will know exactly what to expect.
4) Fruits and vegetables will displace some of the other snack stuff you normally serve thereby upgrading your toddler’s diet.
5) By changing the ratio of fruits and vegetables to other tasty items you’ll point your kid’s taste buds in the right direction.
6) Fruits and vegetables will become a go-to food, not an once-a-day opportunity to fight.
7) You’ll introduce more fruit and vegetable variety because peas, broccoli and string beans will only take you so far.
8) You’ll be content to serve smaller portions: A few bites really add up.
9) Your previously sane self will return becuase you will no longer have to be the food police.
10) It’s the right habit.
Read 10 Ways Improving Your Kids’ Snacking Will Improve YOUR Life.
To you naysayers out there—“That will never work with my kid.”—I say this:
Do it anyway. (Waiting for your children to grow into eating more fruits and vegetables is like waiting for Godot. It might never happen.)
Here's a four-point plan to get you started.
1) Set your sights on small steps.
2) Talk to your children about your strategy.
3) Applaud small successes. Each and every one of them. Each and every time.
4) Read The BIG Fix: What To Do When Feeding Strategies Fail.
~Changing the conversation from nutrition to habits.~
]]>It was at the doctor’s office after my daughter had gotten a shot. She was crying and the nurse offered her a lollypop.
Having watched both my mother’s constant struggle with food, and her premature death from obesity-related issues, I was hyper-attuned to the problems associated with using food to soothe the soul.
And so, that day at the doctor’s office I whipped the lollypop away from the nurse before my daughter could see it. I soothed her with hugs and kisses and then, only after my daughter had recovered from the trauma, did I offer up the lollypop.
You see, I wasn’t against the lollypop. I was against teaching my daughter to use sweets to soothe her soul.
Research shows that children learn to eat for emotional reasons as early as age 3.
It’s a startling statistic that makes you think. Read Using Sweets to Soothe the Soul.
Given my history, I’m sure you can see why I was determined from the get-go not to soothe my sweetheart with food. And while I haven’t always been as effective as that day in the doctor’s office—Read Cookie Love and you’ll see how I adore feeding my daughter sweets and treats—I’ve been pretty good about using food as, well, food. And it is a good thing too.
A new study shows that mothers who reported using food to soothe their kids tend to have heavier children.
I’m not interested in vilifying mothers.
For starters, I am one, and raising children is hard to do (especially, if like me, you sometimes feel like you’re raising your husband too!). What’s more, I don’t think anyone is ever really prepared to handle the range of issues that come up with kids. Sometimes food can be a handy tool.
Here’s the study:
Mothers who used food to soothe were more likely to describe their infants and toddlers as having a negative temperament.
The mothers were also more likely to feel that they were not effective parents, especially when it came to being able to soothe their children.
Mothers who used food to soothe their children had heavier children.
Mothers who used food to soothe children with negative temperaments had even heavier children.
Much of the emphasis on child obesity is directed towards identifying the kinds of foods that lead to weight gain.
This research shows that we need to move beyond thinking about what our kids eat, and start considering why they eat the way they do.
In this study, the researchers found that using food to soothe the soul can be a successful strategy. However, the long-term costs are probably pretty high, particularly for children with challenging personalities.
Soothing kids with food teaches them a bunch of bad habits, including these:
The more negative the child, the more opportunities for soothing, the more risk there is for becoming overweight.
When parents do NOT use food to soothe their kids, especially those with highly negative personalities, the risk for childhood obesity is reduced.
This is good news.
I think it’s safe to say that nobody wants their kids to be overweight. This study shows that by switching soothing strategies—consider hugs instead of handouts—parent can teach their kids the habits they need for a lifetime of healthy eating.
~Changing the conversation from nutrition to habits.~
==============================================
Stifter, C. A., S. Anzman-Frasca, L. L. Birch, and K. Voegtline. 2011. “Parent Use of Food to Soothe Infant/Toddler Distress and Child Weight Status. an Exploratory Study.” Appetite 57: 693-99.
]]>But avoiding texture is the wrong way to go.
In my last post I discussed how the French have an advantage in the vegetable department because they introduce their infants to a wide range of vegetables from a very early age.
The French strategy—both introducing lots of different vegetables and switching up which vegetables are offered from day-to-day—exposes infants to a wide range of flavors. Read Early Vegetable Variety: The French Advantage.
But the French strategy does more: It also exposes infants to a wide range of textures.
Variety—in both taste and texture— isn't just the spice of life; it's the key to teaching your tots to eat right.
The more varied textures you expose your infants to the better they’ll eat.
Taste and texture have a symbiotic relationship.
Think of taste and texture like a food relay race: You need to optimize both racers in order to get to the finish line fast.
Make it your goal to vary the taste and texture of the food you provide as often as you can—both from day-to-day and over the course of a single day.
Here’s the study:
Some of what the researchers discovered was pretty obvious:
These findings fall under the category of, "We needed researchers to tell us that?"
Some of what the researchers discovered wasn’t so obvious.
Look at who consumed more of the chopped carrots:
The researchers concluded: The more familiar infants are with different textures, especially with chopped foods, the more likely they are to eat (and like) chopped carrots.
The researchers also concluded that:
"Infants with more experiences with different textures seem to be more confident in handling more complex textures and are less likely to reject these foods."
Many parents are reluctant to give their infants chopped foods because they worry about their children choking.
And that’s a reasonable concern. You don't have to compromise your feeding goals, however, to keep your kids alive. You can serve mashed, chopped and lumpy foods safely.
In this study, the researchers thoroughly cooked both the pureed and the chopped carrots, and the chopped pieces were about ¼ inch in size. This complies with the American Academy of Pediatrics recommendation that to prevent choking parents leave bites no bigger than ½ inch in size.
Other parents steer clear of challenging textures because their kids reject them.
But that's the wrong approach. Repeatedly serving textures infants prefer reinforces their limited palates. It doesn't move them along.
Even if your child has a physical or development issue which makes tackling textures tough, you still have to introduce a variety of textures. Just see a professional. Read: What can you do about texture issues and My Child Only Eats Cheerios and Puffs: When to Seek Medical Help.
Kids who reject challenging textures need more exposure to them, not less, because they need to learn how to handle textures they find tough.
The longer you wait to introduce lumpy, bumpy, and chopped up foods, the harder it becomes.
In another study, children who were introduced to lumpy foods before they were 6 months old:
The message is clear: stop babying your babies.
Instead, let them take their lumps. It's only through exposure to textural variety that your kids will learn to eat a wide variety of foods. And that's the habit you want to teach your kids for a lifetime of healthy eating.
~Changing the conversation from nutrition to habits.~
=======================================
Sources:
Blossfield, I., A. Collins, M. Kiely, and C. Delahunty. 2007. “Texture Preferences of 12-Month-Old Infants and the Role of Early Experiences.” Food Quality and Preference 18: 396-404.
Northstone, K., P. Emmett, F. Nethersole, and A. L. S. P. A. C. S. Team. 2001. “The Effect of Age of Introduction to Lumpy Solids on Foods Eaten and Reported Feeding Difficulties At 6 and 15 Months.” Journal of Human Nutrition and Dietetics 14: 43-54.
]]>We should feed our infants their way do too.
The French have figured out how to introduce their infants to vegetables in a way that works. And their method doesn't just produce better vegetable eaters, their method produces better eaters. Period.
Remember all the hoopla over the book French Women Don't Get Fat? Well, excellent eating habits extend to French kids too. Check out Karen Le Billon's French Kids School Lunch Project for a real eye-opener. (I guess she's right, French Kids Eat Everything.)
What is the French secret?
The French introduce their infants to lots of different vegetables during the first month of weaning. And, they rotate through those vegetables regularly.
I'm sure there are lots of other factors at work here, but check this out. Researchers recently compared the feeding practices of French and German mothers and found some significant differences. (Spoiler alert: We’re more like the Germans.)
During the first month of weaning:
More specifically:
The French mothers also rotated through more vegetables from day-to-day.
Variety. It really is the key to teaching kids to eat right. Read The BIG Fix.
When asked to explain why they choose their particular feeding strategy:
The prevalence of food allergies in infants in France and Germany is the same: 5-8%.
We’re concerned about food allergies here too. According to the CDC, though, the prevalence of food allergies in the U.S. for children under 5 is also low: 4.7%.
Maybe we should be thinking more about taste development and less about food allergies. Read Why Toddlers Don't Eat Vegetables.
General vegetable consumption is higher in France than in Germany.
And it's higher than in the U.S. too. I guess the French are on to something.
And here's an added bonus: Because the French mothers introduced more vegetables, they didn't have to worry when one was rejected. (That's something I can get behind.)
So get the French Advantage! More alternatives. Less pressure. More success.
~Changing the conversation from nutrition to habits.~
=======================================================
Source: Maier, A., C. Chabanet, B. Schaal, P. Leathwood, and S. Issanchou. 2007. “Food-Related Sensory Experience From Birth Through Weaning: Contrasted Patterns in Two Nearby European Regions.” Appetite 49: 429-40.
]]>If I ask my son to have one happy bite of something and he refuses to the point of tears, do I press it until he gives in/force it or just try again the next meal? —Kendra Read The Happy Bite.
But what if, when you ask him to work on a little more of his dinner, he still doesn't eat the peas and asks again for seconds of pasta. Does he get it? —Sally Read How to Serve Seconds Without Hurting Your Kids’ Habits.)
— — Comments from my Facebook page.
Attacking an individual eating issue head-on usually doesn't work, at least not in the long run. It's like applying a bandaid to cure a disease: it's a topical solution to a systemic problem. (And you need a different solution for every problem. It's enough to drive you nuts.)
You need to change the system to change your kids' habits.
The way to solve pretty much any eating issue is to set up a strong feeding/eating structure.
I wish I had a magic bullet answer—Do this and your kids will eat peas! Try new foods! Turn into foodies!—but I don't. And that is because:
Eating problems never start where you see them, and they're never isolated issues.
Solving an eating problem is like fixing a water leak. The source could be anywhere. And the water shifts as you plug up its path! (Bandaids? Water? Sorry for so many similes.)
To fix an eating issue for the long run you've got to fix the structure (or the system). In other words, you've got to start fixing dinner problems at breakfast. Everything is related.
Think of structure as a set of rules (or patterns) that shape how you and your kids interact around eating.
I know the word rule sounds bad, and I apologize if it makes you bristle. But every family already has a set of unpoken rules that shape eating behavior.
Go a few rounds with your kids before fixing them their favorites? The rule your family is living by: everyone eats what they want (but sometimes you have to fight for it first).
I hate to be the one to say this but...
Children eat the way they've been taught to eat.
That's not to say that your children don't come to the table with their own issues. They do. And some kids can be particularly challenging to teach. But if you can recite the routine, your kids can too.
If you want to change the way your kids eat you've got to change the way you interact with them around food.
Put this structure into place regardless of your issue.
Even if you can't see how it'll help. It will.
1) Serve different foods from day-to-day for every meal and snack. (Structure for What to serve.)
I cannot emphasis the importance of rotating foods on a regular basis for increasing your kids’ food acceptance, and for shaping their attitudes towards eating. If you can also mix things up so fruits and vegetables are offered more frequently, that's a bonus.
Read House Building 101 and Breakfast: The Most Important Meal of the Day.
2) Establish a regular routine for the timing of meals and snacks. Eliminate grazing and eating on demand. (Structure for When to serve.)
I'm not saying you shouldn't be responsive to your child’s hunger. By all means, adapt the timing of meals and snacks a little here and a little there. But kids have got to come to the table ready to eat (both physically and emotionally) in order to eat what you offer—when you offer it.
3) Build compromises into the structure. Don’t wing it. (Structure for How to serve.)
This is the most complicated part of the plan, and so it’s the most difficult component to discuss succinctly, but it’s probably also the most important. Structured compromises:
With structured compromises everyone know their role and everyone knows their limits.
Conversely, compromises that come willy-nilly encourage your kids to be combative. (With enough effort they might just win!)
Here are some structured compromises:
4) Make sure your lessons are hitting home.
Many parents mistakenly believe that the opposite of pressure is leniency. It's not. The opposite of pressure is STRUCTURE.
Don't set up a confrontation. A strong structure will resolve your eating problems:
Structure acts like the walls of your house: it keeps everything standing.
Sounds unbelievable, I know. But it's true. When a strategy fails, go back and shore up the structure. It's the only sure-fire way to succeed.
~Changing the conversation from nutrition to habits.~
]]>Think about it, if you thought your children would eat the right amount you wouldn't have to intervene. But you get involved because there's lot of evidence that your kids are kind of crappy about portion control.
Overeating gets all the media attention but most parents of young children are more worried about under-eating. In one study of kindergarteners, 85% of parents tried to get their kids to eat more.
Rather than control your kids' consumption, consider teaching your kids to self-regulate..accurately. Researchers accomplished this task in 6 weeks. You can too. (Read on for details.)
As I see it, the trust problem stems from two sources.
First:
At the same time:
The result is a situation where parents are willing to risk teaching their kids to overeat in order to make sure their kids don't under-eat. It's a high-stakes gamble.
Research shows children vary in their ability to self-regulate how much they eat.
So you might be right to distrust your kids. Some kids naturally eat more than they need. Other kids stop eating way too soon.
Unfortunately, many of the tactics most parents rely on to solve the situation simply make it worse. Kids respond to pressure by eating less or to restriction by eating more.
But even when parental prodding is relatively benign consider this:
When parents control how much kids eat, children don't learn to self-regulate—they don't learn to do the job on their own.
You've got to let go.
Teach your kids to self-regulate.
In one study, researchers taught a group of 3-4 year old children to self-regulate. They:
You can do all of this at home—even the dolls. The stomachs were made from nylon material (i.e. stockings) and were filled to varying degrees with salt. Make a few and strap them on to a couple of Barbies.
Will your kids make mistakes if you leave the eating up to them? Sure. But that’s how they learn.
The key is to talk to your kids about the underlying issues (hunger and satiation) and to focus less on the food.
Set appropriate times for meals and snacks—no eating on demand—and then let your kids practice, practice, practice. It won't just solve your short-term problems, it'll teach your kids the habits they need for a lifetime of healthy eating.
Remember, you have to let your children choose not to eat in order for them to choose to eat. (It's a freedom thing.) And you have to allow them to choose not to eat enough in order for them to learn to get it right. If this freaks you out read The Upside of Hunger.
For more on this topic read:
~Changing the conversation from nutrition to habits.~
===============================================
Sources:
Orrell-Valente, J. K., L. G. Hill, W. A. Brechwald, K. A. Dodge, G. S. Pettit, and J. E. Bates. 2007. “"Just Three More Bites": an Observational Analysis of Parents' Socialization of Children's Eating At Mealtime.” Appetite48(1): 37-45.
Johnson, S. L. 2000. “Improving Preschoolers' Self-Regulation of Energy Intake.” Pediatrics 106(6): 1429-35.
]]>That’s what happened in response to my last post Are You Teaching Your Toddler to Overeat? One reader asked:
“I put appropriate sizes on my daughter’s plate, and I don't make her eat or encourage her to eat more. If she eats, she eats, she's the one who knows if she's hungry or not. Often she will eat all of her fruit or bread or something, not touch anything else, and then want more of the thing she ate. Should I give it to her, or in that instance, tell her ‘no’ because she hasn't eaten anything else, and then encourage her to eat the other stuff on her plate?”
I threw the question back out to parents on my Facebook page, and I agree with a lot of what people had to say. However…
The primary solution to the snag of seconds happens long before the battle. This is definitely a case where an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. That’s right, you can actually prevent the seconds situation from occurring. Here's how.
Prevention Part 1: Set aside the goal of getting your toddler to eat a certain amount—or a certain type—of food. Instead, think about teaching your tot to eat right.
Shifting your goal from worrying about consumption to shaping habits won’t just enable you to keep the highs and lows of any one meal in perspective (though this is certainly a benefit).
It will also help you avoid a common parental pitfall: Relying on a set of strategies that bite you in the butt in the long run. Read The 2-More-Bites Tango: How YOU Can Take the Lead and Wheelin’ and Dealin’:10 Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Trade Peas for Pie.
And, if these benefits aren’t enough, consider this:
Shifting your goal from consumption to habits will enable you to set up a feeding system that works by transfering your attention to when and how food is served and by altering the parent/child dynamic. It also will drastically reduce the pressure you put on your child to eat. Read The Pressure-Cooker Problem.
The result:
Never compromise your long-term goals for the sake of the immediate meal.
Prevention Part 2: Take the pressure off dinner by serving higher quality food through the day.
Here’s a math problem (and possibly a traumatic flashback to fifth grade): Two children are eating dinner. One child has eaten 2 bites of vegetable at each of the earlier meals and snacks, for a total of 8 vegetable bites before sitting down to the main meal. The other child hasn’t eaten any vegetables yet today. Which child’s parent is more likely to crazed about how many carrots her kid consumes at dinner?
Change the dinner dynamic by upgrading the rest of the day. I recommend you serve a fruit and/or a vegetable at every meal and snack.
Even if you don't achieve this goal every day, you will increase your kid's consumption, thereby resolving most of the seconds dilemma. And let's be honest, vegetables are at the heart of this problem. Would you really care if your toddler asked for seconds after barrelling through the broccoli without so much as checking out the chicken?
The benefits of serving a fruit and/or a vegetable at every meal and snack:
Eating is really a matter of math: Kids eat what they're exposed to the most. (And what they eat the most determines the nutritional quality of their day.)
Prevention Part 3: Downsize your expectations and the portions you provide.
Part of the problem with seconds is simply a problem of portion size: You pile on the pasta and the peas (hoping your child will eat at least some of the stack).
Put very small portions of food on your child’s plate. And, make the portions of different foods fairly equal. In other words, don’t put two bites of broccoli and ½ cup of pasta on the plate. Put down two bites of broccoli and 2 bites of pasta.
This is definitely a case where less is more, especially if you have a reluctant eater.
Other advantages of serving smaller portions:
Prevention Part 4: Teach your child how to eat.
Think about eating from our kids' perspective: They tuck into their favorites first. Then, after they’re kind of full (or totally stuffed) parents come along and tell them to eat their veggies.
Turn that baby around by teaching your child to eat some of everything before she eats all of anything. I describe this method of grazing around the plate—which I call One-One—in more detail in the post: My child asks for seconds of pasta before she’s even touched her peas.
Remember, kids don’t know when they are going to be full. One-One gets a portion of all the goods into their guts before they’re totally goners. Share this rationale with your toddler: “It’s hard to know when you’ll be full so I would like you to eat a little bit of everything as you go along so you don’t get too full on pasta before you’ve touched your peas.” It might take awhile for the lesson to sink in but don't let that deter you.
Put all the parts of the prevention plan into action. Then, when your child asks for seconds of the pasta before he's touched his peas...
Say OK.
Then dawdle. “I’ll get you some more pasta after I finish a little more of my dinner. Why don’t you work on the rest of your meal while you’re waiting.”
Don't stress about it.
Try again tomorrow.
Then, put your focus back on perfecting all the parts of your prevention plan. It won't just solve the problem of seconds, it'll change the entire way your child eats. The prevention plan: It's where you'll find the secret to success.
~Changing the conversation from nutrition to habits.~
]]>I know that everything you’ve ever read says that infants and toddlers self-regulate. That they only eat what they need. That they don’t overeat.
And that’s all true. Unless parents interfere with those internal mechanisms. And we all do it. All the time.
In one study of kindergarteners, 85% of the parents tried to get their kids to eat more. In fact, encouraging consumption was such a common phenomenon that the researchers were compelled to conclude that the majority of parents of young children have one primary goal: to get their kids to eat more during meals. Read Two More Bites.
I’ve written about the hazard of pushing your kids to eat more bites than they want—Read The Hunger Dilemma—but the problem of portion size is an equally important pitfall. It’s one of the key ways in which parents inadvertently override their children’s internal self-regulation system.
According to recent research:
Portion size is not an insignificant issue. Research shows that how much you serve determines how much your kids eat.
Read Size Matters.
When we spend the first few years of our kids’ lives getting them to eat more, is it any wonder that they have to spend the rest of their lives trying to eat less? Habits learned early in life tend to stick around.
I’m not blaming parents. In fact, it’s almost impossible not to overfeed your kids in the current food environment.
Most foods are 2-5 times larger than they were years ago. Read How Big is that Bag? Eating in the Age of Portion Distortion.
But it’s not just that. Our cultural obsession with nutrition has created a culture of consumption. Everything you ever hear about nutrition centers on how much people should eat.
It’s not surprising that most parents are left with an uneasy feeling that they need to get more into their kids. More protein. More calcium. More fiber. More fruits. And, of course, more vegetables.
(One comment I read on someone's blog said that the writer didn't believe the government guidelines were adequate. She tried to get as much protein into her child as possible.)
Parents aren’t alone in their obsession with consumption. Read my Huffington Post piece: Are Pediatricians Hurting Your Toddler’s Eating Habits.
Stop worrying about nutrition. Research shows that our kids are generally taking in the nutrients they need.
Who knew? Our kids are getting their vitamins and minerals!
True, there are pockets of deficiencies—some kids aren’t getting enough iron for instance—but studies show that U.S. infants, toddlers and preschoolers are more likely to meet or exceed nutritional guidelines.
I’m not saying that there isn’t room for improvement.
Want your kids to eat better? Shift what they eat. Then, abandon any effort to make your kids to eat more food whenever you serve up the good stuff.
Serve less food. And let your child come back for more.
It's the simplest way to teach the right habits. Especially if you aren't really sure what the right serving size is.
Did you know that an appropriate portion of pasta for a 2 year old is 1/4 cup? That's 1/3 of a packet of Annie’s Real Aged Cheddar Microwavable Mac & Cheese. When was the last time you cooked up the entire packet but then served only 1/3?
One strategy for figuring out the right serving size is to use the Tablespoon technique.
Give your child a tablespoon of food per year of age. For a 2 year old this turns out to be...
(I know these aren't all measured in Tablespoons. Don't blame me. I didn't invent the method.)
Children learn how to select an appropriate, child-sized serving from adults.
Every time you put a portion on the plate you are teaching your tots how much food they ought to eat.
So err on the side of serving smaller sizes and let your kids come back for more. It’s a habit that will set them up for a lifetime of healthy eating.
~ Changing the conversation from nutrition to habits. ~
=======================================
Sources:
Butte, N. F., M. K. Fox, R. R. Briefel, A. M. Siega-Riz, J. T. Dwyer, D. M. Deming, and K. C. Reidy. 2010. “Nutrient Intakes of U.S. Infants, Toddlers, and Preschoolers Meet Or Exceed Dietary Reference Intakes.” Journal of the American Dietetic Association Suppl 3, 110 (12): S27-S37.
Ramsay, S. A., L. J. Branen, and S. L. Johnson. 2012. “How Much is Enough? Tablespoon Per Year of Age Approach Meets Nutrient Needs of Children.” Appetite 58: 163-67.
]]>