The Goldilocks Approach

The blank stare.  I get it a lot when I tell parents that they have to back off the pressure if they want their kids to try new foods.

Without a little friendly encouragement, these parents’ eyes seem to say, their kids would never venture beyond bland, tan, “child-friendly” foods (chicken nuggets, pasta, bagels…you know the ones I mean).  And green would never be a color that would grace their kids’ plates.

These parents mistakenly believe that I’m suggesting they back off entirely.  That less pressure means no guidance.  That I believe in letting the inmates run the asylum.  But that would be nuts.

Research shows that it’s not just pressure that creates a problem.  The lax approach doesn’t work either.  Read The Pressure-Cooker Problem and  What do you want for dinner?

The key to teaching healthy eating habits is to establish a clear set of boundaries and expectations while remaining empathic and respectful of your children’s opinions. 

In other words, you have to be firm but flexible.  Your kids have to know the ground rules, but they also have to feel like they have some say. 

Think of this parenting style as The Goldilocks Approach (not too hot, not too cold …).  Researchers call it Authoritative.  (This sounds a little dictatorial to me.  But the dictatorial style is called Authoritarian, a parenting style heavy on discipline and control, light on regard and respect—or as I like to call it, the “My-Way-or-The-Highway Approach.”)

Authoritative parents are successful because they are able to navigate the tension between pressure and leniency to create a supportive structure.

Specifically authoritative parents:

1) Cultivate self-control and responsibility in their children through supervision, rules, structure and discipline. 

2) Foster their children’s individuality and self-assertion by being attuned and supportive of their kids’ needs and demands.

Many people I know successfully integrate authority and compassion in other areas of parenting, but vacillate between the two extremes when it comes to food.

The most effective way I know to create a supportive structure for eating is to set guidelines around how foods are chosen, and then let your kids participate in many of the choices.

Here’s the structure to teach your kids:

• Eat fresh, natural foods more often than processed foods (proportion).

• Don’t eat the same foods two days in a row for any meal or snack (variety).

• Only eat when you’re hungry and stop eating when you’re full… even if your parents think you should eat more (moderation).

Read House Building 101, How Big is That Bag? Eating in the Age of Portion Distortion and The 2-More-Bites Tango: How YOU Can Take the Lead. 

Here’s how to give your kids choices:

• Whenever you can, let your children decide what to eat by giving them two choices you have preselected.  Read Feng Shui for Food and Marshmallows Make You Smart.

• Let your kids use a mealtime backup. Read How Cottage Cheese Changed My Life.

• Allow your kids to decide when they eat their treats.  Read It Doesn’t Matter WHEN Your Kids Eat Their Crap and Candy with Breakfast?

~ Changing the conversation from nutrition to habits. ~

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Berge, J. M., M. Wall, D. Neumark-Sztainer, N. Larson, and M. Story. 2010. “Parenting Style and Family Meals: Cross-Sectional and 5-Year Longitudinal Associations.” Journal of the American Dietetic Association 110(7): 1036-42.

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. ~

2 New Year’s Resolutions to Create Kids Who Eat Right.

There are many columns out there suggesting how to improve your life in the New Year.  In keeping with that tradition, here are 2 changes that will definitely make your life better.  They’ll also make your kids' lives better too.

1) First you: Give up your fixation with nutrition.

Trust me on this one, giving up nutrition is like spending a month at a spa: it shuts out the noise so you can relax and focus on what really counts.  It also just feels good.

Instead of being your salvation, nutrition is really a shackle.

• Nutrition is too complicated, it’s impossible to know which elements are most important and the information is always changing.  Frankly, keeping up with nutrition is exhausting.

• Nutrition makes it challenging to know which foods to buy. Food manufacturers make health claims that obscure the truth. Renowned nutritionist Marion Nestle frequently says: health claims are about marketing, not about health.  Believe her.

• Nutrition keeps your attention focused on the qualities in the food instead of on what really counts: the habits your kids are developing about eating food.

2) Next, your kids: Focus on teaching them three principles of healthy eating.

These principles teach your kids how to eat. The end result will be the nutritious eating patterns you’re going for -- without the struggle.

• Proportion: Eat foods in relation to their healthy benefits. Don’t worry about reading labels and don’t try to trade up to slightly healthier versions of the foods your kids like to eat (these products are still only marginally better for you and this approach doesn’t help your kids like different foods - like veggies).  Instead...
  • Serve fresh, natural foods that look like what they once were the most.  (You know, chicken, broccoli, milk...) 
  • Serve processed foods less frequently.  (These products not only contain too much sugar, fat and sodium, but they alter the taste, texture, appearance, and aroma of foods so you kids don’t know what real foods are really like.)
  • Serve junky treats the least frequently.

• Variety: Eat different foods during the day and over the course of a few days. Culinary monotony is a curse.  It may seem like a good (i.e. easy) idea to serve your kids foods you know they’ll eat, but it undermines your efforts in the long run.  Constant variety early in life is the only technique consistently associated with healthy eating in kids. You’ll have to broaden your focus from the immediate meal to consider your children’s eating patterns. 

• Moderation: Eat when you’re hungry and stop when you’re full.  This is the trickiest principle for parents to put into practice because it means not feeding kids to reduce conflict, keep them occupied when you’re busy, to alleviate boredom, to soothe hurt feelings or even to get them to eat more veggies.

These resolutions will change how you think about feeding your kids, how you interact with your kids around food and eating, and ultimately your kids eating habits.

~ Changing the conversation from nutrition to habits. ~