Soul Food for Kids

I vividly remember the first time someone tried to soothe my crying child with a sweet.

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:

• Gather 100 mothers of 3-36 month old children.
• Ask the mothers a bunch of questions about how they meet their children’s basic needs (feeding, sleeping, crying, soothing).
• Gather data about the children’s height/length and weight.
• Ask the mothers to assess how they feel about their competence as parents, and how ably they feel they meet their children’s needs.
• Ask the mothers to assess their infant’s temperament.
• Crunch the numbers and see what happens.

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: 

• To use distress (not just hunger) as a cue to eat.
• That eating has rewards (i.e. emotional relief) beyond taste and satiation.

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.~

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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. 

The Secret to Your Kids' Souls

Examine your relationship to food and find your soul.

That’s the essence of Geneen Roth’s new book Women, Food, and God, who says:

• The way you eat is a reflection of your core beliefs about who you are. 
• Your relationship to food mirrors your feelings about love, fear, anger… about everything, including God.

Oprah says Women, Food, and God has changed her life and that she’ll never diet again.  Read what Oprah has to say.

But food can help you discover more than your own soul.  It can also reveal the depths of your children’s personalities, beliefs, feelings…

Want to really get to know your children? Look at how they eat. 

Examining the feeding experience can teach you a lot more about your kids than just what kinds of foods they prefer.  It can actually shine a light into their souls.

How your children eat reflects both their personalities and their stage of development.

It’s tempting to think that how well your children eat at any given moment is simply a product of how hungry they are, how tempting the food is, and whether the environment is distracting, but there’s more to it than that.

Kids eat how they do because of who they are.

• Cautious kids eat cautiously. 
• Adventurous kids eat adventurously. 
• And those who are going through a controlling phase – you know, the one that starts around 2 and ends…hopefully sometime before college – usually try out their muscle when it comes to food too.

Instead of freaking out about your children’s bad eating, or gloating about their gastronomic glories, revel in the learning.

And then parent accordingly.

Here are some of the things you can learn from examining how your child eats:

• How your child copes with new experiences.
• How your child manipulates (or tries to manipulate) you.
• How your child responds to pressure.
• How your child deals with temptation.
• How food-centric your child is.
• How controlling your child is.
• How moody your child is and what that mood is today.
• How your child copes with emotions.
• How your child deals with peer pressure.
• How your child responds to limits.
• Whether or not your child is a conflict-avoider.
• How curious your child is.
• How your child’s fine motor skills are developing.
• How much routine your child desires.

The more you know about your children’s temperament and development, the better they will eat.

So, for instance, if you discover your child is going through a control stage, you can redirect his control away from what he eats by offering him choices around where he eats, when he eats and how he eats.  Read Curbing Your Child’s Craving for Control and House Building 101.

If your child isn’t terribly adventurous, help make new foods less frightening.  Read Look Into My Crystal Ball and Mind Over Matter.

And if your child needs help coping with emotions, teach him how to separate emotional hunger from tummy hunger.  Read Feeding the Hunger Within and Help! My Kid is Food Obsessed.

Knowledge isn’t a magic bullet, but it is the first step in figuring out which tools you’ll need to teach your kids to eat right.  You need a big tool bag because every kid is different.

And perhaps it goes without saying, that how you feed your children tells you a lot about your parenting style too.  But that is a topic for another post.

~ Changing the conversation from nutrition to habits. ~

Cookie Love

I love giving my daughter cookies.  It makes me feel fantastic to give her cake too.  And while I’m confessing, nothing beats giving her ice cream.

My daughter lights up when she gets these goodies and making her happy makes me happy.  Actually, it makes me ecstatic!

Do you know what I mean?

When I provide a wholesome meal – complete with salad and vegetables – I feel like a good mother.  But when I give my daughter the treats she loves, I feel like I’m directly transferring love from my heart to hers.  It’s like hooking up an I.V. of happiness. 

The drawback of my cookies=love problem is that one of the most important tool parents have for teaching kids to eat right is proportion: offering foods in relation to their healthful benefits.  Treats should be offered occasionally. I love my daughter all the time!

Setting boundaries around food can be tough -- especially if our lovely little bombshells are well versed in begging, whining and otherwise canoodling candy out of us.  We want to make them happy.  Sometimes brownies do the trick.

But I really want my daughter to learn that food is food, that treats are treats and that love is a feeling.   After all, mixing up food and feelings produces one of the greatest eating struggles people ever have.

Unfortunately, it’s not just my nagging suspicion that loading love onto the plate leads to poor eating.  Research backs me up.

In one recent study, researchers found that family cooks generally fall into one of five dominant personality profiles -- Giving Cooks, Healthy Cooks, Innovative Cooks, Methodical Cooks and Competitive Cooks – and that every type of cook produces healthy eaters except one… the Giving Cook!

The Giving Cook specializes in comfort foods, and traditional favorites, and provides lots of home-baked goodies.

There are plenty of ways parents teach the wrong lessons around food.  It’s not just Food=Love.  There’s also Food=Comfort. Food=Reward.  Food=Guilt.  Food=Punishment.

Do any of these statements from the book Mindless Eating sound familiar?

• “Eat this pudding, it will make you feel better.” (Food as Comfort)
• “If you get an A on your test, we’ll go out for ice cream.” (Food as Reward)
• “Clean your plate; children are starving in China.” (Food as Guilt)
• “Finish your vegetables or you can’t watch T.V.” (Food as Punishment)

Kids are always going to do some emotional eating – it is unavoidable, especially as long as birthdays, Thanksgiving and grandmas exist – but consciously parenting kids around food means minimizing the times we use food as a tool.

Let’s face it, food is a powerful elixir.  But parenting with food is a mistake.  Teach kids to use food to satisfy their hunger, not to soothe their needy souls.

Want some ideas on things you can use instead of food to get your kids to behave? Read Lollypops for Listening? 10 OTHER Ways to Bribe Your Kid into Behaving.

~ Changing the conversation from nutrition to habits. ~

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Source:  Wansink, B., 2006. Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think. New York: Bantam Books. P. 166, 176.