Eating Well #2 With Love
Sometimes, a little love makes all the difference in helping a child to eat well.
Ideas Families Have Tried:
1. Good stuff first.
Teach kids that their bodies need the nutritious foods first, to be healthy, and only a little bit of treats afterward.
Years ago, our young family put our family rules to song. One of the rules, which was established when children were very young, was “Before we eat other food, eat our food.” (Mark came up with that wording as I recall!) This simply means that before the children eat dessert, they must finish the food that is before them. The same song phrase worked for finishing the bites on their plate before they got something different. It is not necessarily all of it that is required, but Mom or Dad will set an amount of bites required. If a child has been served a large helping, for example, and has done a valiant effort of trying to get down something she doesn’t care for, Dad might say “OK, one more bite.” But if someone has been jumpy and unable to sit and eat, and I know he will get up and be hungry again soon, I might require “5 more big bites!”
2. Let kids shop.
Sometimes, kids are simply asking for a choice in the matter of what to eat. Picking out foods at the grocery store allows for some choice.
A friend of mine let her children pick out the vegetables and fruit in the produce section of the store. She found that when the kids chose it, they would eat it. One time, her 9-year old daughter chose asparagus. It was something that she nor her husband had never cooked or even tried before. She looked up how to prepare it, and they tried it. And asparagus became a family favorite! One time, her 15-year old son picked Cassava melon. It was fun to try something new and interesting!
My sister-in-law had a little boy who would only eat peanut butter, oatmeal, and spaghetti! She was exasperated with trying to get this skinny son of hers to eat. So she took him to the store to pick out what he wanted. Guess what he chose? Peanut butter, oatmeal, and spaghetti!! So the next time, she told him to pick anything healthy in the store, except for those three items! I am anxious to find out the rest of this story! I will let you know what he chose! And what he ate!
My Favorite Idea:
- Let kids cook!
One summer, I decided to let my children—ages 5-18 help cook. When I prepared my menus and shopping lists, I let each child pick a main dish which I wrote down with the ingredients to buy on the back. On their particular turn, I helped the child cook as much as he or she could. I let the older kids read the recipe and do most of it alone. I found that they loved choosing what we eat and the loved the experience of cooking it. Not only that, they appreciated the meal more when they had cooked it, and ate better too!
Several of my boys loved to make “space food!” It was their own special concoction snack made of crushed graham crackers mixed together in a plastic bag with peanut butter and honey. It didn’t make too much of a mess, it was pretty nutritious, and it was fun to make and eat!!
A couple of my boys were extra inclined to be scientists—they were constantly at the sink experimenting! Cooking fit right in with that! There are all kinds of scientific reactions that take place when you cook! One of my sons in particular loves to cook (and loves to eat it), so on Sundays, I ask if he will make part of our dinner. He usually likes to pick a dessert to make, and has become an excellent cookie or brownie maker. Occasionally, he will look up a new recipe online to try. I love it, and the family likes to try his new stuff!
One time, when this son was probably 7, he searched through the freezer to find cool things to put in his smoothie. He found some frozen banana, which he added to the blender with the other yummy stuff. Excitedly, he presented his masterpiece to me to taste. It was good—but there was something weird in there! Turns out, the” frozen banana” was really frozen raw bacon. We still laugh with him about that concoction!
Sharing my kitchen with the kids has helped them learn new skills, and be better eaters too! And if the kitchen is only stocked with good foods, they are the ones that will get used in their cooking!
4. Show financial reasons for good food.
Mark and I sat down with their family one night and spelled out to them the family finances. Their young kids did not realize that they had to pay for lights, and for water, and for all these things they thought were free! When I spelled out how much it cost to buy the family’s food, the kids understood better why they didn’t always get to buy expensive snacks and goodies. They now knew why Mommy had to say no at the grocery store. They also could better see why the family tried hard not to be wasteful. It helped them eat up what was on their plate.
5. Love=Good Food
Help Children see that you feed them because you love them. Convince them that you love them so much, you want them to be healthy and happy. Fix special things you know they love on birthdays, and sometimes, on regular days too.
Tough love is still love! When I have occasionally hid or thrown away some of the sugary treats that the family had already eaten too much of, her kids complained. “Sugar is like poison,” I reminded them, “if you eat too much.” “Would I be a good mother if I fed you poison?” That made them stop complaining. They realized I was right.
My daughter’s 4-year old hated dinnertime. He hated the word dinner! It was such a negative experience for him, cuz he never liked the food! She had been working hard not to enable his pickiness. But in the process, she realized, mealtime had become negative. She decided to work on that. She started fixing his favorite food, frozen pizza, once a week. Then she could say, “It’s dinnertime, and we’re having frozen pizza!” “Yeah!” would be his response. And his picky-ness started to get better.
She still required about three bites of the meals he didn’t like. But instead of staying there in the kitchen in a stand-off, and trying to ignore his fussing or cries for help, she decided to spell out to him that he must eat the required bites before he got down from the table, then she would leave. Invariably, this son would take the bites much sooner, and come to her to say he was done and that it actually tasted pretty good! Dinnertime at their home had become a more happy time.
This same daughter had a young daughter liked to suck on her food. Hours after dinner was over, she would find her little girl still sucking on one of her first bites of food! She was getting more and more worried about her daughter’s eating enough! After many unsuccessful attempts to shake her daughter from this habit, Jill finally asked her husband to join with her in prayer. The idea came to them to have her take this little girl on her lap and feed her with a spoon for awhile. The extra time and extra love turned out to be just the thing to solve the problem. They were so grateful for the direction from God for the care of their little sweetheart.
How do you get your kids to eat well? Please comment below or at marlene@theanswerismorelove.com.