Battling With Kids Over Vegetables
|
Which Is Better: Forcing or Sneaking? Try Neither One In the old days, kids were told, "Eat your vegetables or you won't get dessert." Many of today's parents feel that approach doesn't work. For one thing, it makes dinner a constant battle ground. For another, it didn't work for a lot of us. We either refused to eat the vegetables anyway, or we choked them down and resented it so badly we still don't eat them as adults. They Gotta Have Veggies Somehow, Right? Still, we know vegetables are essential to proper growth, concentration at school, and preventing illness. Enter Jessica Seinfeld and friends. Pureeing is the answer! Pulverize vegetables so they're unrecognizable, then sneak them into regular foods, like mac and cheese, and the kids won't know the difference! Obviously, the idea struck a chord with desperate parents, because Seinfeld's book, Deceptively Delicious, and Missy Chase Lapine's book, The Sneaky Chef, have been hugely successful. Are You Going to Follow Them to College and Sneak Veggies in Their Dorm Food? But what about the long-term implications of sneaking? What happens when the kids are 10 and 12 and go to friends' houses where the mac and cheese is just mac and cheese? Will they still come home and eat the pureed stuff? What happens when they go to college? Will Seinfeld and Lapine sneak into the dining hall to hide pureed cauliflower in the chicken a la king at Harvard? To be fair, both women say vegetables should still be offered at the table in their regular, non-pureed form. But if the kids weren't eating the vegetables before these women resorted to their stealth tactics, why should they eat them after? The Division of Responsibility in Feeding: A Sane Approach To help answer these questions and more, I spoke with Feeding Expert Ellyn Satter, author of Secrets of Feeding a Healthy Family. Satter is the woman who pioneered the concept of the Division of Responsibility in Feeding. You've probably heard this idea before, likely from your child's doctor. But you may not have heard the most important aspects of this approach. Here's what Satter has to say: What is wrong with making kids eat vegetables? Satter: "It's helpful to start from a child's point of view because kids have their own logic. "From a child’s perspective, they think, 'If I have to be made to eat that, it can’t be so good.'" So you're saying this tells kids vegetables are bad before they get a chance to decide for themselves if they like them? Satter: "Yes, but also we have to realize that children do not have to be made to grow up with their eating or anything else. They want to do it on their own. They want to get better with everything they do, including eating. "Our getting pushy with eating just totally ignores their need to grow up on their own." Why Neither of These Approaches Works So what about sneaking vegetables into food the way Jessica Seinfeld and Missy Chase Lapine recommend in their books? Satter: "It is a serious issue. Children are so smart they will figure it out. And when they do, they're going to refuse to eat a lot of foods." So you're saying the strategy could backfire? Satter: "Yes." But we parents feel so much pressure from friends, relatives, doctors, etc. to get our kids to eat healthy foods. My doctor recently told me I should make sure I get at least one green vegetable in my six-year-old every day. How can we cope? Satter: "'Get' is a control word. Parents have to take, not a control stance, but a trust stance. They need to put food on the table and trust that sooner or later, the children will learn to like the food. "As far as coping with the pediatrician, you just have to know that while the advice might be well meaning, that person is not up on research as far as feeding dynamics is concerned." What do you mean? Satter: "A lot of people misinterpret the Division of Responsibility in Feeding. Parents should control the what, when and where of feeding and give the child autonomy with respect to choosing what and how much to eat." Won't they just eat dessert and nothing else all the time? Satter: "Desserts do have an unfair advantage. The recommendation I make for dessert is that parents put a serving of dessert on the table with everything else at each placing setting, and let the child eat dessert when they want. That could be before, during or after the meal, and once it's gone, they don't get any more." Isn't that controlling how much kids eat? Satter: "I'm well aware that that is more controlling than my other recommendations. But I say this because you don't want to set up a forbidden fruit environment. "If you're going to follow the rule for dessert, it's important for you to find a time when a child can have as many cookies as he wants. The time for that is snack time. It is a planned, sit-down snack. Put out a plate of Oreos and some milk and let the child eat Oreos until he's had enough. He doesn't have to feel cut off. "It's important that a snack is a structured sit-down snack, not just a food handout. Parents determine when that snack is going to be, so the child is not allowed to beg and graze." Won't the kids just fill up on Oreos and not eat dinner? Satter: "Yes, typically the child's eating becomes more extreme before it moderates. The parents have to tough it out for three or four weeks while that child comes to trust the new pattern is going to persist. "Too often in today's world, the parents' own eating behaviors are pretty compromised. They don't like a lot of fruits and vegetables, so it's hard for them to imagine the child will get to the point where they will like those foods. "It's hard for them to trust that the child knows where to go with his or her body. It's hard to take anybody else farther than you've gone yourself." Find out which is the best weight loss diet |
