Please Don't Be This Parent

It is amazing how possessed some parents are about what and how much their child eats. At the San Diego Zoo, watching elephants eat, a parent started in on her child. "See how the elephant eats everything" she said. I'm no child psychologist, but does she think that her kid is going to relate to the elephant and decide, "wow, she's right, I'll start eating all of my vegetables too". Or does the kid think, "I thought we were here for fun and now I'm being lectured about my vegetables." I vote for the latter. If mom keeps this up soon the kid won't want to go anywhere with mom, as he feels he will always be an open target for criticism.

Please don't be this parent. All the studies that quantify the feeding behaviors between parents and children have shown that when a parent over manages the child's eating, the child will over eat when left on his or her own. A parent's job is to provide a variety of healthy food in a timely manner and letthe child choose to eat the offered foods or not.

I have seen over and over a child signalling that he or she is done with the meal. The parent says "take one more bite before you go". What is this parent trying to accomplish? I am still amazed by how many parents think one more bite of food will make or break a child's nutrition, unlikely. This "one more bite" becomes a knee jerk reaction on the part of the parent, always insisting on the last decision. This is not a successful way to teach a child to take care of him or her self. Nor does it let a child know they can trust their own internal cues for knowing when they have had enough food. We are all born with a natural instinct to eat to survive, and know when we have had enough. The only reason children loose this ability is if we teach them to ignore it, by telling them how much to eat.