[quote=“sjcma”]If you want details, the classic book on this topic is this one:
EDIT: I see honeybird has already mentioned the book above as well as another good one by Ellyn Satter. So yeah…what honeybird said.[/quote]
Thanks for the tip. I bought the book and it’s very helpful.
The author stresses how it’s the parent’s job to buy lots of good foods and put them on the table. It’s the child’s job to decide which foods he/she will eat and how much.
We’ve been following her advice. We ensure that there are always several good, healthy, tasty choices to choose from. Don’t short-order cook for the kid – don’t get up in the middle of dinner if he/she doesn’t want what’s being served and prepare something else special ordered. Instead, ensure that if she doesn’t like the fish she can eat the bread and veggies and drink her milk, etc. And, recognize that kids often eat slowly, so one should accept that and allow more time – adjust to that reality instead of trying to force them to unnaturally adapt to your adult pace.
Actually, a large part of our success, I believe, is with the authority of the book (neutral 3d party expert) as support, my wife has backed off on her very firm stance and we’ve given our daughter more control to eat the quantity she wants (more than before anyway). So I think our girl feels we’ve given her more control, so she’s responding responsibly and eating what she needs rather than playing games with us (and vice versa).
Glad to hear that things are working out for you, MT. Eating can be such a struggle between parents and kids. Even though we know what to do, sometimes, emotions get the better of us (ok…more my wife) and all those learned skills go out the window. However, it always backfires on us invariably.
Ours is just 4.5 yrs old, but I still tried to keep the book buried under a magazine, etc., on the coffee table, rather than lying out in plain sight, and to avoid openly discussing it with my wife, because I didn’t want her to know I was reading about how to manipulate her.
Nonetheless, she observed the book and remembered it precisely, because over dinner the other day she told me, “I saw you have a book called ‘How to Get Your Child to Eat, but Not Too Much’.”
Damn. Busted. So I told her, yes, I’m learning how to cook good delicious meals that children will like. Incidentally, our dinner that evening satisfied the book’s criteria precisely and was a huge success: homemade macaroni and cheese (I let her pick which noodle beforehand, giving her some control over that process and I bought noodles she liked, with a big girl on the package), a great salad (I’ve been extremely pleased at our success with salads) and a cup of milk. Lots of protein, calcium and nutritients.
It’s invariably a slow process, but we’re more accepting of the fact that kids are often incapable of eating as quickly as adults. But, so long as you put out a good variety of healthy foods that appeal to kids, give them some control over the process, do proper family dinners at the dining table with TV turned off as often as possible, and try not to push them too much, it should work out reasonably well. Just start earlier if you must finish by a certain time (same as with everything else; kids need time and don’t like to be pushed to suddenly perform in an instant).
We were told by a doctor to give ours some LP33 which is a specific brand of yoghurt drink to encourage his stomach to digest more effectively. Because he didn’t each much his stomach juices weren’t flowing which caused him to eat little and he was stuck in a cycle. Since he started the yoghurt drink there was an immediate difference in appetite and eating pace. Like magic he started to eat much quicker and even started to request food, which was unheard of.
I really feel for you and I’m glad you’re making progress. I took a training course for how to feed special needs kids–sometimes that meant problems swallowing or chewing, but many times that meant kids who didn’t want to eat or were so slow.
I had great success with the biggest tip of all–to lavish lots of postivie attention on them when they are activley eating and behaving properly, but to turn away from them (if not a choaking risk) for refusal to eat/innapropriate behavior. Once in Taiwan, the secretary at my first bushiban asked me if I had any ideas about feeding her kid because he stayed at work with her all day and would take forever about eating, crying and having a fit over the smallest thing. I told her to give lots of love and positive attention for appropriate behavior, but turn away from him for innapropriate behavior. If the lunch hour was up and he hadn’t eaten–too bad. It worked.
Then I had my own son. He turned out to be a very, very slow eater. At one point I couldn’t even get him to finish the insides of two shao long bau in two hours. The dr. in Taiwan gave him something that gave him an incredable appatite, but it came on and went away so quickly that it wasn’t really helpful and I only gave it to him once or twice. It’s so much harder to deal with your own child’s issues than someone else’s!
Finally, he got where he’d eat more–especially after taking my mom’s advice and just leaving his food within his reach for about four hours. He’d never sit down to eat, but would graze as he played. I also found that it helped a lot if there were others around eating, too, not just the two of us. Especially other kids.
Now, he’s in school and still taking so long about eating that he doesn’t get to finish. I’ve tried including candy treats with the directive that he can’t have them until he’s finished his meal, but the treats just come back home because he’s not eating fast enough.
He’s five and a half now and so concerned with wanting to play and socialize that he doesn’t want to stop playing and eat. Rather than fight, I’ve just gotten to where I don’t argue. Then when it’s bed time and he’s hungry, he simply has to wait 'till breakfast. He rarely does this twice in a row, but it hasn’t stopped completely. Over the summer he outgrew everything he owned. So I’ve stopped worrying too much about it. If he’s hungry, he’ll eat. I can’t be a short order cook, and I can’t force him to eat like I’d like him to. He’s healthy and I guess that’s what matters.
We do this as well, but not regularly and mostly unaware at the time that we’re actually bribing him. Bribing is not a good way to motivate a child to eat as it sends the message that meal time is so much of a chore that it requires incentives beyond the meal itself. Ultimately, it’s a poor motivator.
Yup, young kids won’t voluntarily starve themselves. They’ll get hungry eventually and if the only food provided is of the fresh and nutritious variety, that’s what will eventually go into their tummies. The important thing is to develop good eating habits – sitting down at meal times, maximum time for each meal, no gorging during snack times, etc.
