Attitudes to food and feeding with babies, encouraging healthy eating habits in childhood and adulthood...

[hub2dee]

I started a thread the other day about dd (16 months) dropping food . Some interesting comments about whether you address the behaviour / ignore it etc came out. One of those posts: "[I] generally try to make very little comment about food and eating as I don't want to encourage overeating for praise" (by Mawbroon) I thought was particularly interesting as we're often praising dd for 'eating well' (trying to taste unusual foods, doing fab finger-pincer cuteness on a plate of peas etc., holding a spoon or fork and managing to get stuff in her mouth, etc. ), and, whilst I appreciate this isn't quite in the realm of "good girl, you ate your brocolli which is good but you shouldn't have too much cake because it's bad, bad, bad" , I was wondering if anyone else might like to discuss how one encourages healthy eating 'for life' IYSWIM...

dw and I are both overweight, and are keen to avoid instilling unhealthy eating patterns on dd (whether consciously or sub-consciously), so it would be interesting to get other people's feedback on this topic generally, or on specifics such as:

1. If there are foods such as cake / sweets / crisps / chocolate in your home / at a party / famly dinner etc. would you eat them, would you allow your toddler to eat them, would you attempt to limit what they ate of these foods (ie. saying 'that's enough' before they've chosen to stop, by saying 'that's not allowed' or by only allowing it only after their main course IYSWIM) ?

2. Should you praise / encourage children to taste different foods (particularly new / unusual food), or just allow them to discover / not discover what is available.

3. Should you do the "do you want one more bit before I take it away now you seem to be finished" thing ? (I do this !)

FWIW, If dd is not minded to eat at a particular mealtime I never worry, I let her eat as much as she wants and she stops when she wants, and she gets snacks between meals if she seems hungry / points at fruit etc. / I remember / stuff is available... we don't particularly 'schedule' snack times. (Meals too tend to be around 12 or around 5:30 - if they need to happen earlier or slip later we just go with the flow.

(Sorry if a similar discussion has been had recently, I've never noticed one on quite this topic before).

Deffo chase, sounds like it could be interesting. Weird not to have heard back though. I presume you gave ODI your Number 10 red hot line number and have been busy with Tony saving the world from things that it needs to be saved from.

Hours at work sounds like a good plan too, though I expect it'll be hard.

Race ya:

abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz

You win

If I'm at a family party with cake or whatever then I will let LO (8) have some, but I do encourage her to eat savory items first & do say, well I think you've had plenty of cake now & if you're still hungry have another sandwich instead. I will eat stuff like that in front of her.

I do encourage her to eat new foods as it was really awkward on holiday when she wouldn't try anything new. I praise her if she tries something & then says she doesn't like it politely rather than saying yuck really loudly!

She is pretty good at eating her meals - I think we give her enough but not too much. She is not allowed a pudding if she hasn't eaten her main course as I feel that if she's really that hungry then she would have eaten it, but I won't force her to sit there until she's finished it.

my 14 year old is jokily laughed at in school because he eats so healthily...
dp and i are both healthy eaters.
i do encourage trying of different foods but am not huge on sweet things...(for them - i am a horror in private!)
At party time etc they can eat what they like.
I am only really restrictive with things like breakfast cereals ( all healthy - no others in house) and yoghurts - only buy big pots of nice stuff - no kids nasty things.
My children have all been big beefy toddlers but by 10 are rakes!

HC's views are very interesting. I would love to have a chat with someone like this. My DS is severely allergic to 5 different foods, egg being the most difficult to avoid, and he is very fussy to boot. He will eat a very limited diet and is underweight. Getting him to try new foods is very traumatic as he decides before hand that he doesn't like it. Sometimes this intensely annoys me as he is prone to infections which often triggers his asthma.

Intellectually I know everything HC is correct and yet there are times when I want to punish him for not eating by witholding sweets. It is so primal to want to feed your children and to want to feed them well but it ccan be soooooo difficult. He is 7. He is under a consultant for his allergies who has tried to reassure me that kids like this are often fussy and he is tall for his age so he must be getting enough. His ribs sticking out are what bugs me and the constant infection.

We didn't buy unhealthy foods - so in the house there just wouldn;t be any biscuits, chocolates etc, not part of normal foods for the children. Obviously not rigid and sometimes they were given them or bought them.

Never make a fuss about food. Few chidlren will starve if good food is put before them. I've never in 22 years as a mother argued aout eating food up. I can't be bothered. It doesn't matter. Food is there, you eat it. If you don't want it so what?

Try not to have snacks, just eat at meal times.

Children mostly learn by example so parents first take the plank out of your own eye before looking to your young etc....

Get them into cooking and watching you cook particularly as teenagers.

Snacks vs. meal-times only eating is an interesting point too... Often we are told that smallish meals more often (ie. breakfast, mid morning snack, lunch, afternoon / tea-time snack, dinner) is better but I wonder if this reinforces the idea that one is always 'about to eat' IYSWIM... alternatively perhaps it helps keep sugar-levels in check for continued energy throughout the day ?

dros' point is also interesting: "It is so primal to want to feed your children and to want to feed them well" - I get the impression some people do see food like this (perhaps exacerbated if children tend to be fussier / have more allergies / limited diet), whilst others really see it fairly devoid of emotion: it's fuel - 'eat if you're hungry, don't if you're not' type of thing...

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Pruni you reminded me of a compliment back home in Ireland - 'she is a fine horse of a woman'. Needless to say skinny women weren't much use with a plough.

HC I absolutely agree with your posts.

ds eats when hungry, not when not. i try not to give too many snacks between meals other than fruit, pickles, basically stuff that will not fill him up, so he often is hungry at mealtimes.

nothing is banned, i enjoy cooking and we really enjoy preparing healthy food together (eat fresh roasted mackerel at least once a week, about his favourite thing in the world is feeling 'his' fish and patting it dry before putting it in to cook), but he also has chocolate and biscuits if he wants (although is as likely to want an apple, or mango or whatever it is i'm eating, he ate leftover squid stew from last night for supper tonight!).

as a background to all of this though is an awareness that many people's weight issues and unhealthy relationship with food, specifically emotional eating is linked to two things (imo and ime).

firstly, many of our parents and grandparents have lived through real food shortages (i'm thinking during the wars and post war). whether this is our parents or grandparents, the implications of having gone hungry are huge and filter down the generations. in my family, my grandparents lived in starvation conditions for a couple of years (siberia during WW2). I grew up with a granny (we lived in the same house as my grandparents) that had enough hoarded in the cellar to feed us all for 2 years should there be a nuclear strike (!!!). by contrast my mum never has anything in the storecupboards or fridge, we lived one meal at a time, which had it's own effects.

secondly, emotional eating is often due to some kind of emotional impoverishment, not so much about food, but about some disfunction or lack in terms of emotional sustenance. good attitudes to food are not always anything to do with food iyswim.

I have also heard it said that one of the few things kids have control over is food. My mum would have seen hard times and her mantra was if I could not eat all my dinner - 'eat the meat'. By contrast a work colleague said his mum's mantra was 'eat what you can'.

Interestingly in my family my sister was anorexic in her teens and my other sister is and was very overweight. I was very skinny as a child and am now average. The one thing I know for sure is not one of us has a good relationship with food.

My dd has always been tricky with food and a v. strong willed child as well. So food is bound to be a battle ground.

I found HC's post very interesting. I guess I have taken your views to the extreme. Dd is completely free-range in what she eats. She has food at mealtimes but if she does not eat, it is left on the coffee table for her to help herself when she is hungry. And yes, in between playing with her dolls, she sometimes takes a bite or more, sometimes finishes, other times never touches it. We don't make a huge issue of it.

She is pretty much allowed naughty snacks if she asks for it, with only the caveat that she is not allowed too much. Right now, she is eating far too much junk ( eg frankfurters) than I like

But at nursery and Grandma's house, she eats practically anything that is put in front of her - not sure why she will not do that at home.

Oh, and I snack all day long in between meals, with a fair bit of junk as well. But all meals are homecooked from scratch. We love our food in this family and can't imagine making it anything other than an enjoyable activity, even if it isn't the most healthy food.

dd and I are slim, but that could just be our genes.

This is SUCH an interesting thread. I have a couple of questions, though (not to take over OP, I hope, but to add to discussion):

a) why is it so important not to praise eating? I praise many things, you walked 2 steps - clap, clap; you pointed at the monkey - clap, clap, clap; you gave the baby a kiss - clap, clap, clap! Surely it is good to show approval, disapproval to kids, to be emotionally involved with them. Why should food be 'highlighted' as a different category? If we are to be relaxed and balanced towards it, shouldn't it be treated in the way you treat other activities?

b) fwiw as i said below i had the 'eat everything on the plate before pudding', which seems to break (at least) 2 good eating rules - forced eating AND sweets as treats! although i am not necessarily planning to do this, i can say i have never had any form of eating disorder (except eating mcdonald's for most of my twenties when i couldn't be bothered/ too busy to cook!), and although i could prob do with losing a bit of baby flab, i am not 'overweight'. we always sat down to eat as a family and mealtimes where a great family time of day. i'm sure this also fosters a healthy attitude and enjoyment of eating.

What an interesting discussion. I am sorry if I take over from the OP too, with my own experiences.

I think we have fallen into two traps with our DD who just turned 4. We give out praise for eating a good amount of her dinner and we call junk foods (chocolate and cakes) treats. I wonder what we can do to reverse this, particularly the latter.

In my defense, DD1 knows that treat foods are limited because they are bad for her teeth. We don't talk about fat or thin or diets in this house!

If I had chocolate and cakes in the house all the time I feel that's all she would ask to eat. By limiting them to a weekend, which mirrors what DH and I do, is that so bad?

I see the point about not giving praise for the quantity of food eaten. I hadn't thought about that before. It's so ingrained in us from our own parents that 'good' eating should be rewarded and sadly ingrained in us that 'good' eating means clearing your plate at every meal. Dh's parents were the type who made him eat his cold leftover dinner for breakfast! As did my father's parents. Both my dad and DH have a problem with leaving food on their plates.

I think I'll talk to DH and take on a new approach. We can stop focussing on the amount she eats and simply ask if she has had enough. She does tell us she is "all filled-up" when she wants to stop eating, so at least seems to associate stopping eating with being full.

We don't make her eat everything on her plate but we do expect a good effort. She's an easily distracted, procrastinating 4 year old, so sometimes it is difficult to know if she's not eating becuase she has no appetite or if she is not eating because she can't be bothered. It's becoming more common that we'll all tuck into our meal and turn around 5 minutes later to see DD1 dreamily waving her clean fork in the air, having not touched a morself of food. I suppose the way to tackle that is to offer her our help?

Is it not OK to give praise for trying new foods?

Sorry for the hijack.

Hi all,
This is a very interesting discussion and its certainly got me thinking!

My dd is now 8 and has always had a very small appitite although she used to eat a good variety of food stuffs, meat, fish, veg, potatos, rice and pasta as well as sweeter offerings!

However, as she has got older she is becoming much more fussy over what she will and won't eat and it seems to chnge daily...for instance sometimes mushrooms are yummy and then they're poison!!!

We have begun to realize that if there is a pudding or after supper 'treat' on offer then she suddenly doesn't like anything on her plate as then she can go straight to the sweet things! For this reason we've instigated a no afters if you've not made a good attempt at supper (we don't insist all of it is eaten, just a good proportion). We don't have puddings or treats everyday as I'm overweight and so try to eat a healthy diet (and encourage dd to do so too!) but I don't stop dd (apart from if she's eaten no supper) from having treats, puddings etc. I just try to emphasise that they ARE treats ans should be eaten in moderation!

I hope I'm not passing on any of my bad food attitudes to her but I have found I need to be careful about saying I'm on a diet as she does pick up on it and ask if she should diet too (she's a stick insect at the moment ). I try to emphasise that I'm trying to eat healthily now in the hope that she has a better attitude to food!

Hi Ellie, I obviously can't speak for anyone else on this thread, nor wish to put words in hc's mouth (there's a good girl, have a nice word ) but I think the point re: "why is it so important not to praise eating" (compared to walking or linguistic echievements etc.) is that, whilst it is recognised that eating is a social activity, and food can be prepared so it is either more tasty or less tasty, food is to be treated as an available resource.... if you're hungry, eat it (enjoy it) and then move onto something else. If you're not hungry, and there's food infront of you, leave it. Rewarding kids when they eat says it's good to eat, mum or dad love it when you eat, and possibly that our love wavers when you don't want to eat or you've decided you've had enough, and that 'just having one more bit before I take it away' is a development of that: "I'll think you're trying extra hard and being extra good if you just have this extra morsel" IYSIWM. (I'm exagerating, simplifying and stereotyping my text to make a point, but I hope there's a point there somewhere, LOL !)

(I appreciate I've not quite answered your question re: why should eating be different to identifying a monkey).

Re: clearing plate before pudding / sweets as treats - i think it is related to similar points I make above... it posits sweets as 'good things' possibly better than the vegetables etc. that you've got to 'get through' in order to be granted access to 'the good stuff' IYSWIM, also, it doesn't quite incorporate the ability for the child not to finish their plate and still get a sweet IYSWIM, thus possibly stifling their ability to naturally control their appetite or select healthy foodstuffs (or a balance of foodstuffs, some of which might be more healthy than others IYSWIM).

When at schol I can vividly remember a psychology teacher outlining to us an experiement that was used to support a humanistic view of human behaviour (which, to paraphrase, is something like 'people are naturally good and growth-oriented')... kiddies were allowed into a room for a meal which had a buffet of both 'healthy' foods and 'unhealthy' foods. They were given no instructionas to what they could or couldn't eat. I think this experiment occured daily for a week). At first they tended to gorge themselves on all the unhealthy foods, but after severl days, when they could see the unhealthy sweets weren't going to be taken away, and they could have as much of whatever as they wanted, they tended to select a variety of foods to give them healthy balanced meals. It is the 'permission' / 'trust' that our minds and bodies will select a healthy balance of foods which is behind some of the approaches / points made in this thread.

(I know this is long, sorry)

Aderyn - I hope the above also addresses your post a little. I expect re: "We don't make her eat everything on her plate but we do expect a good effort. She's an easily distracted..." one would say that she should eat whatever she wants, and if she is distracted and mealtime is over this is tough; she will either snack later on something or realise that mealtimes are the best chance of grabbing a nice meal and she'll be a lot more hungry (and therefore eat more of her meal) at the next mealtime IYSWIM.

hth

Neither me nor DP have ever been overweight (now into our 40s)and have 2 DDs 6 and 4.

I do praise for eating well, I do let them know about healthier foods, but like all others on this thread, no food is bad as such. I do tell them that eating too much of anything is not good for them. They know about the 5 portions of fruit and veg thing and they love to count up what they've had.

DD1 is a dream, will eat virtually anything and everything and has done since weaning. She is a whippet, constantly on the go and constantly hungry/thinking about her next meal.

DD2 is much more sedate, eats far less than DD1 (although still eats a good range of stuff)and will eat only when I tell her it's a mealtime - she never asks for snacks between meals - unlike DD2, it's not something it seems, she thinks about. DD2 however is deliciously plump with a pot belly you could set your pint on .

I do praise for eating well - not eating lots, but eating well, especially trying new stuff.

I repeat everything my own dad did really, when he raised me, cos basically I did ok from it.

Thanks Hub - for starting this and allowing me to think about getting back to the attitude we started out with towards children and food.

Getting 'dessert' has never been dependent on amount of main course eaten. We nearly always finish a meal with yoghurt or fruit or both.

DD1 is quite a good eater compared to some children. We're a mostly cook from scratch family and DD eats a variety of foods. We also include her in the preparation of meals - although DH is better at doing this than me. He has more patience!

Hmmm, seems we need to change our thinking a little bit, just to get over the quantity expectation and the labelling of chocolate and cakes as treats.

Thanks again.

Thanks for starting this hub.

I've been really interested in everyone's views, and particularly Pruni's comments about the differing views she and her brother hold to food, and its emotional aspects.

My mother was anorexic/bulimic from when I was about 7 years old (I'm now nearly 38 and she's still bulimic). I have HUGE issues with food and am seeing a counsellor.

Like Pruni's brother, I used/use food as a weapon, a crutch, a comfort but also to self-harm (yes, I do mean self-harm. I am well aware what overeating is doing to my health, and yet I continue to do it).

My dd is 2 and has a good attitude to food. She asks to eat when she is hungry, will eat a relatively balanced diet (although currently refusing most veg!) and says "enough" when she's finished. I NEVER praise her for finishing, because I want her to know what it feels like to be full, and to know that she can stop eating. She is always allowed fruit or yoghurt for pudding, even if she's only eaten a single mouthfull of her main course. She has cake sometimes, but very rarely sweets.

However, I am well aware that in spite of all my efforts, by far the biggest influence on her food habits will be what she sees around her. I acquired my food habits watching my mother either binge or starve. I saw anger about food being eaten when my mother was in a bulimic phase, I saw joy and jubilation when food was eaten if she was in an anorexic phase.

I know that my daughter's future attitudes to food depend on me.

I would love to feel "normal" about food but fear that it will be a life-long battle, just as it has been for my mother. But, it's a battle I will continue to try and win, for the sake of my darling daughter.

Hub I have heard of that experiment before. It is very interesting. DP always gets a craving for fruit if he has eaten a lot of meat. I wonder if this experiment were conducted today if there would be a few kids who would continue to gorge on the unhealthy food?

Interesting discussion.

One thing I am very aware of, having 2 dds, is my responsibility to instill healthy attitudes to food and self. I don't especially have these myself and am determined not to pass my own issues on. So - the word diet is banned in our house. There are times when I am on one, but it is not mentioned or discussed in any way. I am reasonably fortunate in my metabolism (size 12ish but massive norks (this worries me for the dds' future))and am pretty active. Dh is not as fortunate and is also quite greedy. Consequence is he is fat, as are all of his birth family. At the moment the dds are both willowy, and pretty good eaters.

Our attitude to dd1's meals is we like her to make a good attempt at what is on her plate. If she doesn't really so this, we don't fuss, but she knows that there will be nothing else until her next meal time. The exception to this is fruit, which is always available and kept within their reach, so they can help themselves. Dd2 is 22mo and thus too young to instigate the "if you don't eat a decent amount of your dinner, don't come asking for sncks" thang we have going with dd1. She is also a small child, who doesn't seem to be that hungry. She tends to eat 1 good meal a day, then grazes on fruit, crackers etc at other meal times. As she get bigger I would hope to do the same with her as dd1.

We never insist that plates are cleared but we do say well done if either child eats esp well - particularly if they were fussing early on in the meal.We rarely have pudding, though there is always yoghurt if she eaten a good meal and wants more.

We do have biscuits, choc etc a couple of times a week. They are seen as nice extras, rather than treats/sins or part of mealtimes per se. They can have snacks any time so long as its not too close to meals - we do limit quantity. Except fruit - see above.

Wot a ramling post - apologies!

To clarify - biscuits often - probably 1 per child per day on average.

Choc/sweets - once or twice a week.

I've found this all really interesting.

Foxinsocks I also have a dd with multiple food allergies (4 yo) and I am careful how I talk to her about the foods she's allergic to - eg. she was at a party yesyterday and the other children had Iced Gems which she wasn't allowed - I said to her 'Yes, what a shame you're allergic to them. Maybe when you're a bit bigger yuo'll be able to have them. Never mind, you had lots of lovely things on your plate' - we always try to keep the possibility in her mind that one day she will be able to eat things she's allergic to, and not to think of them as bad foods as such.

As for healthy-eating...before the party dd said 'Well I'd better have something healthy for lunch because there'll be unhealthy food at the party!' Dh was amazed and accused me of giving birth to a 30-yr-old! We do classify foods as either 'healthy' or 'unhealthy', which is v. black and white but helps dd understand why she can't have sweets whenever she wants.

I get really frustrated if when I present the dcs with something new they immediately decide they don't like it. I think that teaching healthy eating is a very long term project and is well worth the effort. It took my ds ages to decide that actually rice is okay, and I love it when he eats it up happily now.