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).

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I try not to be fussy about food. My mum has always been really skinny, and I think her appetite is determined to some extent to how she feels (it's hard to eat when you're being chased by tigers). I've noticed this in myself. I think it matters more what you eat over the course of a week or a month than what you eat in a day, so if you eat chocolate cake all day and drink sherry with it, but do it only once a year, it's not going to make much difference if you generally eat well. As such, I don't make a fuss if dd (age 2) eats masses of biscuits at playgroup, because she's not going to be eating bics at home, and she probably won't have many more bics or chocs during the week. I think apetite is fairly self-regulating if you allow it to be. I think we are very hard on ourselves and you are really only severely over or under weight if you have lost your shape altogether.

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OK. Am beginning to get a few messages! Don't agree with it all, but there are definitely things I will change or things I am doing 'instinctively' which I feel better about. I have taken a lot from the advice on treating all food as food, not labelling 'good' or 'bad' and treats being sweets/ choc. And counting to 5 fruit/ veg a day is cool!

Still not sure I wholeheartedly agree with the praise thing or not 'forcing' to eat. And as for kids stopping when they are 'full up', my ds definitely is hungry for 'some things' and not others! Surely kids will eat what they like and not eat what they don't like if given the chance - nothing to do with stopping because not hungry. Ds will refuse his main course, but happily scoff down a yoghurt, and he's only 1 yr old. If he was truly full up, why would he eat the yoghurt?! I do insist he eats some of the main meal but not clearing the plate.

I still don't get the difference between trying hard to eat something you don't like much (or as much as something else you KNOW is in the fridge), and trying hard to walk a few steps. I think eating your sandwich, even though what you really want is just the chocolate cake/ banana/ yoghurt, is worthy of praise.

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