Friday, January 20, 2006
Kids and Food
I have a great friend, I'll call her Ella, who takes pride in preparing separate meals for each member of her family. Ella is an amazing cook by any standard, and the "grownup" fare she prepares would rival that of the finest restaurant. Her children, though, are fed a variety of chicken nuggets, pasta with sauce on the side, and grilled cheese sandwiches. I have to admit that it horrifies me!
I am not one of those mothers who prepares multiple meals to satisfy individual appetites. In other words, if the kids don't like what we're having, they don't have to eat it. Don't get me wrong, my kids don't starve. I know what they like, and I try to include something they'll eat at each meal. But I don't want to fall into the trap of preparing something different for each member of the family. It seems too... decadent.
I base my philosophy of family feeding on a strangely-named but great book on the topic: Ellen Satter's Child of Mine: Feeding with Love and Good Taste. Her basic premise, as I remember it, is that as the parent it is your job to put healthy and appetizing food on the table. It is up to your child to choose whether and how much to eat.
In practice this can sometimes be difficult -- I'm tempted more nights than not to offer my two-year-old something I KNOW she'll eat when she pushes away her meal untouched. But I usually keep myself from offering, hoping that she will learn to try new things. My 8-year-old has a pretty good appetite and eats just about everything (including meat!). Sometimes I take total credit, certain that my philosophy on food has helped her to become such a good eater. There's no way for me to know, though, whether it's nature or nurture-- I acknowledge the possibility that she was just born a good eater. I can already see that my 2-year-old has much more of a sweet tooth, so she may prove more of a challenge. I'm trying to keep Satter's advice close at hand.
A nutritionist, Satter provides knowledgeable advice from breastfeeding forward. One suggestion I followed was not to grind up grownup food to make baby food -- if you can't feed it to a healthy baby without sticking it in a blender, the baby's probably too young to be eating it in the first place. Satter is big into letting babies experience the joy of playing with food and connecting that to learning to feed themselves. She helps set up healthy feelings about food and prevent power struggles that can turn into dangerous eating disorders later in life.
What would she say about Super Moms like my friend Ella who lovingly prepare several meals a night to please each family member?
"Children learn to eat a variety of foods and take responsibility for their own eating when they are regularly offered a variety of nutritious food in a no-pressure environment. No pressure means getting a meal on the table and eating with a child rather than feeding her. Generating food especially for a child makes pressure an unavoidable part of the equation." (p. 3, italics are hers).
What could Ella do with the time she would save by only preparing one meal a night? Hmmmm... maybe have friends over for dinner more often?
I am not one of those mothers who prepares multiple meals to satisfy individual appetites. In other words, if the kids don't like what we're having, they don't have to eat it. Don't get me wrong, my kids don't starve. I know what they like, and I try to include something they'll eat at each meal. But I don't want to fall into the trap of preparing something different for each member of the family. It seems too... decadent.
I base my philosophy of family feeding on a strangely-named but great book on the topic: Ellen Satter's Child of Mine: Feeding with Love and Good Taste. Her basic premise, as I remember it, is that as the parent it is your job to put healthy and appetizing food on the table. It is up to your child to choose whether and how much to eat.
In practice this can sometimes be difficult -- I'm tempted more nights than not to offer my two-year-old something I KNOW she'll eat when she pushes away her meal untouched. But I usually keep myself from offering, hoping that she will learn to try new things. My 8-year-old has a pretty good appetite and eats just about everything (including meat!). Sometimes I take total credit, certain that my philosophy on food has helped her to become such a good eater. There's no way for me to know, though, whether it's nature or nurture-- I acknowledge the possibility that she was just born a good eater. I can already see that my 2-year-old has much more of a sweet tooth, so she may prove more of a challenge. I'm trying to keep Satter's advice close at hand.
A nutritionist, Satter provides knowledgeable advice from breastfeeding forward. One suggestion I followed was not to grind up grownup food to make baby food -- if you can't feed it to a healthy baby without sticking it in a blender, the baby's probably too young to be eating it in the first place. Satter is big into letting babies experience the joy of playing with food and connecting that to learning to feed themselves. She helps set up healthy feelings about food and prevent power struggles that can turn into dangerous eating disorders later in life.
What would she say about Super Moms like my friend Ella who lovingly prepare several meals a night to please each family member?
"Children learn to eat a variety of foods and take responsibility for their own eating when they are regularly offered a variety of nutritious food in a no-pressure environment. No pressure means getting a meal on the table and eating with a child rather than feeding her. Generating food especially for a child makes pressure an unavoidable part of the equation." (p. 3, italics are hers).
What could Ella do with the time she would save by only preparing one meal a night? Hmmmm... maybe have friends over for dinner more often?
