I was at a picnic for the Babysitting Circle this week and one of the other mothers, S, was asking about food and children and when they start to eat everything. It reminded me of a lesson I learnt when mine were small which I thought would be an interesting journal entry.
I have always used the logic that my children need to be able to eat everything that we as a family eat. I am not desperately interested in having to cook “adult” food and “kids” food. However, I was unclear as to exactly at what age that occurred, though, and like my friend S, slipped in to the habit of making a meal for the kids and one for the adults. Easy to do because in the beginning they are eating very different things from us. I cannot imagine husband happily chowing down on a meal consisting of parsnip and pear puree for example.
So somewhere between breast feeding (when I ate everything I would normally eat, and all those tastes and smells became normal to my children) and weaning when I was carefully crafting special combinations they could manage, via finger foods and then on to proper meals, I lost my way. I found myself one evening watching my three year old throw her supper on the floor in disgust and with tears in my eyes I started to make her a second supper I thought she would eat. My husband questioned me. What was I doing? I wasn’t sure, to be honest. I think I was just so exhausted physically as well as emotionally I was taking the easier path of least resistance and hoping for a quiet life. As soon as my husband asked me though, I saw the mistake I was making. Who is in charge of our family meals? The mummy who understands about basic nutrition or the stroppy three year old who is desperately trying to forge some independence and wrestle control?
So how do you find a balance between making sure they eat something and getting them to eat what you as a family eat, so you can enjoy family meals together? I know the mother of a small orphaned Russian girl who was so desperate for her to eat anything that a steady diet of biscuits was preferable to another visit to the tutting health visitor who would ask why she wasn’t gaining weight. S said her child, aged five, who had a repertoire of about ten meals she knew he could reliably eat was down to five now and the list seemed to be diminishing daily. “You know that food I said was my favourite? I don’t like it now…” he had told her.
If you try to understand what is going on from the child’s point of view it is sometimes easier to overcome this seemingly insurmountable problem. You want them to eat (you’re their mother and you know they need food) but they want to be in control and get a reaction (even a negative reaction) from you if at all possible. Meal times make fabulous battle grounds, they learn quickly, because food can be such an emotive issue. Your child soon realises that they have you over a barrel. S acknowledged that even though she tries her hardest not to react when faced with a food issue that she must have let her face fall when her son dropped this latest bombshell. “It’s just so hard!” she said to me.
Understanding that a child must try something at least twenty times before they get used to the taste and also allowing for infant tastes being less sophisticated than their adult counterparts, how do you approach meals and retain your sanity? Consistency is vital. It is necessary for you and your partner and any one else who feeds your child to have the same rules in place. My rules are very simple and seem to be effective. At my house you have to try everything. This way you allow the child to taste things twenty times and say “Yuck” and still keep them open to the moment when they say “actually this isn’t so bad”. You must sit at the table until you have finished and if you get down without permission, I assume you have ended your meal and your food is removed after a warning. Using the logic that no child will starve itself to death, I also have a rule that if you eat everything on our plate, you are obviously still sufficiently hungry for pudding. If you leave things on the plate, you don’t get pudding (pudding may be a yoghurt or fresh fruit). If you don’t like anything on your plate having tried it, and refuse to eat it, you are served brown bread and butter. With a smile. This is not a fight, remember, this is just the way it is.
Children who start school and eat school dinners tend to eat more, different things because of the peer pressure than the same child at your table. The dinner ladies don’t give them such a good reaction if they refuse something either. S said her son became noticibly more picky when he started reception at a new school and was at the childminders. It could be that he wanted to feel in charge and the only place he could do that now was at home with mummy where he could have a good scream about something relatively unimportant to him, but vitally important to her. I suggested that she sits down with him and his brother once a week and lists fifteen foods she knows he has eaten in the past and allows them to choose from her list something for supper every night. Understanding that he cannot have the same meal more than once in a week. Allowing him to set the menus with his brother (even in a controlled context like that) will get him to buy in to meals and given that vested interest, hopefully he will regain that sense of control which he is now missing. In conjunction with the house rules, this tends to improve eating enormously. I would also suggest that you introduce a new food every week on a day that you negotiate control over understanding that if the child really doesn’t like it, they can have brown bread and butter.
I also have strict rules about snacks in my house. You can help yourself to the fruit bowl at any time of the day or night without permission (and top tip from the wonderful Sally, wash all the fruit when you buy it and first put it in the bowl). If you have eaten all your meals for the day and are still hungry, you may ask for cereal or toast with butter. This still gives you space for negotiation and treats can be meted out, but you don’t want to get into the habit of having kids who fill up on crisps and biscuits between meals and don’t have the hunger to try to eat what you cook them. I try not to outlaw any foods, either, everything is fine in moderation, I believe, and although I would never feed my children processed food, if they are at a friend’s house or a party and served it, they will eat these things with relish.
If you are the mother of an only child, you will have more of a struggle as it is harder to be consistent with on some of these rules, as the meals are completely in your singleton’s hands. You don’t learn not to get down until everyone is finished unless someone else is at the table with you, and the negotiation of not having pudding is harder if there is no one else sitting there with a bowl of ice cream lording it over you, making luxurious yummy noises. We have three only children locally who are routinely brought round for tea when they are going through a sticky patch, and it is amazing how much difference there is in their behaviour when they are at a shared table than when they are at home alone.
These rules have given me a sense of control as well. I know what I am doing as a parent and am less emotional about meals now that it is clear in my own head what the structure is. I still have moments of anguish when someone announces that they aren’t eating something, but the consequences are obvious and don’t need to be reiterated after a while, so I can afford to be more pragmatic. My little one didn’t have pudding for nearly three years during a particularly protracted awkward period, but she didn’t die of starvation and now she eats most things presented to her. I can also take them pretty much anywhere confident that they won’t totally embarrass me, at least at the table.
I offer these suggestions as something that has worked for me. Try it. You might like it.
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