Why are food and eating such notorious battlefields in parenting? Why do almost all parents feel some obligation to force their kids to eat what the kids won’t eat and why do children have such an urge to eat what their parents would rather they didn’t eat? I have a theory that both parents and children misunderstand eating as an exercise in obedience. Eating should not be seen in this way. It should not always involve clashing wills. Rather, it should be seen as a time for togetherness as a family, a privilege to enjoy together and an opportunity to nurture our bodies.
Our need for control over all of our children’s actions and our inability to gradually transfer responsibility to them, often lead to this problem. We interpret a refusal to eat something as disobedience. Why? Mothers start by feeding babies from their own bodies. They have absolute responsibility and control. They decide when, what and how much to feed their babies. This becomes the central way in which they take care of their babies. They take it extremely seriously because babies that don’t eat well and enough, die. Still, it is very hard to make a baby drink when it doesn’t want to. Why, then, do we think we can make toddlers eat what, when and as much as we want them to eat? And why do we fret over half a sandwich that came back in the lunch box? Toddlers don’t die from skipping a meal, or even two! When we get that first “pumpkin spray” all over our faces because our baby discovered the ability to spit out what she does not like, we should realize that we will not always be in control of what our child eats. We have a real problem dealing with this aspect of our child’s will. We revert to force. And voilà – the food fights begin. We justify our force by saying that we absolutely HAVE to make our children eat healthy. If we could play the game differently, and rather play a guiding role whereby we teach rather than force good eating habits, we might change dinner time from a feud into a feast. Perhaps force and feeding were never meant to go together. Staring with hungry eyes while everyone else was enjoying a tempting dessert. We were disqualified by some or other inedible vegetable.
The weapons of threat and shame simply will never teach children healthy eating habits. In fact, research shows that those children subjected to fewer rules and punishment around eating, tend to have fewer food issues (eating disorders, food addictions, picky eating habits, health obsessions and weight struggles) as adults.
I am convinced that parents should rethink the food fiasco. Yes, we take our responsibility to feed our children healthy foods very seriously. We should, however, take a hard look at some of the methods we use to achieve this goal. We get some clues as to how we can do better, by watching the natural ways in which our children learn other good behaviour from us. Here are some suggestions:
• Children want to be like Mom and Dad .
• Children follow our example.
• Children love games or a challenge. Dare them to eat a “grown-up” food for the first time.
• Children hate doing things when they don’t understand the purpose. Explain in simple terms how foods of different colours contain different types of nutrition.
• Children get sneaky or rebellious when we are too strict. Children fear the unknown. Make a rule that your children do not have to eat everything on their plates, but they have to tolerate it. No-one is allowed to say “yucky” or “gross”, pull faces or remove food from their plates, but they are allowed to leave it. One day in an unguarded, hungry moment, they decide to give that recurring slice of cucumber a try… More often than not they discover it doesn’t bite back!
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This week’s article has been written by Hettie Britz. Hettie is married to a Gospel singer and music producer, Louis Brittz and they have 2 daughters and a son.
As a former speech, language and hearing therapist, Hettie worked in a multi-disciplinary practice alongside a paediatrician, psychologist, occupational therapist and other speech therapists. She gained extensive experience in therapy and parental guidance. She also pioneered an educational upliftment project in Proclamation Hill where she worked with many challenging children (and their extremely challenging parents!), dealing with everything from nutrition and computer skills to molestation and spiritual counseling. It was while working at this centre that her passion for children and parents started her on a new career path.
Since 2002 she has presented seminars across the country as well as overseas in churches, schools and corporate surroundings on a variety of topics related to Christian parenting and education. Her books “Kweek Kinders met Karakter” and “Kweek Gesonde Gesag” were published in 2007 and 2008, along with the English versions “Growing Kids with Character” and “Growing Kids through Healthy Authority”