Parenting the Kid Who Likes to Eat A Lot!
The New York Times has an interesting article about Parenting and Food. It talks about what to do with the child who wants to eat a lot. The dilemma is that telling your kid not to eat too much can cause eating disorders in the future. Yet, if you don’t help them control their habits, they might just eat everything they want: including lots of junk food!
Here are some possible ways to help your child:
1) Eat right and exercise yourself as an example to your child (most of us could improve our habits!)
2) Have lots of fruit in your house as an alternative to junk food and limit the junk food and soda in your house. (The NY Times article points out that your child will just find the junk food elsewhere. But meanwhile, if s/he’s grazing on healthy snacks presumably your child would be less hungry for other food.)
3) Eat Family Meals together
4) Less Take-in Food
5) Have them Bring Lunch to School (cafeteria lunches leave much to be desired)
6) Find an alternate activity to snacking – like a hobby
7) Have your child help you plan the meals for the family, thus helping them learn how to think about food in a healthy way.
8) Smaller dishes lead to smaller portions. When my friend visited us from France, she was amazed by the huge sizes of our dishes here in the US. If you have smaller dishes and you fill them up, you feel like you’re eating the same amount as a larger dish filled up. Yet your portion is less.
9) Make less carbohydrates. My husband is over 6 feet tall and my 15 year old son is almost 6 feet tall. Sometimes, I find myself making larger and larger amounts of pasta or rice to keep up with them. Lately, I’ve been trying to make less pasta, so we all eat less carbs, rather than making more and having leftovers.
10) We try to take long walks at parks together as a family.
11) We’re considering getting a dog – with the understanding that our kids would have to help walk it. That would be a daily walk for all of us!
Please feel free to let us know any advice you might have, in the comments below, for helping children eat healthy food and eat healthy amounts of food, without causing eating disorders down the road.
September 6th, 2009 at 3:05 am
I think that not feeding kids a lot starts from the very beginning of life: a baby can cry for many reasons so don’t assume that s/he’s hungry every time s/he cries. If you feed him/her every time s/he cries -maybe s/he needs to be comforted/reassured- s/he will associate food with being reassured and will eat to feel better when s/he feels bad/depressed/sad/lonely…
Also: Love doesn’t equal food, so don’t overfeed your child as a proof of how much you love him/her, then s/he won’t tend to ask for food while s/he actually wants to feel loved. “More” doesn’t mean “better”
Then children of different ages don’t need the same amount of food and a 3 years old doesn’t need two pieces of pizza just because his 12 years old brother has them. To have equal rights, respect and consideration doesn’t mean to have equal everything. Tell your youngers that when they were their age their siblings would be treated the same way as themselves are NOW and when they grow bigger, THEN they’ll be treated the same way as their siblings are treated now.
September 7th, 2009 at 11:31 am
Linda wrote an interesting suggestion…
“Sometimes children mistake hunger for being tired instead. Make sure they are getting enough sleep. A big craft box with everything they need to create a masterpiece might help with I’m bored eating. In any case keep up the good work and always let them know how beautiful they are.”
November 4th, 2009 at 9:10 pm
My name is Todd. My Girlfriend Melanie’s daughter Hunter allways says she’s hungry. She gets fed great and she eats healthy meals at home and at school. Melanie was just wondering if Hunter might be missing some kind of vitamin/supplement in her diet? (i.e. fiber etc..)