Column on getting kids to eat - not what you might expect

Z

ZoRd

New member
I find it odd that I almost never find this guy's column at any
website that actually attracts/lists comments with every column - and
he's written a dozen books or so and has been on plenty of news shows,
so it can't be for lack of fans.

I have to say that had I not had his philosophies well in mind when I
was babysitting for a 3-year-old for two weeks, I could easily have
been brainwashed by the "common wisdom" that says you have to ask
kids' permission before you make them do anything - and if they cry
about, say, having to walk for more than five minutes because they
hate walking and prefer to take taxis everywhere, you HAVE to at least
apologize and carry them or else you'll traumatize them for life!
Thank goodness I knew differently beforehand (the mother wasn't so
informed, really).

Lenona.


http://www.kansascity.com/2011/02/08/2640201/living-with-children.html

I must, in the interest of full disclosure, begin this column with a
confession: I am a voyeur; more specifically, a parenting voyeur. In
the words of Chauncey Gardner, I like to watch; more specifically, I
like to watch people interact with their kids. I do my voyeur thing in
restaurants, stores, shopping centers, parking lots, and so on. I try
to do it without staring, of course. The trick is to be casual about
it, to go unnoticed.

So, I am walking up and down the aisles of my local grocery store the
other day (I also like to shop), on a mission for my wife and myself,
and I turn from one aisle into the next and begin walking up on a Mom
and Dad who are hovering over a shopping cart, talking to some third
person whom I cannot see at first. Using my amazing powers of
deductive reasoning, I correctly (it turns out) figure they are
talking to a child.

"What do you think about this, buddy? Eh? Look good? Eh?" Dad is
saying.

He's holding up a bag of what looks like frozen chunks of breaded
chicken.

After several seconds of silence, Mom chimes in with "If we buy that
for you, will you eat it?"

"Yeah, buddy," Dad says. "We won't buy it unless you promise to eat
it. How about it. Huh?"

During this exchange, as I stroll ever closer to this little family
drama,

I have been pretending to peruse the shelves for my favorite brand of
baking soda. As I pass their cart, I am able to see the child in
question. He is sitting in the basket. I suppose he refuses to sit in
the child seat. He's eating something that looks, at a glance, like
candy. He looks to be 21/2.

One parenting picture is worth a thousand words. These two people
don't have a clue, but they are digging an ever-deepening hole for
themselves. At this stage of the game, they can, with minimal effort,
climb out of it, but the longer they allow this "hey buddy" and "will
you eat this?" silliness go on, the more difficult climbing out is
going to be. This child is not yet 3, and he is ringmaster of the
family circus.

At some point, these parents are going to complain (if they have not
already) to others about how "strong-willed" he is, how he won't
accept "no" for an answer, and the like. But he is not the problem.
His behavior is nothing more than an expression of the problem. Trying
to correct him is not and will not be the answer. To correct this
problem, the horse will have to be put out in front of the cart.

The problem will not only be his ever-worsening behavior. The best
research has clearly shown that the happiest children are also the
most obedient.

So the paradox will be that although this child will be getting his
own way, he will not really be a happy camper. Eventually, he may even
be miserable.

The further problem is that this tragic-comedy is close to being the
norm in America. At dinner tables all over the country, children are
being served special meals that keep them happy today and increase
their chances of being malcontents later on.

A week after my grocery store voyeurism, I read a mother's online
story of her 3-year-old daughter who is "food phobic." The mother
spends an inordinate amount of time and energy fixing this foods that
do not kick her "phobia" into action. So now we even have the
beginnings of a new diagnosis and a new mental health industry. Maybe
even a new food industry: Every item - steak, chicken, broccoli,
mashed potatoes, you name it - is processed and packaged to look and
even taste like candy.

That's not a joke; it's a prediction. And it's not funny anyway.
 
Sorry about the double post.

Here's Rosemond's simple way to get kids to eat vegetables - and it
lost him a TV appearance!

http://staugustine.com/stories/022705/com_2906307.shtml

Second half:

"So what should a child do if she doesn't like something that's served
to her?" said producer queried, but I could tell she took issue with
my example. I said that parents should teach their children to eat all
sorts of food, and that there's a way of doing just that, a tried-and-
true way of making sure that your child does not develop into a picky
eater.

How? By putting a ridiculously small amount of each item being served
on the child's plate -- i.e., one teaspoon of mashed potatoes, one
bite of roast beef, and one-half of a dreaded green bean -- and
informing the child he can have seconds of anything he wants when he
has eaten everything on his plate.

"What if the child eats the mashed potatoes and the roast beef and
leaves the green bean?" she asked, to which I replied that the parents
should cover the bean and set it aside. If the child complained of
being hungry later in the evening, he would be told that when he ate
the dreaded bean, he could have pretty much anything he wanted.

"So the child might go to bed hungry?" she asked, testy now, and I
said yes, but that would obviously be the child's choice. Furthermore,
I'd never heard of a child making that choice for long. In short
order, the child discovers that green beans are not nearly as noxious
as he imagined them to be, and that is how one rears a child who is
not only not a picky eater but who also has good table manners.

"Well," she said, "I just don't agree with that at all!"

"I'm sorry," I said. "Am I talking about you and your child?"

There was a pause. Finally, she said, "Well, if my children don't like
something, I respect that and I fix them something else."

But catering is not respect! Respect is helping a child understand
that the world does not revolve around him. Respect is helping the
child develop good social manners. Respect is discipline. I said none
of that, of course, because I work at being well-mannered.

(snip)

Lenona.
 
On Tue, 8 Feb 2011 11:23:47 -0800 (PST), Lenona
wrote:


The entire article is bullshit. He observes an out of context
encounter at a grocery store and proceeds to use it as a symbol of The
End of the Universe As We Know It.

He didn't just use a slippery slope, he went to all the trouble of
renting a snow-making machine and then coating the hill with high
fructose corn syrup.

Folks who feed their kids crap do so for one of two reasons, either
they know no better and they eat that way themselves, or they know
better, but are willing to do so at some/certain/particular times for
any number of reasons, any and all of which are really not his
"expert's" business. If he wanted to make a case out of anything, it's
that he is talking through his hat based on the RCH of evidence he
presented.


Boron
 
On Feb 8, 1:08?pm, Boron Elgar wrote:

If my kids balk at eating...then they are excused from table and
that's that. They can then eat at the next meal. Doesn't take long for
them to eat what they are served.
 
On Feb 8, 4:08?pm, Boron Elgar wrote:


He's a psychologist/ family therapist and has had plenty of families
come to him for advice, so he's seen plenty of cases where parents
really do think it's wrong to make kids do anything they don't want
to, as he makes clear in his books. He doesn't pretend to have ESP
about every family's circumstances.

Anyway, if it's OK for poor parents to say "take it or leave it" to
their hungry kids AND order them to clean their plates (assuming they
give them only tiny servings, of course) why is it wrong for middle-
class families to take the same no-nonsense stance, as a rule?

Lenona.
 
Chemo the Clown wrote:

That's what I did as well. They were pretty hungry by the next meal,
since they were not given any snacks or cookies ahead of time. Kids
soon learn.
 
In article , [email protected] says...

Knew a woman who treated her kid and her cat the same way--if they
didn't eat what was set before them she'd try different treats until she
found something that they _would_ eat. Both the kid and the cat were
shaped like basketballs.
 
"Dora" wrote in message
news:[email protected]...

That never would have worked for me or my brother. Both of us were and
still are picky eaters. I'll go hungry before I eat something I don't like
and so will he.

My daughter is picky in some respects. She is good to try new foods. So I
don't have to force her to try them. She will actually ask to try new
things. But if she doesn't like them, I don't make her eat them again. I
do insist that she eat a vegetable at every meal. Okay, not breakfast,
although sometimes she does eat them then. Her favorite vegetables are raw
carrots and canned green beans. If she eats one or the other I am happy.

Until recently she balked at eating raw tomatoes. I love raw tomatoes but
my brother never liked them so they were something I never made her eat. I
would sometimes put them on her salad. She does eat salad. We just don't
eat a lot of salad at home any more mainly because I don't digest it well,
even though I love it. Anyway... Her normal modus operandi is to take the
tomatoes off and plop them on my plate. I do the same with cucumbers. I
don't really dislike cucumbers but they are probably her third favorite
veggie so I will gladly give them to her. But the other day? She ate a
taco with chopped tomatoes on it. I wasn't even paying attention. But
after she finished the taco she said, "Okay... Now I like tomatoes."

I see sooo many kids who do not eat vegetables. When my daughter was in
elementary school, I would visit the school on occasion. Once I was there
for lunch. I was shocked to see pretty much every kid in that class throw
their single serve pack of baby carrots into the trash. Every day I had
been sending them in her lunch but I believe she was eating them. I say
this because she is not good at throwing things out. Once in a while the
carrots would come home. But mostly I think she ate them.

Now at the dance studio, her schedule is such that she has to eat her dinner
there a couple of times a week. Most of the kids get the standard
McDonald's kid's fare and by that I mean the thing that comes in a box with
fries, or a Subway sandwich containing only meat and cheese. Their parents
either don't provide them with veggies or they just give them money and let
them buy whatever. We no longer eat at McDonalds but when we did she always
had to eat a salad and sometimes the apples as well.

I also can not tell you how many parents have told me, "My kids don't eat
vegetables!" Or, "Don't put onions in your food. Kids won't eat them. Use
onion powder instead!" I didn't even know what onion powder was until I had
some recipe that called for it. I can't remember now what that recipe was.
I did learn to use it when cooking for my FIL. He had a problem with the
texture of onions. But he didn't mind the taste. Since my daughter has
been eating real food she has been eating onions. The only time she
complains is if she sees a big chunk of it in something. I usually try to
cut them up fine. But when I am in a hurry I can get sloppy with my knife
skills.

As a toddler she ate cooked onions and never complained. A favorite food
was spaetzle boiled then mixed with tons of caramelized onions, butter and
Swiss cheese baked in the oven. If I had no spaetzle, sometimes I would
just make it without. She still ate it. She also balks if I put green
onions in her tossed salad. But she does eat them in pasta salad and in
stuffed baked potatoes.
 
On Tue, 8 Feb 2011 15:29:37 -0800 (PST), Lenona
wrote:


You have no children, darling, yet you insist on making a Usenet habit
of posting child-rearing articles ad nauseam. I do not know what your
agenda is, but I, for one, find it extraordinarily tacky, almost like
trolling. I do not know if you regret not having them or willingly and
happily had your tubes tied at 14 because you hate kids, but face it,
you're fixated on them. If you want, and if someone will pay me with a
batch of chocolate chip cookies, I can be tempted to produce a google
search of your postings here and other groups that'd show you up as a
one-note Miss Hannigan.

Insofar as child-rearing experts...If you stroll down the aisles at
any bookstore or library or wander your fingers over the keyboard
while settled on an Amazon search, you will find that there are many
thousands of child-rearing "experts" out there, each offering up their
supposed expertise on everything from how to diaper them, how to put
them to bed, how to feed them, train them, cook them so they are
delectable and juicy, or get them through Harvard for only $2.50 per
year including dorm fees. It's all bullshit, for if it weren't, then
one of them would have miraculously come upon the world's finest
mousetrap and a path would have been beaten to the door. I ain't see
that happen yet in all my 61 years.

I've only raised three, so I am no expert, surely, but none of mine
made it into adulthood wearing Pampers, sucking on a pacifier or
bottle, hanging onto my nipples, starved to death or morbidly obese.
None has been arrested, drinks like a fish, is a drug addict or
cat-murderer. That must qualify me to write a book, or if not, to have
the common sense to keep my mouth shut about how anyone else raises
their kids, feeds them, puts them to sleep, or dares to take them out
to eat or puts them on a plane. My best advice about anyone's kids is
to use the mantra MYOB, repeated often and always. Try it. You might
like it, too.

Boron
 
In article ,
"Julie Bove" wrote:

(snip)

(snip)
(snip) My brother likes them so I made my kids eat them, too.
(snip)
(snip)
(snip)
(snip)

Stream of consciousness. Salinger would have been proud.

--
Barb, Mother Superior, HOSSSPoJ
Holy Order of the Sacred Sisters of St. Pectina of Jella
"Always in a jam, never in a stew; sometimes in a pickle."
Pepparkakor particulars posted 11-29-2010;
http://web.me.com/barbschaller
 
In article ,
Boron Elgar wrote:






I don't agree. Not completely. Many of us have observed that there are
a lot of ways to do things, many of them which work even though they are
contradictory. The most important rule I've found is LOVE. That's the
most important part of raising children. In general, people who espouse
the One Right Way are simply wrong.

Still, when a parent is stuck, sometimes someone will suggest a method
that has worked for them. It just might work for the person who is
stuck. I find that helpful.

--
Dan Abel
Petaluma, California USA
[email protected]
 
On Tue, 8 Feb 2011 14:17:08 -0800 (PST), Chemo the Clown
wrote:



And what, exactly, does that teach them?

Adults are not required to eat whatever is put in front of them, so
how is your training of benefit?

Boron
 
On Tue, 8 Feb 2011 20:38:19 -0500, "J. Clarke"
wrote:


You mean you have found the secret to a life of svelte and this body?

A - Find someone who will prepare your meals

B - Make sure that meal preparer never gives you food you like to eat.

This solves both the jobless problem and the obesity one. Great work.
I'm impressed.

Boron
 
On Feb 9, 8:19?am, Boron Elgar wrote:

Well...I was raised to eat what was put in front of me. I spoke when
spoken to, didn't put my elbows on the table and minded my manners. I
expect that from my kids. That doesn't mean I make them eat something
that is makes them sick. Common sense works wonders. When they become
an adult then they can do what they want.
 
On Wed, 09 Feb 2011 08:04:38 -0800, Dan Abel wrote:



That may be fine for friends and family, IF (note the big IF) they are
willing to discuss and accept it, but you are liable to get into as
much trouble as you solve, maybe more.

And surely offering advice in public to strangers is reason enough for
gun control legislation.

Boron
 
In article ,
Boron Elgar wrote:



Good points. And speaking of being receptive and accepting of advice,
what kind of gun do you recommend for using on people who give
unsolicited and unwanted advice?

:-)

--
Dan Abel
Petaluma, California USA
[email protected]
 
On Wed, 9 Feb 2011 08:47:46 -0800 (PST), Chemo the Clown
wrote:


And what specifically did you learn from that?


That last chunk you wrote has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with
the question I asked you above...not once, but twice. So what is your
answer?

Boron
 
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