By: Elizabeth Redhead Kriston
Stages of Parenting and Feeding your Child:
- Infancy: Keep them alive with constant feedings, sleeping, and diaper changes. Believing that they will always gobble down the food you provide without complaint. Start introducing one smooth food at a time. Duck when they make raspberries with a mouthful of sweet potatoes.
- Toddlerhood: Keep them alive with childproofing everything and never letting them out of your sight. Convince them to eat something other than yellow foods (fries, chicken nuggets, mac & cheese). Duck when they throw their plates to express displeasure with the broccoli and salmon you tried to sneak in.
- Preschool years: Answer incessant “why” questions. Try to get them to eat “grown-up” foods by letting them help cook. Avoid sharp knives and open flames. Have a dog to eat the messes.
- Early school years: Try to keep-up with all the school programs and parties. Navigate all the weird food rules instituted by the school. Pack them healthy lunches and snacks.
- School years: Try to keep up with all the homework and after-school activities. Relent and let them buy cafeteria food. Try to make at least one family meal a week.
My Reality
My 13-year-old packs a bag of chips and a sugary, chocolate protein bar for lunch, and I am happy. I am not happy with her food selections. I am just happy she is eating something, midday, at school.
Feeding your child is essential to keeping her healthy and alive. In fact, children who refuse to eat or struggle with eating safely cause parents the highest degree of stress and worry. If our kids won’t eat doesn’t that mean we have failed at the most basic parenting skill? The answer is no, but that's a hard pill to swallow.
When my girls were little, I was determined to feed them what I considered to be healthy foods. As a result of my health issues, I learned to cook all my meals from scratch. Seriously, take time to read ingredient labels. It is horrifying to see what companies categorize as edible. Why didn’t I know this earlier?
Wanting my kids to grow-up appreciating, and maybe even craving healthy food choices, I embarked on a one-sided mission to get them to be organic, fresh food connoisseurs who would turn their noses up to Twinkies and Doritos as they reached for the hummus and organic carrots.
I say it was one-sided because my husband was not willing to give up his Heinz ketchup replacing it with plain tomato paste. I tried to convince him was just as tasty. He wanted French fries, not roasted broccoli. He wanted his chips to be made from potatoes, not kale. Despite his groans and mockery, I pushed on. It did not take long for him to decide that grocery shopping should be his job. He took on the cooking duties and has morphed into a stellar home chef.
While he was in charge of dinner, I took over breakfast and lunch duties. Believing that breakfast is the “most important meal of the day”, I served my girls as healthy a selection of foods as I could manage. I made sure they had a protein and a fruit with their beloved carbs. They wanted Pop Tarts, I served them whole wheat toast with all-natural peanut butter. They wanted sugar cereal, I served them oatmeal, with nuts, fruit, and a drizzle of honey. They wanted frozen waffles with syrup, I served them homemade whole wheat and nut waffles with real maple syrup. They wanted chocolate milk, I served them unsweetened almond milk.
For lunch, they wanted Lunchables, Hot pockets, and Uncrustables. When they realized I wasn’t budging, they begged to buy school lunches. They turned their noses up at the leftovers or sandwiches, vegetables, fruit, and water I packed them.
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| Click for info on school lunch regulations |
To combat their grumbling and protests, I taught them about real nutrition and healthy eating, not the nonsense they teach at school. As we shopped the perimeter of the grocery store or perused the options at the Farmer’s Market, I would argue that I knew more than any food pyramid could teach. In response, they’d wave the weekly cafeteria menu in my face to prove that French fries, syrupy fruit cups, and frozen pizza had to be healthy otherwise the "school wouldn’t be allowed to serve them." Why else would the school breakfasts have donuts and sugar cereal as options if they weren’t "healthy," they would whine. Despite their pushback, I persevered.
I persevered, that is, until they defeated me. A year ago, I had to cave. My girls were no longer toddlers and preschoolers. They no longer were the elementary school kids that I could control. No, they had grown-up and became self-sufficient. They had taken my years of advice and learned to think for themselves. They no longer retorted my inquiries with a shrill “because I want to” or “because I don’t want to.” Now when they disagree with me, they simply do things their way.
My 16-year-old refuses to eat breakfast. I continue to wave food under her nose each morning hoping she will relent and start her day off right. She gags and pushes it away not hiding her annoyance. Nonetheless, I feel victorious when I watch her pack a healthy sandwich made on sprouted whole wheat bread, raw organic carrots and snap peas with a fresh apple in her lunch. She has always chosen a crisp apple over a cookie. Yeah, she’s weird.
My younger one took a different approach. She stopped eating the healthy lunches I lovingly packed each morning. She decided that starving herself was preferable to choking down the fresh fruit, guacamole, and homemade baked tortilla chips I provided. She would rather eat a box of cookies than an apple. Yeah, she’s normal.
After discovering that the rotting corpse smell her backpack emitted was not her gym shoes, but rather the moldy and putrefied remains of her lunches, I agreed to let her pack her own lunches. I accepted that my days of controlling her diet were over. I grew up eating Dandee Cheese Twisties, Frozen Sunday Crunch bars, and Nutty Buddy bars for lunch most days and I am still alive. As she fills her lunch box with pretzels, protein bars (it makes me feel better), tortilla chips and a water, I bite my tongue and stifle my comments. At least she is eating something and her backpack no longer smells like road kill on a hot summer’s day.
I make sure my girls get healthy dinners. It helps me to sleep better at night. My kids eat almost everything we serve them at dinner. They watch us cook healthy foods. They join us at the grocery store so they are learning how to buy quality foods. I hope when they move on, that they will choose to nourish themselves with delicious whole, homemade food.
When I start to falter in my resolve to allow them to decide what they will eat, I remind myself of all the families I have worked with over the years who are heartbroken that their children can’t or won’t eat. My kids eat. I need to take that as a win and move on.
***If your child has a feeding or swallowing disorder you are not alone. Lots of good information and help exists. Please consult with your pediatrician and contact a speech-language pathologist who specializes in these disorders. ASHA has great information at:
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