Other Tips for Helping Kids to Eat Right

In my last post, I discussed the main principles you need to follow to prevent or fix picky eating. Here are some other things we’ve discovered along the way that help them learn good food habits.

You need to model a good food relationship. If you are binging and snacking and trying various diets and complaining of being hungry and being preoccupied with your body image, your kids will notice and assume that’s a normal and acceptable way to live. They will pick up those habits, and their risk of having an eating disorder (or, at a minimum, a bad relationship with food) will be much, much higher. It’s a struggle in life you can prevent for them by following for yourself the principles outlined in the last post.

It's an ongoing effort. You have to stick to the principles in the last post every day, consistently, for life. It’s a lifestyle, not a parenting trend. If you slack, your kids will slide with you, and then you’ll have to all start over establishing good habits after you finally realize what a stressor food has become again. Living with discipline all the time is much easier.

Try doing a vegetable course first. For most meals, we start by putting only the veggies on the table, and that’s all we initially dish up for them. We don’t force them to eat all of the veggies before they can have anything else (I think that would turn them off from veggies), but we wait a while before giving them the rest of the meal. This actually helps them eat more vegetables most of the time!

The bad habit of not eating dinner. If they get into a habit of regularly not eating more than their one required bite for dinner because they “don’t like it yet” and just choose to be hungry until breakfast, that may mean they’re missing out on the majority of their veggies for the day. Because we’re really nice parents, we have, on occasion, put their dinner plate in the fridge and then heated that up for them in the morning for breakfast. Amazingly, they usually eat it really well, and it’s very effective at curbing that one-bite-for-dinner habit.

There should be no such thing as "kid food." There's probably something to that whole idea that little palettes are more sensitive or something, but feeding kids "kid food" (instead of what the adults are eating) is losing out on opportunities to help them start to learn to like new, amazing, delicious food. Plus, kid food never ends up being very healthful. Our kids ate everything we ate while we lived in Thailand, and it was initially hard at times, but they came to love so many amazing Thai foods! Even now, our 4-year-old says her favorite food is khao soi, which she initially would refuse to eat (other than the one required bite, of course).

Sitting down together for meals. All these things I’m talking about work much better if you have everyone sitting down and eating together. Not only does it help you track and enforce the good eating habits more easily, but mealtime becomes a looked-forward-to time when the whole family is together interacting. To help kids stay at the table, our rule is that if you get off your chair, that means you're done, so they know to just sit and eat until their tummies are full; they can’t get away with running off to play and then coming back for more later.

Because all kids are different, there is a great variability in how well kids will respond to these tactics. Some will have a hard go of it, but your patient consistency will win out in the end.

Picky Eater? It's the Parents' Fault

Sometimes I hear parents complain about how picky their kids are, and I want to say, "It's your own darn fault--you've trained them that way!" (Sorry.) You, too, are guilty if you do any of the following:

·         If your child doesn't like a meal, you let them get away with eating something else instead

·         You avoid giving your child certain foods because you know they will refuse (and then eat something else--see above)

·         When your child complains of being hungry (which happens regularly), you give them a snack

·         You sometimes say no to a snack, but your child somehow ends up eating before the next scheduled meal anyway

Teaching kids not to be picky is so easy if you can just learn how to avoid interfering with the natural consequences* that come from being a picky eater. Here are the three principles that, if understood and followed religiously, will cure the vast majority of picky eating.

Principle 1: Kids will eat food they don't like before they will starve

If a child refuses to eat a meal you put before them, this is what you do: Explain to them that, if they don't eat, they'll be hungry until the next meal, and then CARRY THROUGH WITH THAT PROMISE, ALWAYS (think of la cadre). If, at the next meal, they again refuse to eat the meal you put before them, no worries. Just explain again that they'll be hungry until the next meal. You can keep going like this, and I promise you that you can't lose--you have 1000s of years of evolutionary physiology on your side. Your child will eventually be driven by hunger to eat food they don't like, and they will not even become malnourished in the meantime. This is not harsh--it’s good parenting.

Kathy thinks that, with the littles who are too young to understand these explanations, you can be a little bit lenient (maybe a very small healthful extra snack before the next meal sometimes if they’re super hungry and cranky from not eating the prior meal), but I believe that even the littles figure out the pattern themselves soon enough if they experience hunger after not eating their meals. You’ll have to decide for yourself on that one.

By the way, this doesn’t mean you should never feed them snacks. One small, healthful snack a day at a scheduled time (maybe in between lunch and dinner) is probably a good thing, but be careful--don’t give them a bigger snack just because they didn’t eat much of their last meal (again, that would be interfering with the natural consequence of not eating a meal).

Principle 2: Food preferences are not fixed

My favorite story that illustrates this is about a food critic who decided that disliking certain foods was unfair of him, so for a whole year he ate nothing but all the foods he disliked the most. By the end of that year, many of those foods had become his favorite foods, and he liked nearly all the rest of them. I've had the same experience with many foods (tomatoes, olives, fermented soybeans). In our house, if someone doesn't like a food, we say they don’t like it YET, which helps ingrain this principle. Kids often have to try a food more than 10 times before they start to appreciate it!

Consider also that they may be reacting to the texture or appearance, not just the flavor. So, let them try various foods that incorporate that same flavor/texture/appearance that they’re balking at, and eventually they’ll start to like it. The key to this, though, is that they have to try at least one bite of everything you put before them, every time! Force the one bite into them if you have to; it's that important. Our kids are not allowed to leave the table until they've eaten at least 1 bite of everything, and we don't push for anything more (as explained above). Same goes for spicy foods, but please do it by degrees lest you completely traumatize them.

Principle 3: You can trust your body to know how much to eat

Kids are, on the whole, really great about eating until their tummies are full. Some days, this may be very little. Other days, it may be more than you. Either way, don't worry about it! Again, 1000s of years of evolutionary physiology. But, many parents kill their child’s natural ability of knowing when to stop eating by requiring them to eat all the food on their plate. The last bite is not the magic bite. Please don’t turn eating into a goal-directed empty-your-plate process for your child, because then eating is disconnected from fullness/satiation, which opens the door to all sorts of eating disorders. Trust that, if you’re putting well-balanced meals in front of your child, they will eat the right amount and be healthy.

If you follow these three principles religiously, not only will you have healthier, happier, less-picky children, but food will cease to be a stressor in your home. Next post, I will share some other tips and tricks we’ve discovered along the way.

* Natural consequences: The negative/positive consequences that automatically come after a bad/good decision. They are inherent in the decision. For example, if you don't eat your dinner, you'll be hungry. The other kind of consequences is artificial consequences, which are extra things that the parents do to a child when they deem the natural consequences of a decision (good or bad) to be too weak or too delayed to sufficiently motivate the child to make the right decision.

Traveling with Little Kids: How to Stay Sane and Enjoy the Adventure

After our months-long adventures around the world and across the country, I was surprised at the number of people who asked for advice about traveling with kids. “How did you do it?” “What tips do you have?” “How do you survive the airplane rides?” I think some people were expecting a list of fabulous activities that kept their children enthralled for hours on end or something of the sort. But when you are without running water and your room is swarming with giant ants and your four hungry and over-tired kids are screaming as the ants crawl up their legs and you don’t have any food…a list of activities isn’t very useful. What REALLY helped in managing the hard stuff about travel with kids was our pre-trip mental preparation. We spent some time thinking about how we were going to handle our kids and deciding on strategies and mindsets for ourselves BEFORE we left on our trip. And it helped. A ton.

Here are four guidelines we tried to follow:

1. Manage Your Expectations. Things may go wrong, schedules may be messed up, kids will miss naps, they may vomit or poop all over the airplane, they may fall on their face, it will be hot, you won’t have food when you’re hungry, you may not have electricity or water, it will be hard. If you recognize that things may be a holy mess, then you typically feel quite pleased with how well everything shakes out! And you don't stress out when the trials do come. Somehow it helped so much to expect hard things and then just enjoy the adventure!

2. Keep Calm. Once you know that things may be crazy, decide that when all hell is breaking loose, you will be the rock for your kids to cling to. Travel is disorienting for kids already, but if mom (or dad) is stressed out, they feel it even more—and act out even more! Think about yourself and what will help you remain calm during the chaos ahead of you. For me, it was about laughing at the craziness and recognizing that I could let my regular schedules and control go temporarily—and that we’d all be okay in the end.  

3. Relax on the Discipline. Yes of course you must help your kids be respectful, but maintaining a calm and loving parenting style during travel is really important. They need to feel loved and secure during the multitude of changes. Teach with kindness and let the little things go, recognizing that they are dealing with a lot of stress too.

4. Keep Your Kids in the Loop. Tell them what the plans are, when and where you are going, what you'll do there, how you expect them to act. Our kids behave much better when they know what to expect throughout the day and days to come. And most kids are pretty amazing at rising to the high expectations placed upon them.

These four things really helped us maintain sanity and happiness as the parents of four little girls (ages 6, 4, 3, 1) during months of living out of suitcases and in different hotels every day or two without consistent schedules, sleep, food, or anything “normal” in a foreign country. I hope they help someone else too. Now go have an adventure!

Getting Kids to Do What You Want, Part 2

Recap: In Part 1, I talked about the initial steps to persuade a child to do what you want--the idea was basically to ask them to make a good decision and explain why. And then to do that again. And again. And again, forever.

In Part 2, I'm going to talk about the options parents have to try to add some additional motivation for a child to make a good decision.

But first, I need to explain a super-important concept: natural consequences. Every good decision has, inseparably attached to it, good consequences. And bad decisions have inevitable bad consequences. These are the "natural consequences" of a decision. For example, going to bed early helps you feel good the next day, and going to bed late makes you feel like junk the next day. I talked about this in Part 1, but I didn't provide the term. Now you know.

One last thing about natural consequences: Your job is to help your child understand them! Talk about them before a decision. Talk about them after a decision (to help her link up her consequences with the decisions she made). Ultimately, your child will have to make decisions based on these natural consequences when you're not there to boss her around anymore, so talk about them! And, to the extent possible, minimize the artificial consequences (rewards/punishments) you give your child so she can get lots of practice making decisions based on their natural consequences while you're still around to help her process them.

Now, there are plenty of situations when you'll still decide to add artificial consequences (especially when children are too young to understand the natural consequences of a given decision), so here are your main options:

Punishments

Taking away privileges: The classic grounding, taking away toys, sending to their room, etc. This can be effective if your child actually cares about the privilege you're taking away.

The "stern voice": You know the voice, the one you hear far too often when you see parents interacting with their kids in public. This is many parents' default any time their child is even remotely out of line, and I hate it. How would you like someone to talk to you like that all the time? But, I confess, there may be appropriate times to pull this one out. But never in frustration and always in a controlled, purposeful expression of sternness.

Spanking: Controversial, yes. Evidence suggests it's totally fine in some circumstances. All I know is that it should never be done in frustration. And it should probably be preceded by a warning, such as, "If you [make this decision], you will get a spanking."

Regardless of which of these punishments you use at various times, the most important part of any of them is what you do immediately after: "[Show] forth afterwards an increase of love toward him whom thou hast reproved, lest he esteem thee to be his enemy." You'll notice how hard this is to do if you're ever punishing in anger or frustration.

Rewards

Bribing: This is almost universally a bad option. The child learns to do good things for the artificial benefit you added to the deal rather than for the positive natural consequences that follow a good action.

Sporadic, unexpected rewards: This is an after-the-fact reward, so it won't help them change a bad behavior to a good one, but it will positively reinforce good behaviors. And since it's unexpected, it doesn't have the same effect as a bribe.

Praise: This also is an after-the-fact reward, but it's the most important and also the most frequently forgotten one! Why are we so good at telling our kids what they did wrong and so bad at telling them what they did right? They're growing up in this vacuum of knowing what not to do but not being sure what to do. The awesome feeling of someone recognizing you for doing a good thing can be one of the best motivators to continue on that path of good decisions.

Conclusion

This all seems like a lot to remember, but it boils down to this: Disciplining a child should be done "only by persuasion, by long-suffering, by gentleness and meekness, and by love unfeigned; by kindness, and pure knowledge." And don't forget to apologize when you make a mistake. They'll forgive you. Over. And over. And over.

Getting Kids to Do What You Want, Part 1

We woke up one morning recently to our girls moving all their beds into one room. That's really cute of them, so we left it. But the result is that bedtime has become . . . an ordeal. They just can't find the little-girl willpower within themselves to ignore their sisters and go to sleep. Our various attempts to get them to sleep have got me thinking about how we can get kids to do what we want.

First, there are two crucial things to remember:

1. You cannot actually force kids to go to sleep (or do anything, for that matter). All you can do is persuade.
2. Frustration is always wrong in parenting. So, if you're frustrated, you're doing it wrong. For me, frustration usually means I'm annoyed at myself for not knowing the best way to persuade them.

Okay, so how do you persuade a child to make a good decision?

Step 1: Kindly ask them to do what you want and then teach them why you're asking them to do it. It shouldn't be, "Go clean your room!" Instead, it should be something like, "Will you please clean your room? We want our house to be clean because that helps us have a good feeling in our home." The why part is so often forgotten, but it's crucial! Kids need to learn that good decisions are good because they bring good consequences. And only when a child finally is able to link her consequences with her choices will she start to have the foresight to make decisions with consequences in mind. This may be the most important life skill of all!

Step 2: Repeat Step 1 over and over. Don't expect them to get it in the first 10 (or 20!) times because often they won't. And that's okay--they're kids!

But what if, after repeating Step 1 countless times, your child still not doing what you want?

Step 3: It's decision time. You've got two options: (a) do nothing (other than continue to repeat Step 1 over and over) or (b) add consequences (punishments and/or rewards). I'll talk about punishments and rewards in Part 2, but right now I have some acclaim for the "do nothing" option.

Choosing to do nothing requires saintly patience. It also requires sagacity to ensure it's not perceived by the child as you being powerless/free to be walked all over (don't forget la cadre). But hear me out: I know lots of adults who were hellions as kids, the kind of kids on whom none of the sundry parenting tactics worked, but those hellions still grew up, gained insight, and became awesome people. So maybe we all just need to chill out a bit and remember that as long as we show love to our children and teach them what's right (by word and example), they'll grow out of it. Eventually.

How I Should React When My Kids Do Something Wrong

Ever since I heard this story in 2006, I keep thinking of it random times, and a couple weeks ago I finally figured out why I like it so much.

Recently I attended the funeral of a lifelong friend. His son told a beautiful story of parental patience. When the son was in his youth, his dad owned a motorcycle dealership. One day they received a shipment of shiny new motorcycles, and they lined them all up in the store. The boy did what every boy would like to do, and he climbed up on the closest one. He even started it up. Then, when he figured he had pushed his luck far enough, he jumped off. To his dismay, his dismount knocked the first bike down. Then, like a string of dominoes, they all went down, one after another. His dad heard the commotion and looked out from behind the partition where he was working. Slowly, smiling, he said, “Well, son, we had better fix one up and sell it, so we can pay for the rest of them.” (Robert C. Oaks, The Power of Patience)

This story is about more than just patience. When one of my children makes a mistake, I, the ever-dutiful father, tend to be quick to respond (usually lovingly) with correctional words. Sure, this is good of me because I am helping her understand what she did wrong so she can avoid the mistake in the future. But what a child needs first and foremost when she makes a mistake is . . . comfort. She already knows she did something wrong, and she feels bad about it, so she first needs to know that I still love her and that everything will be okay. Then I can help her process where she went wrong. And she’ll be ready to learn.

But sometimes even that processing part isn’t even necessary. The kid in the story already knew exactly where he went wrong, so his dad didn’t need to say, “Son, I hope this helps you understand that you need to do a better job obeying me.” Instead, the father only comforted him. This requires patience, but, crucially, it also requires an understanding what a person needs most when they make a mistake.

Putting myself first--and why it's not selfish.

This is a lesson I seem to learn and relearn and then learn again. Putting myself first should be easy, right? The selfish, easy approach. Wrong! It's not. It's hard.

Here is what I mean by putting myself first:

I need to have my needs met and myself ready before I can effectively meet the needs of others. It's a simple principle of self-reliance. We cannot help others when we cannot help ourselves. So what are my needs?

1. I need to develop my relationship with God. This is the top priority every day. So really in putting myself first, I am putting the Lord first. When we put Him first, everything else falls into place (see this great talk by President Benson). For me this includes prayer and scripture study, which is most effective when I can sit down and devote a chunk of time to it.

2. I need to exercise. I think I am an addict. I become a crazy person when I do not exercise. For me, exercise is not about my body so much as it is about my mind. Honestly, I just need exercise to keep me sane! Somehow when I exercise I am better able to think and handle the stresses of my day. Plus I reap the added benefits of physical health, like making better food choices throughout the day.

3. I need to be prepared for my day. I need a plan. For me morning prayer helps with this as I think about what I need to accomplish during the day and also as I ask the Lord to help me with the things I am struggling with (see Alma 37: 36-37). As I pray and think about these things I can formulate a plan for the day and little things to focus on--such as enjoying my children in their specific phases, or remembering to praise the good things I see them do, or devoting one-on-one time to each of them that day. And, I'm a list person. Those little checklists make me much more effective!

I prioritize these things for myself, yes, but for the intent that I might be a better wife, mother, friend, and person throughout each day.

I think the key is identifying your needs. What do you need to do to prepare yourself to be the best wife/mother/husband/father/whatever you can be that day? Get those things done to start your day OR plan them at a time you know they will get done. For me, I need to do them first before kids wake up whenever possible. It always means a more effective and happier day--for me, as well as everyone around me!