- Hiding Food: Generally speaking, I don't believe in hiding food. This is a trend in which the parent hides healthy foods inside of other foods the kid is willing to eat. I think that defeats the point in a way. After all, you should teach your child to eat well. Even if you succeed in getting some spinach down your child, if he or she doesn't realize it then there's no learning that took place.
That said, our older daughter refuses anything that might have any sort of nutritional value. She'd gladly live on breakfast cereal, bagels, pizza, cheeseburgers, and mac n cheese. Plus dessert, of course. We put vegetables on her plate every night but she rarely touches them. With her diet, I wonder if she ever poops. Often she's cranky and we suspect her poor diet plays a role in her mood. Quite frankly, I've had enough. She's a delightful girl when she's not being moody.
The other day she asked for a snack and I offered her a smoothie and let her help me make it. Strawberries, blood orange juice, a banana, soy milk (she's allergic to milk), and - when she wasn't looking - some wheat germ. I would have slipped spirulina and a few vegetables in there too if I thought she wouldn't notice. I think she'd catch on if the smoothie turned green though. Sure she didn't get the valuable lesson about whole grains and fiber that she probably needs to learn, but at least I got a few vitamins in her for a nice change.
- Marketing Food with Popular Characters: Our little one lives in a world completely filled up with her favorite characters. She takes Toy Story vitamins, wears Ariel clothes and pajamas (even underwear!), and when she gets hurt we give her Dora band-aids. The other day we were at the store and there were boxes of clementines with Nemo all over them. She LOVES Nemo. Ugh. I'm not even for branding HEALTHY food with cartoon characters. It still teaches the kids to choose their food based on their favorite characters endorsements. Even if Disney is supposedly pursuing only "responsible" marketing (like the clementines), that doesn't help us out with characters from other, less responsible marketers. (In other words, if we teach that you should pick your food based on the cartoon character on it, even if Nemo appears on clementines, what happens when Sponge Bob shows up at Burger King?)
Well, as luck would have it, our little one is on a Princess Bride kick. And I'm on a buttercup squash kick. I didn't connect the two until the other day my boyfriend said with a grin, "She'll love it when we tell her we're eating Buttercup." Aha! Oh my god! Now I tell her all the time: "I'm eating Buttercup, do you want to try some? We're growing Buttercup in the garden! See, right here." She giggles and goes "You're kidding me!" I even got her to try a bite of the squash - and of course, she replied, "That's yucky." I'll keep trying.
- Food Bribery: I don't like the idea of food bribery because it assigns positive and negative values to food. If I offer you a cookie in exchange for doing something I want you to do, then cookies must be really good. This goes even further when dessert becomes the reward for eating vegetables. Using that logic, vegetables must be pretty bad. But lately, bribery seems unavoidable.
Our little one was recently potty trained. I think the big switch over to panties came in mid-October. And, after some initial success, she's recently had a period where she seemed to be peeing in her pants (and on the floor, and outside, and in her carseat, and on my feet) ALL THE TIME. Like, several times a day. At first we'd just ask her "Do you need to go potty?" rather frequently and if she said no we left it at that. But it gets old when you're cleaning up pee all. the. time. So now I've resorted to bribery.
Yesterday my boyfriend was on his way out to the nursery to pick up some stuff for the garden and he planned to take the little one with him. I was outside in the garden but then heard crying and came in to quite a scene. She needed to go potty (we can tell because she crosses her legs and holds her crotch) but refused to. He was absolutely frustrated, wondering aloud why on earth she wouldn't just go to the bathroom when she had to go. I gave her a hug and offered her a cookie if she went potty. She walked away and threw her shoes angrily.
The truth is that everyone was going to get a cookie anyway. The kids and I had just baked a batch of "chocolate crinkle cookies" together and they had just come out of the oven minutes before. I asked my boyfriend if he wanted a cookie. He said yes and I told him he could have one - IF he went potty. Then I asked where our older daughter was. "She's going potty," said my boyfriend. "Oh," I replied, "Then she gets a cookie." I added that I wanted a cookie so I would go potty too. As soon as the bathroom was free, our little one ran in there to go potty. When she came out I gave her a cookie.
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