Six ways to orchestrate kids' desire to eat what you want them to eat, Part II

Aug 5, 2010 by Anna Migeon

This post continues from Six ways to orchestrate kids’ desire to eat what you want them to eat, Part I

Four: Keep them from eating: be out doing something fun. Distract them from eating at times you don’t want them to eat. Take them to the park, the library, anywhere where it will be easy enough to keep them away from food.

Then have a meal prepared ahead of time to serve upon arrival, and they will be too hungry to turn it down.

Marlena’s kids would be foraging in the kitchen all afternoon, after not really eating lunch.  So they would spoil their appetite for dinner, thus perpetuating the cycle. They would need a “second dinner” before bedtime, after refusing dinner, in order to stay asleep all night. She decided the only way to stop them would be to get them out of the house.

I know you can’t do this everyday forever, but it can help break a bad cycle and jumpstart change. If outright laying down the law is too much change all at once, this strategy can get you moving in the right direction more gently.

Five:  Do not give them anything to eat after meals when they haven’t eaten enough. This strategy gets more into the tough love area. Let their hunger teach them. The natural consequence of choosing not to eat is hunger. Let them choose to be hungry if they want, or not to eat if they are not hungry. This technique can be used indefinitely, as needed. But it won’t be needed long. Temporary hunger is a perfect teacher, a speedy teacher.

Six: Let them serve themselves. Say, “Only take it if you are going to eat it. We all want some and we don’t to waste it.” Put the value on food.

Marlena’s kids responded especially well to this shift. They liked being in charge of what they ate–who wouldn’t?  And they ate more and stopped misbehaving at the table. Kids, like the rest of us, respond well to being treated as if we are capable and trustworthy. They are perfectly equipped to regulate their own eating if the situation is properly set up.  Like sheep, they only need to be limited and restricted from the wrong eating. Then the right eating is inevitable.

Related post:

How to Motivate Kids to Eat

© Sacred Appetite / Anna Migeon / 5 August 2010 / All rights reserved