little eaters
Unfinished Muffin - photo by Anton Walker
Recently, I’ve been reading Unconditional Parenting by Alfie Kohn, provocatively subtitled, “Moving from Rewards and Punishments to Love and Reason.” I’m finding it a bit of a slog but overall worthwhile and have been particularly intrigued by his comments on children’s eating habits.
Kohn claims that children have a remarkable capacity for self-regulation when it comes to eating. He states that parents are often responsible for overriding the natural inclination of children to eat what they need, when they need it. Our role as parents, Kohn maintains, is to provide healthy choices and step back to let our children choose when and how much to eat.
…young children will usually consume the number of calories their bodies need over time. Sometimes they’ll go for days eating so little that we become concerned, and then they suddenly put away huge portions. If they eat something fattening, they’ll tend to eat less, or something less caloric, afterward. In terms of how much they eat, then, children seem to have a remarkable capacity for self-regulation.
I’ve been impressed at our son Anton’s ability to eat just what he wants and leave the rest - even with ice cream and other sweets. We try to resist encouraging Anton to finish all that he’s been given - although I still try to get him to eat something to provide sustenance before he moves on to desert - “perhaps a few more bites of dinner first?” I realize though that I need to learn from Anton’s example of stopping when full, as I tend to clear everything on my plate plus what is left over on his. Unfortunately, my body is storing away the extra calories and apparently I’m ready for a long hibernation this winter.
The next big diet craze - The ‘Eat like a 4-year old’ Diet? I think it might work but clearly most people wouldn’t lose weight on what a 4-year old would eat if given free reign to choose whatever they wanted. Kohn isn’t suggesting that parent’s should be permissive about what children eat - just when and how much they eat. It still starts with learning to make healthy choices and teaching our children to forsake those colourful containers of sugar and corn syrup that get poorly disguised as food.
With the exception of avocado and mushroom Anton is willing to try pretty much anything we eat. We don’t deny him junk food but it is a very small proportion of his diet and of our own. I think we’ve managed to set a good example on that level. However, when it comes to getting in touch with my own body’s cues about being full I have some work to do to set a better example of healthy eating.
It’s been interesting to consider the research that Kohn refers to. He describes the work of two nutritionists in Illinois who observed 77 children between the ages of two and four, and also recorded the level of control that their parents attempted to exert over the children’s’ eating habits.
They discovered that those parents who insisted their children eat only during mealtimes (rather than when they were hungry), or who encouraged them to clean their plates (even when they obviously weren’t hungry), or who used food (especially desserts) as a reward wound up with children who lost the ability to regulate their caloric intake.
