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Monday, November 26, 2007

The Clean Your Plate Methodology

Do you subscribe to it? As in, do you "force" your kids to clean their plates, even if they may not like what is on it or may not be hungry? What about cooking separate meals for kids who are picky about what they eat?

I don't generally force anyone to eat anything they don't want and most of the time, believe that if kids are hungry they will eat. I try to do a fair amount of convincing that eating what they are served would be a good idea, and tell them that if they don't eat dinner, there will be no desert (if we happen to have any "deserty" type thing in the house which isn't the norm around here). I used to have to be a little more persuasive with Katherine who basically had to eat to avoid a hypoglycemic attack but, that hasn't happened in a long enough time for me to believe that she has outgrown it.

As for cooking separate meals, I admit to doing it for Julia a number of times, back when she was having actual issues with eating. There were a select few things that she would eat (toast and yogurt being the biggies). She had major sensitivities to most everything else and basically refused to eat. She was at the stage where not eating was basically not an option (she wasn't gaining weight and actually had to go for weight checks at the pediatrician). Other than that very specific situation, I basically never cook a separate meal at the request of my kids.

What about you?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Absolutely not, even though I can see the temptation to insist they eat everything. You give your kids food issues that way, so later instead of giving them a hard time about cleaning their plate, you can give them a hard time about being fat. I bought that hook line and sinker, and it was pushed at school too. I still can seldom bring myself not to eat whatever is in front of me, and my adult life reinforced that.

They get presented with a variety of reasonably decent food that they can eat or not, and if they seem to live on air for one meal, another they'll devour avidly so it all evens out. We encourage them to eat, We encourage them to try everything, including things one of us maybe doesn't like that much. But making a big deal of it? No way. Much as it pains me sometimes, seeing what gets thrown away.

However, no way I ever want to get in the habit of multiple meals. Unless it were something planned that way, like something one of us can't eat and the rest of us want anyway. At most it would be PB sandwich for the holdout.