Thursday, January 10, 2013

What type of parent are you when it comes to feeding your child?

Through the years I have seen many parenting types when it comes to feeding children.

There is Lackadaisical Lucy, Chelsea Choice, Erin the Enforcer, Wanda the Whining Worrier , Betty Briber and Hilda Hide It

I do not want to single out a parenting technique as wrong or right because I think that each and every parent is doing their best to ultimately provide the best nutrition that they can. 

Some parents may not be able to stomach another parent that is forcing, bribing or begging  their child to eat their food but it is important to look at what we are doing as parents before we know how to make changes. 

Over the course of the next week we will go over each parenting type. As we think about these parents it will be a good time to reflect upon your own feeding techniques. Here are a few questions you may want to ask yourself:


What is your ultimate goal when feeding your child? For example, My goal is to get my kids to try more foods and consume more of a variety of foods. 
How do you measure success as a parent when feeding your child? I measure success by getting my kids to taste just one bite or by having my son ask me to make a meal again.
What works for you? I don't have an ultimate answer yet but I would love to hear what you do :) 




One last thing- A fun feeding tip of the week: 

My kids are still excited about the cookies they made over Christmas. For my dad's 63rd birthday we had a pizza party at the house. I divided up fresh pizza dough so each child could make their own pizzas (to avoid any pre-dinner sibling rivalry meltdowns). My daughter decided that she wanted to cut shapes out of the pizza dough with cookie cutters. She cut out horses, my son cut out snowflakes and then they proceeded to top them with healthier versions of pizza toppings. The end product did not exactly resemble a horse or a snowflake but the kids gobbled them up. Yes, I know what you might think- It's pizza of course they ate it! Well actually they are really picky about their pizza and it has to come from 1 pizza shop in town. And since I wanted a healthier version for this fun night I wanted to make it at home which typically draws moans and groans. But not this time. They ate it up and want to do it again. Yay! One point for mom. 


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