Helping with Appetite Control
The best guide to how much your child needs to eat is her appetite, but boredom, anxiety, stress, and depression can trigger or suppress it. Help her separate food from emotional issues by disallowing arguments at the dinner table. Avoid discussing upsetting subjects while your child is eating. Never punish your child by withholding food or use food to reward good behavior. Instead of cheering her with comfort foods, help her find other ways to feel better. If she's bored, help her figure out something else to do. If she's sad, give her a hug or help her find another way to cheer herself up. If she is nervous, suggest a warm bath or a few moments of meditating. If she is upset about a specific problem, help her find a solution if you can; reassure her that everything really does work out in the end if you can't. Emotional eating doesn't solve problems. It creates them.
It's not just the foods your tween consumes on a regular basis that he will grow to love. Surround a rarely served dish with the warmth, joy, and excitement of a holiday or special “let's celebrate” treat, and it will acquire the ability to soothe and nurture. That is the hallmark of a feel-good comfort food. Confine rich foods to the holidays to make the special times truly special.
Don't encourage a picky eater to consume more. Your child needs to be able to recognize her internal sensations of hunger and satiation. She can't do that if she is being pushed to eat because she “should” rather than because she's hungry. Never urge your child to clean her plate.
If your child says she's full, don't even insist that she finish her salad. However, if she is asking for a second helping of something else, it certainly makes sense to require her to eat her salad first. If she won't eat the salad and you're afraid she'll soon want a snack, save the salad and serve it to her when she's ready. If snack time arrives and she still refuses the salad, reassure her that the next meal will be served in a few hours. Don't argue; just remain matter-of-fact. She will either change her mind about the salad or be ready to eat something else that is nutritious at the next meal.
Controlling snacking is easier than most parents think. If you think that by imposing limits you will have to deal with a cranky child, you're right! But if you take the shortcut and let your child eat what she will in order to minimize conflict, you're likely to find she is harder rather than easier to get along with. Poor eating habits can cause the kind of ongoing irritability, hyperactivity, and crankiness that drive the very tension you wish to avoid.
