Put an end to the nightly food fight
Kids’ learn good eating habits from their parents
If your son falls and scrapes his knee, it’s natural to pick him up, comfort him, maybe suggest a treat to make it better.
But that reaction, says Roslyn Fisher, a registered nutritional consulting practitioner, may create an emotional bond with food. One that can cause kids to use food as a salve.
That’s part of the focus of Fisher ’s new book, “Power of the Table.” The book, her first, aims to give readers insight into why kids eat the way they do and help parents encourage healthy meals and manage kids’ fussy eating habits. It also focuses on emotional eating and creating confidence and positive self-image.
Fisher says she got into kids’ nutrition because it’s something she’s always had a knack for. Growing up in Oakville, she babysat to make money. She says parents were always amazed when their kids would eat things with her that they’d never otherwise consider.
She went on to get a degree in nutrition from the University of Guelph, then became a registered nutritional consulting practitioner. She started her own nutrition consulting business, Highway to Health, serving Oakville to Hamilton, in 2005.
Still, Fisher had never considered writing a book until September 2014. She says she simply felt she had something worthwhile to contribute to the conversation on kids’ eating habits; something she had picked up working with clients’ kids, as well as her own — two daughters and two sons, age seven to 15.
Her strategy starts, not with the child, but with the parents — teaching them that the dinner table doesn’t have to be a battlefield, one where a cookie becomes a reward for finishing vegetables or where components of the meal are negotiated, with different items served to each member of the family.
“Parents were always coming to me (saying) ‘my daughter’s overweight and my other daughter’s skinny. What should I do?’” she says. “And I was, like, ‘stop comparing your children between one another. Just focus on feeding your kids all the same thing. They’re all going to grow the same way.’ When you start limiting food for one and telling another one to eat, you’re using food as a control.”
Fisher’s strategy is to serve the same thing to everyone at the table. She encourages keeping dinnertime conversation light, not talking about heavy subjects or anything that might create emotional associations with what’s on the table.
There’s also a degree to which kids mimic their parents. So if dad comes home and eats a bag of chips for dinner or if mom steps on a scale every day and worries about her weight, kids will pick up on that.
Fisher says you have to teach them selflove, first.
“I mean, you can’t teach them but you can show them that you love yourself,” she says.
She says eating without distractions is a big part of that. Having everyone sit for the length of the meal, devices down, TV off. Then, the food is what brings you to the table, but it’s not the focus, time together is.
Power of the Table is available in hardcover and Kindle on Amazon. It’s also available on www.createspace.com, at Apple iBook, and on her website, Highwaytohealth.ca.