Create independent eaters among our children

AFTER my husband recovered from an autoimmune disease, I became the food police, imagining that if I could control the food he and my children ate, I could keep us all healthy and safe.

I figured this made me a magnificent mother and wife as well; if my family was guzzling artichokes and homemade soups and never saw sweets or chocolate, I deserved high marks.

I talked about nutrition constantly and took every meal as an opportunity to teach my kids about healthy eating.

Meals were no longer fun, they were lessons.Not surprisingly, my kids became pickier and more resistant instead of embracing all the wonderful health foods I was parading in front of them.

When I realised what I was doing, I had to actively recalibrate, especially the way in which I talked about food to my children and the frequency with which I talked about it.

Of course, it was beneficial to teach them about which foods help them grow and which ones should be consumed in moderation.

But making my goal at every meal to get them to eat as many healthy foods as possible, and to cut out all the unhealthy ones, was missing the point.

As parents, we should focus on creating independent eaters: kids who have a healthy relationship with food, who can self-regulate sweets and who enjoy all kinds of foods without a parent persuading them to eat.

It took a while for me to change my ways, but I did. I still feed my family mainly whole foods and tons of vegetables, but my boys will also occasionally have sweets and soft drinks.

What happens when parents focus too much on getting children to eat?

Every time we talk about food while eating, whether to encourage children to eat more vegetables, praise them for finishing a healthy meal or comment on the amount of sugar they are consuming, they feel they are being judged.

It has been shown that restricting foods makes the controlled foods more desirable, and rewarding children for eating healthy foods makes them like those foods less.

Most of them inherently know how to eat without a parent pressuring them. They also know how to stop eating when they are full. Actively persuading kids to eat confuses their natural selfregulation.

It complicates the parent-child dynamic, creating an unnecessary point of conflict. – Casey Seidenberg / The Independent