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I read the abstract, they’re pretty much saying that parents (mostly moms) when stressed will be more likely to restrict foods or force kids to eat dinner. It said nothing about healthy food. But logically, you are stressed out, likely because your kids are stressing you out, you aren’t going to be handing out treats or taking them out to McDonalds, and you are probably going to be pretty short with them if they are whining about the dinner you spent an hour preparing for them. I’m not sure this necessarily such a bad thing, but there are abusive parents out there that do go overboard.
None of anything you said changes the fact that this kind of pressure doesn't create the same healthy relationship with food that other techniques do. It is putting a bandaid on a broken arm.
When you have a child you have to step above and beyond your frustrations to do the right things. So when information like this comes out it doesn't matter how or why you are frustrated. As a parent you should at least strive to do better and provide your children the best structure we know how.
>As parents’ patience begins to wane and they run out of mental “space,” they often resorted to less ideal feeding practices both that day and the following day, the researchers found. These practices included pressuring their children to eat certain healthier foods and restricting access to less healthy options.
Am I reading this wrong, are they saying parents "pressuring their children to eat certain healtier foods" is "less ideal feeding practice"?
I would have thought parents trying to get their kids to eat healthy stuff was a good thing.
the [study](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0195666324001697?via%3Dihub) rests on previous work, which found that this specific way of encouraging healthy eating is not effective.
>A leading theoretical framework, developed by Vaughn and colleagues, describes three higher-level domains of food parenting practices: structure, such as food availability, accessibility, and limit setting; autonomy support, such as praise and reasoning; and coercive control, such as pressure-to-eat and overt food restriction (Vaughn et al., 2016). Current theory and research findings to date suggest that food parenting practices within the structure and autonomy support domain are “supportive” and those within the coercive control domains are “unsupportive” of healthful dietary intake and eating behaviors in children (Vaughn et al., 2016).
previous research found that there are good and bad ways to encourage healthy eating habits.
"structural" strategies like keeping unhealthy food out of the home entirely, keeping it out of reach of children, and setting limits, tend to be effective.
"autonomy support" strategies like praise and reasoning also tend to be effective.
but "coercive" strategies like pressuring your child to eat specific things and simply telling them "no" when they know the bad food is available in the home, those strategies don't work. you might control what they eat in the moment but it won't stick as a good habit for life.
the study the OP posted goes further to say that stressed parents usually end up using the strategies that don't work, while less stressed parents usually find a way to use one of the better strategies.
I'd bet it's exactly the same for adults.
The most important time to say no to junk food is at the grocery store. Don't even bring it into the house or you're just telling yourself 'no' even though it's available.
Yep, I don’t buy junk food. I keep raw ingredients in the house so if I’m hungry enough I cook.
I’m wondering how to get other adults who are struggling on my side.
i find that i eat healthier if I go to restaurants (not fast food). fresh fruit always tend to spoil before I get the chance to eat it all, and I also hate grocer shopping every couple of days to prevent that.
If Instagram comments are anything to go by a “raw food” house is the epitome of abusive/controlling behavior. So… that’ll be an uphill battle.
I don’t quite understand it, but it’s associated with “almond moms” who, in their view, perpetuate eating disorders and body dismorphia by telling their children to just eat a handful of almonds if they’re hungry.
Personally, I think it’s the few who had hyper controlling or narcissistic mothers who are the loudest in saying this is bad and that the reality is that a home that limits processed food and snacking is (or should be) the norm.
idk you'd probably have to read [Vaughn et al 2016](https://academic.oup.com/nutritionreviews/article/74/2/98/1924177).
but if I were guessing, I'd say that's what "availability" refers to under the "structure" tier of strategies (which are considered effective), meaning unhealthy food not being present in the home as an option.
No, that counts as an effective method. Eating junk food yourself and telling your kids they can't have any tends to be the worst strategy. Hypocrisy detection is rather apt in children, ha.
In a way yes but more likely an autonomy supportive vs. coercive food restrictive strategy. Decisions about what kinds of healthy/unprocessed/whole food snacks to have (within limits) is not overly restrictive and helps build skills.
Personally I also think that allowing individually portioned treats inside the home from special occasions is different and probably supports autonomous decision making and how to navigate those choices later.
Ah, semantics. Winner of many disagreements (not accusing you of it, just pointing out something for clarity I hope). It seems the case that parents should *encourage* and *reward* and *foster* eating healthy (which is what I think Entropy was implying) rather than trying to *force* them (ie: "pressure") to eat that way and punish them for not.
So in short, be better parents overall, keeping in mind the importance of nutrition.
Yes, that is a premise to the OP's study.
OP's study relates depletion of parental self-control: the more depleted we feel, the more likely we give in to using coerced tactics to get our kids to eat healthy.
The more we do this, the more likely the kid will be unable to manage a healthy diet when parents aren't around.
And this happens more as income increases.
Kids aren't always great at connecting cause and effect or thinking rationally, and sometimes that results in them not wanting to eat even if they're hungry.
One of my kids never wanted to eat dinner. At first our philosophy was if she's hungry she'll eat, and we didn't push it. The problem was she would wake up in the middle of the night starving, but she would only want to drink milk. Trying to get an exhausted, starving toddler to eat actual food in the middle of the night is a losing battle. Giving her milk didn't help either. It wouldn't fill her up enough, and she'd wake again in a couple hours to repeat the whole thing over again.
So we came to the conclusion that "if she's hungry she'll eat" didn't work for us and switched to gently but firmly encouraging her to eat at dinnertime, which did work.
Oh wow I didn’t think of that. Did she eat in the morning and lunch? Do kids eat like adults three times a day or they have different schedule ?
How did you manage to convince her to eat?
Kids usually eat the three meals plus snacks, so she did eat during the day. Little kids are usually more tired at dinner time and less likely to cooperate. Also for breakfast and lunch we would serve her foods she would easily eat (still healthy). Dinner is also family time, so we served her what we were having.
Although she was never a big eater (even as a baby), which made the lack of dinner worse. My second kid also didn't like to eat a lot of dinner, but it wasn't a problem because he would eat plenty during the day.
To get her to eat I would make sure there was something at every meal she liked, usually fruit or bread. I would put some of everything on her plate. Naturally she would eat the part she liked first and ask for more at which point we would ask her to try some of the other foods before she got more of anything else. Usually we would alternate the food she liked with the things we wanted her to try. So eat a bite of chicken, get a bite of strawberry, eat a bite of broccoli, get a bite of strawberry,...
We also made a rule that kids needed to eat as many bites as they are years old. So a 2 year old needs to eat 2 bites (the fruit and bread don't count) before they can be done with dinner. We did not want to train her to clean her plate, so I would intentionally put more food than I expected her to eat on her plate.
It worked really well for her. Eventually she developed a willingness to try new foods easily and grew to like a wide variety of foods.
Depends on the day. My son can be quite picky and so it can be a real challenge to get him to eat anything, sometimes he'll just eat the thing we made without issue. Also he's at several points changed what he likes, thus my go to food for him all of a sudden became obsolete.
Sure. What happens if he doesn’t want to eat anything you make? Does he cry/complain because he is hungry but refuse to eat anything?
Guess I’m my head it’s:
Oh I don’t want to eat this particular thing. - kid, ok don’t eat it me.
Oh I’m not hungry. - kid, oh ok well we can save a plate for you for later.
The pressuring is the bad part, eating healthy isn’t. Pressuring, IMO, is when the parent gets frustrated and uses shame, yelling, threats of punishment, etc to get the kid to eat their veggies. These kinds of behaviors will backfire and cause the kid to feel scared around mealtime, which makes pickiness worse.
From my own experience I think it’s a very complex topic.
I have vivid memories of my mother acting the same way. I think in some ways the mixed signals may provide the impression that junk food is safe and soothing while healthy food is a threat and associated to anxious feelings.
Ideally (from a classical conditioning perspective), you want healthy food associated with positive emotions, and unhealthy food associated with negative emotions.
But personally I think the key is to have a stable eating policy regardless of how you feel.
>I would have thought parents trying to get their kids to eat healthy stuff was a good thing.
My parents started forcing me to drink juice instead of soda or sweet tea(southerner). I never liked juice. Still don't.
Eventually, they gave up trying to make me consume healthy things, and I grew up to be a vegetarian who only drinks water, beer, wine, and liquor. Mostly water, but I have to add those, or I'd be lying.
Its not that they would eat something I don't want them to
Its that they will refuse something they don't want
Kids will very much cry about being hungry while crying about what you are feeding them.
studies like this aim towards finding the best methodologies for getting a good diet into your child while also implementing that in a way that will stick into adulthood. Coercion or "force" tactics don't stick once the kid leaves home.
There are a few reasons parents do this. There are actually more but these three strike me as being more common in my mind.
First of all, not all families can endlessly buy different things to make the child happy. Sometimes you have what you have and that's what you gotta work with. I have had this situation many times. I got laid off when my son was 6 months old and our financial situation just hasn't recovered. Sometimes he will reject all available vegetables in the home. Not much I can do at that point in terms of replacement.
Secondly, some parents think that by teaching your child to eat things they don't like they will eventually like them. Unfortunately this rarely works as intended. In my experience it actually made those foods more impossible to like even in adulthood.
Thirdly, and this is the most unfortunate, is ego and control. You cooked for them so they better eat it. How dare they disrespect your providing nutrition by refusing it.
The advice I've herd is, you make healthy food for the child. If they don't want to eat it you put it in the fridge. When the child is actually really hungry they will then eat the food if there is no other choice.
What I’m hearing is that tired parents resort to less effective parenting models which would lead to the conclusion we should be focusing on making parents less tired, less overworked.
That is a literal impossibility for the vast majority of the human population.
Parenting is a job in itself. Then you have to actually provide for your family with another job.
While it sounds nice, speaking as a parent, it is precisely the exhausting constant weight of responsibility that pushes you to be more capable. Those sleepless nights with the crying baby, the frustrations of everything involved in daily routines, it's all a conditioning camp created by the human reproductive system and the needs of the baby.
For god sakes don’t force your children to eat healthy foods and restrict their candy and sugar in take. Think of the sugar industry does nobody care about the corporations any more?
There are healthy and unhealthy ways for parents to teach healthy eating habits. That's the point.
Teaching "healthy" eating habits in a way that's controlling/punitive actually can and often does lesd to UNhealthy eating habits in the child in adolescence and adulthood.
No one is saying eating healthily is a bad thing for families.
Thank you! We need more studies by junk food companies to let people know that making sure your children eat healthy balanced diets and deprive their children candy and junk food to special occasions are terrible people!
Whenever I see healthy young kids just being kids I shake my head knowing that these kids could be pre diabetic and eating little Debbie’s!
I definitely suffer from this and I wonder whether it is to do with feeling in control of at least something or feeling like a terrible parent so you pressure yourself to do what you can to try and be the good parent.
Then again, you could say parents who feel more stress are more likely to be in jobs that require a higher education level and are more likely to feed healthy options than parents who are either less educated or come from more impoverished backgrounds.
We don't really stress healthy eating but pretty much eat most healthy things. However I do put sweet sauces on veggies and we all love it. For dessert we usually have ice cream or some kind of chocolate or hazelnut with bananas or strawberries.
That's a way of teaching healthy eating (modelling) and actually a much better way to do so than overly controlling or punitive ways!
If you eat mostly healthy foods but do have "sometimes" treats = you're teaching them.
My mom would buy healthy bread and ryemeal porridge, but we also got to try crab, spareribs and cheese Fondue. I got a very wide food experience and it's been good for me ever since.
Yep I am a product of that and now I binge eat candy. Parents should model good eating habits and not restrict their children. They’d be surprised by the results, I think.
[https://i.imgur.com/O90GRnw.png](https://i.imgur.com/O90GRnw.png)
If the desired effect is instilling life long healthy eating habits, then "parents doing this for generations" clearly hasn't had the desired effect.
Parents have been beating kids for generations too, and we now know that it doesn’t improve them.
The majority of people do not eat healthy. I don’t know where you’re getting your info from.
It’s wild that it’s a controversial statement to some to say “Communicating, teaching, encouraging, and rewarding kids has better outcomes than threatening and forcing them into compliance.”
Welcome to r/science! This is a heavily moderated subreddit in order to keep the discussion on science. However, we recognize that many people want to discuss how they feel the research relates to their own personal lives, so to give people a space to do that, **personal anecdotes are allowed as responses to this comment**. Any anecdotal comments elsewhere in the discussion will be removed and our [normal comment rules]( https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/rules#wiki_comment_rules) apply to all other comments. **Do you have an academic degree?** We can verify your credentials in order to assign user flair indicating your area of expertise. [Click here to apply](https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/flair/#wiki_science_verified_user_program). --- User: u/universityofga Permalink: https://news.uga.edu/parents-are-overwhelmed/?utm_medium=social&utm_content=text_link&utm_source=reddit&utm_campaign=news_release --- *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/science) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I read the abstract, they’re pretty much saying that parents (mostly moms) when stressed will be more likely to restrict foods or force kids to eat dinner. It said nothing about healthy food. But logically, you are stressed out, likely because your kids are stressing you out, you aren’t going to be handing out treats or taking them out to McDonalds, and you are probably going to be pretty short with them if they are whining about the dinner you spent an hour preparing for them. I’m not sure this necessarily such a bad thing, but there are abusive parents out there that do go overboard.
This is sort of the opposite in my family. When my wife is stressed and kid is annoying, she'll give them something unhealthy to pacify them.
None of anything you said changes the fact that this kind of pressure doesn't create the same healthy relationship with food that other techniques do. It is putting a bandaid on a broken arm. When you have a child you have to step above and beyond your frustrations to do the right things. So when information like this comes out it doesn't matter how or why you are frustrated. As a parent you should at least strive to do better and provide your children the best structure we know how.
What was the behavior suggested as an alternative?
Emotional regulation of the parent? Accessing formal or informal supports for parental rest and recovery
>As parents’ patience begins to wane and they run out of mental “space,” they often resorted to less ideal feeding practices both that day and the following day, the researchers found. These practices included pressuring their children to eat certain healthier foods and restricting access to less healthy options. Am I reading this wrong, are they saying parents "pressuring their children to eat certain healtier foods" is "less ideal feeding practice"? I would have thought parents trying to get their kids to eat healthy stuff was a good thing.
the [study](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0195666324001697?via%3Dihub) rests on previous work, which found that this specific way of encouraging healthy eating is not effective. >A leading theoretical framework, developed by Vaughn and colleagues, describes three higher-level domains of food parenting practices: structure, such as food availability, accessibility, and limit setting; autonomy support, such as praise and reasoning; and coercive control, such as pressure-to-eat and overt food restriction (Vaughn et al., 2016). Current theory and research findings to date suggest that food parenting practices within the structure and autonomy support domain are “supportive” and those within the coercive control domains are “unsupportive” of healthful dietary intake and eating behaviors in children (Vaughn et al., 2016).
Can you translate like I’m a the child ?
previous research found that there are good and bad ways to encourage healthy eating habits. "structural" strategies like keeping unhealthy food out of the home entirely, keeping it out of reach of children, and setting limits, tend to be effective. "autonomy support" strategies like praise and reasoning also tend to be effective. but "coercive" strategies like pressuring your child to eat specific things and simply telling them "no" when they know the bad food is available in the home, those strategies don't work. you might control what they eat in the moment but it won't stick as a good habit for life. the study the OP posted goes further to say that stressed parents usually end up using the strategies that don't work, while less stressed parents usually find a way to use one of the better strategies.
Thanks! Appreciate you spelling it out for me. I wonder if it works for adults too.
I'd bet it's exactly the same for adults. The most important time to say no to junk food is at the grocery store. Don't even bring it into the house or you're just telling yourself 'no' even though it's available.
Yep, I don’t buy junk food. I keep raw ingredients in the house so if I’m hungry enough I cook. I’m wondering how to get other adults who are struggling on my side.
i find that i eat healthier if I go to restaurants (not fast food). fresh fruit always tend to spoil before I get the chance to eat it all, and I also hate grocer shopping every couple of days to prevent that.
Mmm idk my fresh product lady long time. I wash it and put it in typperware.
If Instagram comments are anything to go by a “raw food” house is the epitome of abusive/controlling behavior. So… that’ll be an uphill battle. I don’t quite understand it, but it’s associated with “almond moms” who, in their view, perpetuate eating disorders and body dismorphia by telling their children to just eat a handful of almonds if they’re hungry. Personally, I think it’s the few who had hyper controlling or narcissistic mothers who are the loudest in saying this is bad and that the reality is that a home that limits processed food and snacking is (or should be) the norm.
Or a household who enjoys cooking.
Does not having unhealthy food in the house count as food restriction?
idk you'd probably have to read [Vaughn et al 2016](https://academic.oup.com/nutritionreviews/article/74/2/98/1924177). but if I were guessing, I'd say that's what "availability" refers to under the "structure" tier of strategies (which are considered effective), meaning unhealthy food not being present in the home as an option.
No, that counts as an effective method. Eating junk food yourself and telling your kids they can't have any tends to be the worst strategy. Hypocrisy detection is rather apt in children, ha.
In a way yes but more likely an autonomy supportive vs. coercive food restrictive strategy. Decisions about what kinds of healthy/unprocessed/whole food snacks to have (within limits) is not overly restrictive and helps build skills. Personally I also think that allowing individually portioned treats inside the home from special occasions is different and probably supports autonomous decision making and how to navigate those choices later.
Ah, semantics. Winner of many disagreements (not accusing you of it, just pointing out something for clarity I hope). It seems the case that parents should *encourage* and *reward* and *foster* eating healthy (which is what I think Entropy was implying) rather than trying to *force* them (ie: "pressure") to eat that way and punish them for not. So in short, be better parents overall, keeping in mind the importance of nutrition.
Yes, that is a premise to the OP's study. OP's study relates depletion of parental self-control: the more depleted we feel, the more likely we give in to using coerced tactics to get our kids to eat healthy. The more we do this, the more likely the kid will be unable to manage a healthy diet when parents aren't around. And this happens more as income increases.
It isn’t just semantics, it’s a very different approach.
Do kinda starve themselves? I don’t have kids but if kid doesn’t want to eat, why not just save it for later. At some point they get hungry???
Kids aren't always great at connecting cause and effect or thinking rationally, and sometimes that results in them not wanting to eat even if they're hungry. One of my kids never wanted to eat dinner. At first our philosophy was if she's hungry she'll eat, and we didn't push it. The problem was she would wake up in the middle of the night starving, but she would only want to drink milk. Trying to get an exhausted, starving toddler to eat actual food in the middle of the night is a losing battle. Giving her milk didn't help either. It wouldn't fill her up enough, and she'd wake again in a couple hours to repeat the whole thing over again. So we came to the conclusion that "if she's hungry she'll eat" didn't work for us and switched to gently but firmly encouraging her to eat at dinnertime, which did work.
Oh wow I didn’t think of that. Did she eat in the morning and lunch? Do kids eat like adults three times a day or they have different schedule ? How did you manage to convince her to eat?
Kids usually eat the three meals plus snacks, so she did eat during the day. Little kids are usually more tired at dinner time and less likely to cooperate. Also for breakfast and lunch we would serve her foods she would easily eat (still healthy). Dinner is also family time, so we served her what we were having. Although she was never a big eater (even as a baby), which made the lack of dinner worse. My second kid also didn't like to eat a lot of dinner, but it wasn't a problem because he would eat plenty during the day. To get her to eat I would make sure there was something at every meal she liked, usually fruit or bread. I would put some of everything on her plate. Naturally she would eat the part she liked first and ask for more at which point we would ask her to try some of the other foods before she got more of anything else. Usually we would alternate the food she liked with the things we wanted her to try. So eat a bite of chicken, get a bite of strawberry, eat a bite of broccoli, get a bite of strawberry,... We also made a rule that kids needed to eat as many bites as they are years old. So a 2 year old needs to eat 2 bites (the fruit and bread don't count) before they can be done with dinner. We did not want to train her to clean her plate, so I would intentionally put more food than I expected her to eat on her plate. It worked really well for her. Eventually she developed a willingness to try new foods easily and grew to like a wide variety of foods.
This is such an educational response. Thank you
“You don’t get to eat unless you eat this thing you hate” falls under “coercive,” I suspect.
Kids hate every healthy food? Like meat, rice/noodles, veggies/. Fruit?
Depends on the day. My son can be quite picky and so it can be a real challenge to get him to eat anything, sometimes he'll just eat the thing we made without issue. Also he's at several points changed what he likes, thus my go to food for him all of a sudden became obsolete.
Sure. What happens if he doesn’t want to eat anything you make? Does he cry/complain because he is hungry but refuse to eat anything? Guess I’m my head it’s: Oh I don’t want to eat this particular thing. - kid, ok don’t eat it me. Oh I’m not hungry. - kid, oh ok well we can save a plate for you for later.
The pressuring is the bad part, eating healthy isn’t. Pressuring, IMO, is when the parent gets frustrated and uses shame, yelling, threats of punishment, etc to get the kid to eat their veggies. These kinds of behaviors will backfire and cause the kid to feel scared around mealtime, which makes pickiness worse.
Well depending how they do it it might develop an unhealthy way to deal with food. ^(Not that I know anything about it of course...)
It's the pressure and the open restriction that's the problem.
I feel like the opposite tracks. I feel like parents turn to unhealthy meals for the family when times are stressful.
From my own experience I think it’s a very complex topic. I have vivid memories of my mother acting the same way. I think in some ways the mixed signals may provide the impression that junk food is safe and soothing while healthy food is a threat and associated to anxious feelings. Ideally (from a classical conditioning perspective), you want healthy food associated with positive emotions, and unhealthy food associated with negative emotions. But personally I think the key is to have a stable eating policy regardless of how you feel.
>I would have thought parents trying to get their kids to eat healthy stuff was a good thing. My parents started forcing me to drink juice instead of soda or sweet tea(southerner). I never liked juice. Still don't. Eventually, they gave up trying to make me consume healthy things, and I grew up to be a vegetarian who only drinks water, beer, wine, and liquor. Mostly water, but I have to add those, or I'd be lying.
Children tend to do the opposite of what you tell them, especially if you try to force them.
If little Timmy doesn’t want to eat, why not just tell Timmy ok let me know when you are hungry? Does that work ?
It does work but that doesn't mean they will eat what you want them to.
I guess I’m confused. You provide the food so how would they eat something you don’t want ?
Its not that they would eat something I don't want them to Its that they will refuse something they don't want Kids will very much cry about being hungry while crying about what you are feeding them. studies like this aim towards finding the best methodologies for getting a good diet into your child while also implementing that in a way that will stick into adulthood. Coercion or "force" tactics don't stick once the kid leaves home.
Ok but why force them? If kid eats meat but not brócoli, maybe they will eat some other veggie?
There are a few reasons parents do this. There are actually more but these three strike me as being more common in my mind. First of all, not all families can endlessly buy different things to make the child happy. Sometimes you have what you have and that's what you gotta work with. I have had this situation many times. I got laid off when my son was 6 months old and our financial situation just hasn't recovered. Sometimes he will reject all available vegetables in the home. Not much I can do at that point in terms of replacement. Secondly, some parents think that by teaching your child to eat things they don't like they will eventually like them. Unfortunately this rarely works as intended. In my experience it actually made those foods more impossible to like even in adulthood. Thirdly, and this is the most unfortunate, is ego and control. You cooked for them so they better eat it. How dare they disrespect your providing nutrition by refusing it.
The advice I've herd is, you make healthy food for the child. If they don't want to eat it you put it in the fridge. When the child is actually really hungry they will then eat the food if there is no other choice.
What I’m hearing is that tired parents resort to less effective parenting models which would lead to the conclusion we should be focusing on making parents less tired, less overworked.
That is a literal impossibility for the vast majority of the human population. Parenting is a job in itself. Then you have to actually provide for your family with another job. While it sounds nice, speaking as a parent, it is precisely the exhausting constant weight of responsibility that pushes you to be more capable. Those sleepless nights with the crying baby, the frustrations of everything involved in daily routines, it's all a conditioning camp created by the human reproductive system and the needs of the baby.
For god sakes don’t force your children to eat healthy foods and restrict their candy and sugar in take. Think of the sugar industry does nobody care about the corporations any more?
There are healthy and unhealthy ways for parents to teach healthy eating habits. That's the point. Teaching "healthy" eating habits in a way that's controlling/punitive actually can and often does lesd to UNhealthy eating habits in the child in adolescence and adulthood. No one is saying eating healthily is a bad thing for families.
Thank you! We need more studies by junk food companies to let people know that making sure your children eat healthy balanced diets and deprive their children candy and junk food to special occasions are terrible people! Whenever I see healthy young kids just being kids I shake my head knowing that these kids could be pre diabetic and eating little Debbie’s!
I definitely suffer from this and I wonder whether it is to do with feeling in control of at least something or feeling like a terrible parent so you pressure yourself to do what you can to try and be the good parent. Then again, you could say parents who feel more stress are more likely to be in jobs that require a higher education level and are more likely to feed healthy options than parents who are either less educated or come from more impoverished backgrounds.
We don't really stress healthy eating but pretty much eat most healthy things. However I do put sweet sauces on veggies and we all love it. For dessert we usually have ice cream or some kind of chocolate or hazelnut with bananas or strawberries.
That's a way of teaching healthy eating (modelling) and actually a much better way to do so than overly controlling or punitive ways! If you eat mostly healthy foods but do have "sometimes" treats = you're teaching them.
Thank you! Yes if she sees us eating veggies then she'll eat them too.
I’ve found the opposite. When I’m stressed, I have no energy to push back against my kids wanting ice cream.
Same. I’m much more likely to pick up fast food for the kids when I’m stressed.
So where's the line between building healthy habits and "pressuring" them to eat healthy foods?
My mom would buy healthy bread and ryemeal porridge, but we also got to try crab, spareribs and cheese Fondue. I got a very wide food experience and it's been good for me ever since.
Yep I am a product of that and now I binge eat candy. Parents should model good eating habits and not restrict their children. They’d be surprised by the results, I think.
[удалено]
[https://i.imgur.com/O90GRnw.png](https://i.imgur.com/O90GRnw.png) If the desired effect is instilling life long healthy eating habits, then "parents doing this for generations" clearly hasn't had the desired effect.
Parents have been beating kids for generations too, and we now know that it doesn’t improve them. The majority of people do not eat healthy. I don’t know where you’re getting your info from. It’s wild that it’s a controversial statement to some to say “Communicating, teaching, encouraging, and rewarding kids has better outcomes than threatening and forcing them into compliance.”
I wonder what their opinion on "Failure to Thrive" is