Momma Sandy Says - Kids and Food

Momma Sandy Says

Kids and Food

   Here are some of my thoughts and children and food.  Sorted by topic.

Babies:

Formula - Though breast feeding is popular again, formula use is still going to happen.  Unfortunately, not all babies can tolerate all the different kinds of formula.  Allergic reactions are common as the digestion systems of babies are developing.  This means that what your child seems to be allergic to one day may be ok 6 months later.  This will come up again with the introduction of each new food.

   I wish there was one kind of formula that was tolerated by every child the whole time they are growing.  Some of you will be lucky and not have problems.  One of mine went through several kinds of formula.  My least favorite though, are the soy based formulas.  Not only do they stink, but they also stain.

Baby Food:  Every kid handles baby food differently.  That said, let me give you a few things I've learned.  First off, feed babies over a cleanable floor.  If you are stuck feeding your child over carpeting, put down a large tarp.  I'm not kidding.  The first time your child sends the bottle flying you will be glad.

   Your doctor will give you guidelines about which food groups to start when. I used the option of starting with carrots. The orange baby food matched my kids hair.  The photos were great.  After that it was trying one baby food after another, making sure my kids could tolerate them.  We were really lucky - we only had one allergic reaction.  But dear Lord, what a reaction!  On schedule I fed my son some soft scrambled eggs.  Every part of his body that the eggs touched immediately turned a bright red.  And the little he ate went right through him.  One unhappy little boy.  Two years later we tried eggs again and he was fine.  No further problems with eggs.  In fact, he doesn't have a problem with food allergies in general.  Common sense rule - if your child reacts badly to a new food, don't feed it to them again!  Tell the doctor.

   I do want to warn new parents about getting all hung up on keeping the baby food meals balanced.    Do your best, but don't freak out if your kid refuses certain foods sometimes.  My son was doing that, so I kept track of what he ate for 6 months.  Sometimes he almost inhaled proteins and ignored veggies.  Or vice verse.  But at the end of 6 months his nutritional needs balanced out.  I stopped trying to force him to eat what I thought he needed.  Clearly he was listening to the needs of his body.

   Now my daughter was completely different.  She didn't have any problems with baby food.  However, her personality was such that she wanted to grow up quickly.  Usually I would feed her her meal as the family ate.  She was fussy and would not ear the baby food I had for her.  She made it clear that she wanted people food, not baby food.  As an experiment I started grinding up our dinner to feed to her.  And she was perfectly happy.  As I said, every kid handles baby food differently.

Picky Eaters:

   God save me from picky eaters!  My daughter, once we got her squared away with people food, was fine.  My son, however... He and green vegetables were not friends.  This was where I learned how to pick my battles.  Not only was he picky, he was (and is) strong willed.  We really were the stereotypical mother/child picture of well after dinner, waiting for him to eat his now cold 5 green beans.  I did get smarter.  I learned to offer substitutes and positive reinforcements (bribes).  More importantly I taught him that he had a choice in the matter.  He could choose to eat those 5 green beans in a timely manner, or he could choose to suffer the consequences.  Sometimes he won, sometimes I won, and sometimes the green beans would mysteriously vanish.

   Luckily for me, most of my sons picky eating ended with the onset of rapid growth in middle school (see below).  It's hard to be a picky eater when you're in the middle of a growth spurt.  The one trait he continued though, was that he would eat one food at a time.  No mixing of food items was allowed.  And heaven help us all if the food items touched!

   That particular picky habit ended also in his early teens.  We were at a low key but gourmet restaurant when my son started working on a 3 part desert.  He was happily eating the chocolate mouse topping when he accidentally included some of the chocolate pudding with the mouse.  It was like a light went off in his head.  Wait!  You can mix food flavors to make it better?  Then we had him try all 3 layers at once.  He found chocolate nirvana.  And learned something amazing about food.

   Both of my kids are fairly adventurous eaters as adults.  I give a lot of credit for that to their Grandpa Eddie.  He would feed them excellent food and then later on tell them what it was.  I miss him.

The Growing Years:

   I am generally not a fan of gender generalizations, but behaviors around food during the pre and teen years (when they are growing so fast) do tend to follow true due to gender.  Boys, once they start their growth spurts (usually around middle school), tend to eat everything in sight. That phrase, "growing pains" can be a real thing.  And to fuel that boys eat.  A lot.  My son, during those years would eat a snack on the walk home from school.  Once home, his snack was the size of a full meal for me.  Dinner, a few hours later, would usually include thirds.  And an hour or so later he was ready for desert!  We didn't have leftovers very often in those years.  For years I had a cartoon on my fridge.  The first panels showed two viking raiders eating everything in sight.  The next panel showed the father of one of the boys looking into the fridge commenting on how there never seemed to be any food in the fridge.  having teen boys is like that.

   Girls generally don't eat as much.  There is also a push towards personal appearance, thanks to media and group pressures.  I would recommend parents of girls, starting in preteen years to watch out for dieting.  While dangerous to their nutritional needs, it can also be a starting point for more serious issues like bulimia and anorexia.

Fad Foods and Lifestyle Food Choices:

   Something to watch for, especially starting in preteen years are fad foods.  A certain food becomes popular, so that's all your child wants to eat.  Stomp that sucker down asap.  You should have been teaching them about the need for a balanced diet all along.  Fad foods are not usually balanced.  They can also be tied in with dieting as well.

   Lifestyle food choices are things like becoming a vegetarian, or even a vegan.  Maybe even a full carnivore.  I had to go through that when my 7th grade son informed me that since his girlfriend was a vegetarian, he wanted to be one too.  My brain went, "Not going to happen.  You love your grandpa's ribs and carne asada too much."  But I went with the good parent gig and we started to talk about nutrition.  We calculated how much protean my son should be eating due to his age.  Then we started looking at the non-meat substitutes.  Which included, of course, the green vegetables that had been such a bane of his childhood.  I could see his brain fighting between wanting to be like his girl friend and not wanting to eat all that non-meat stuff.  I took pity on him and asked him to hold off on becoming a vegetarian until he was around 16, to give his body a chance to finish growing.  If he still wanted to stop eating meat at that point, I promised to help.  He agreed.  You know, he never mentioned it again.

   The opposite can occur.  What if the child of a vegetarian family discovers he or she likes meat when he finally has a chance to eat it?  I feel, in both cases, that parents need to respect lifestyle food choices.  Now if there are religious components involved, that's a different discussion.  But if a child or young adult wants to try a different style, and is mature enough to understand it, I say, let them try.  Plan this adventure with them.  You will gain major trust points with your children.  I'm also going to recommend, especially of a new meat eater in an otherwise vegetarian family, that the child help in the preparation and cooking of these foods.

   I knew of a family where the Mother and the youngest child were vegetarians.  The dad and the other siblings were not.  There could have been a lot of strife in that family around food, but the family was wise enough to avoid that.  Meals included both vegetarian and meat based main dishes.  Thanksgiving was a lot of work, but mostly the family respected each others choices.

Conclusion:

   Like in so many areas of child raising, respect your children and their choices.  Train them to understand what the good choices are and what the consequences of bad choices can be (scurvy and rickets to name two).  Remember that all children are different in how they view food.  And what they like and don't like.  And those choices can change.