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Simplifying Food for Children and Parents
[Week 28 of 52 Weeks to a Better Relationship With Your Child]
Why is food so complicated?
What are your main considerations when deciding what and how to feed your children? I think the basics are:
A parent ends up, whether consciously or not, searching for a manageable balance between factors. Sooner or later, every parent is faced with how to fulfill the parental responsibility in feeding a child no matter what a child’s preferences in eating.
Other than the moral obligation of parents to provide food for their own children, there is not anything obviously moral about exactly how it is done. That doesn’t mean that there might not be better or worse ways to go about it for the sake of personal habits for the children or family relationships.
Budgeting in the eyes of a child
Let’s start with talking about the budget, because, let’s face it: someone has to pay for the food. Someone is doing the work to grow and sell the food and they reasonably want recompense for their efforts. Then, the parents work to provide the food in ways that children often fail to comprehend. A parent should feel free to put limits on anything, from what is prepared to serving size. This helps to make the best use of the food available. While the end goal may be to have our children understand economics and make good food choices, for a while the parents have to be the ones to do that.
As a child matures, he will understand decisions more, but that doesn’t mean the child needs to be convinced in order for a parent to be justified in a decision. A child does not need to agree with what is being bought or available to eat. A parent is best suited to make these decisions. Disagreements from a child about how it is done are only important in the sense of how the disagreement is handled.
In most cases, it is a minor preference of the child’s and an attempt at taking over the parental role in the family. Almost all children try this at one time or another. Food issues are a likely trigger for it since eating is frequent and can be a stressful point of the day. A parent can communicate concern for the child’s desires, while at the same time retaining the role of parent.
Keeping track of what your child puts in his mouth
Even if a child gets some money to spend on his own food, a parent has the responsibility to guide that. Since nutrition is particularly important for a growing body, this should be a priority for parents. The more time the child spends away from home/the parent, the harder this will be.
I’m not suggesting that every bite of food needs to be absolutely nutritionally perfect or that that is even possible. However, parents see the bigger picture and have a better idea of how to weig
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By Laura Blodgett[Week 28 of 52 Weeks to a Better Relationship With Your Child]
Why is food so complicated?
What are your main considerations when deciding what and how to feed your children? I think the basics are:
A parent ends up, whether consciously or not, searching for a manageable balance between factors. Sooner or later, every parent is faced with how to fulfill the parental responsibility in feeding a child no matter what a child’s preferences in eating.
Other than the moral obligation of parents to provide food for their own children, there is not anything obviously moral about exactly how it is done. That doesn’t mean that there might not be better or worse ways to go about it for the sake of personal habits for the children or family relationships.
Budgeting in the eyes of a child
Let’s start with talking about the budget, because, let’s face it: someone has to pay for the food. Someone is doing the work to grow and sell the food and they reasonably want recompense for their efforts. Then, the parents work to provide the food in ways that children often fail to comprehend. A parent should feel free to put limits on anything, from what is prepared to serving size. This helps to make the best use of the food available. While the end goal may be to have our children understand economics and make good food choices, for a while the parents have to be the ones to do that.
As a child matures, he will understand decisions more, but that doesn’t mean the child needs to be convinced in order for a parent to be justified in a decision. A child does not need to agree with what is being bought or available to eat. A parent is best suited to make these decisions. Disagreements from a child about how it is done are only important in the sense of how the disagreement is handled.
In most cases, it is a minor preference of the child’s and an attempt at taking over the parental role in the family. Almost all children try this at one time or another. Food issues are a likely trigger for it since eating is frequent and can be a stressful point of the day. A parent can communicate concern for the child’s desires, while at the same time retaining the role of parent.
Keeping track of what your child puts in his mouth
Even if a child gets some money to spend on his own food, a parent has the responsibility to guide that. Since nutrition is particularly important for a growing body, this should be a priority for parents. The more time the child spends away from home/the parent, the harder this will be.
I’m not suggesting that every bite of food needs to be absolutely nutritionally perfect or that that is even possible. However, parents see the bigger picture and have a better idea of how to weig