This is one of those sentences that comes up often, especially when you have more than one child. I can’t say how many times I’ve heard it, but it’s been a lot. No kid is perfect and they will always test the boundaries. This is why having a clear set of rules that you, your partner and your carers agree on and follow, consistently, is really important.
I am a firm believer that if you implement your eating rules from the outset (i.e. from when you start weaning your baby), then even if once in a while they push them, they know what will happen next. If you have no rule book, you just make up your mind on what to do in the spur of the moment, and that decision will be dependent on many factors like if you have another crying child in the background, if you’re late for work, if your child is tantruming, etc.
So we watched this episode of Supernanny once that was about a girl with an eating disorder. She plainly refused to eat anything that her Mom gave her. And it came to a point that it was clinically serious; the girl was mal-nourished. In comes Supernanny and there are immediate alarm bells: when the girl refused to eat, the Mom would offer alternatives, like yogurt.
Now, go back in time to when you were a naughty little kid yourself. If you told your Mom you didn’t want your vegetables and she offered you yogurt (or some other yummy thing) instead, which one were you going to eat? And the time after that, what would you do?
And so, following on from Supernanny’s advice we implemented this rule. Generally we didn’t have problems at breakfast because everyone ate porridge with fruit from the time they could eat, so no complains there. I say generally because Miss Z did have a phase of complaining about bananas in her porridge. She said she didn’t like it that they were oxidised – a word she learned from me at around 4 years old, and didn’t let go of until she was about 5½.
So, back to the rule, the porridge in the morning was sacred. However, when we served them lunch or dinner, if they refused to eat it, then we would serve them the same food for the next meal. And the next, and the next if need be. Also, we wouldn’t give them the snack in between so they were really hungry for the next meal.
Now, just so you’re not thinking that this was torture, I remind you again that they had a huge bowl of porridge in the morning. And normally, as we started this rule very early on, they wouldn’t resist past 2 meals.
I’m not advocating that you force them to eat every single bite. There were phases my kids went through where they didn’t like a certain food, like onions or leeks. And so it was ok to leave them on the side, and they felt that their feelings about what they like and don’t like were being heard. But if they are refusing to eat a whole meal, with things that they have eaten before, just because, then you know, it’s pure manipulation.
I can’t emphasise enough how much easier it is to face these issues when you nip them in the bud early on. If you stick to your guns from when they’re 6 months old, you avoid having a real problem in your hands down the road.
But if your child is already 4 or 5 and has come to a point of not eating anything that is healthy and instead you find yourself cooking chips, sausages and beans on toast all the time, then trying to implement this rule all of a sudden won’t work. They will see right through it and just not eat; for days! So please do yourself a favour and seek professional advice. Everyone needs a nutritional diet, and kids need it even more.
I’ve had to face quite a few tantrums and stubbornness on this rule alone. But it’s worth it in the end, when you see your child eat a curry full of vegetables, without complaining once.
Remember that most of the time, it’s a battle of wills with your child. Some battles are not worth fighting and you get to decide which ones to pick. I firmly believe this is one of them, and so with unwavering resolve, I always fought to win.