Radical: My two brothers and I were raised on a no-rules food system: We had access to as much candy as we wanted - all day long... including ice cream and cookies. My father kept the supply almost full almost all of the time in a dining room drawer.
Mealtimes: breakfast was almost always pancakes or French toast and bacon and LOTS of maple syrup. Lunch: was always a simple sandwich with milk - since we didn't like milk but, during the 40's and 50's it was considered essential to have at every meal, our milk was always enhanced with either Bosco or Hershey's chocolate syrup. Dinner: mostly chicken, or steak and canned vegetables...although we were often given the option of Franco-American spaghetti - in a can.
None of the three of us has ever had a weight problem and we all have grown up really thoughtful and conscious of eating a basically very healthy diet. We are relaxed about food...not neurotic. There was one rule: as we left the dinner table we had to compliment my mother on her cooking or some aspect of the meal. (I was very popular - my candy-deprived friends would visit regularly!)
It is important to me to teach my daughter healthy eating and living habits. I am grateful that my parents taught them to me. Eat slowly, enjoy your food, drink water, take time to talk, and listen, at the table, listen to your body and what it wants. Try to move your body every day. Enjoy vegetable and fruits and also desert, but really enjoy it. See dessert as a privilege to be savored and not a right. I try to present good food and to model healthy habits for her. We like to cook and have always fed her what we eat and I think this has made her more of an adventurous eater. We also live in a city that is filled with food from all over the world and we enjoy it together. She is more adventurous than I am, truthfully. I do think many children learn to eat mindlessly and like it's a speed-oriented sport, and I am trying to help her learn different habits. I will say that she and her friends seem to have much better body images than I did at their age (12). She goes to a progressive girls school that has focused on rejecting/reimagining the thinking about body ideals that we grew up with and I think this has helped a lot. It's kind of amazing to see this. Relatedly, there is a great book called First Bite: How We Learn to Eat, that you might enjoy. I thought it was great.
This resonates so much with me. I've definitely gotten into some battles with my 9 year-old, which she has won by chewing food up and spitting it on the floor! Not the dynamic I was aiming for. I've recently had some success at insisting that my kids eat *some* dinner and not make a big deal of it, and then trying to be pretty lax about snacking at other times. Recently when dinner was being a miserable battle for several nights, I collected everything sugary or snacky and put it all in the basement for two weeks. Maybe that's too shame-inducing... I do think I succeed at not shaming my kids about the quality or quantity of their eating in general. One effective thing we've done since they were little has been to say that only a few nights a week are "dessert nights" -- but on those nights, as long as they ate a decent amount of real food, they can eat however much candy and ice cream they want. But in general, I suspect that I'm too much of a helicopter parent about their eating.
Radical: My two brothers and I were raised on a no-rules food system: We had access to as much candy as we wanted - all day long... including ice cream and cookies. My father kept the supply almost full almost all of the time in a dining room drawer.
Mealtimes: breakfast was almost always pancakes or French toast and bacon and LOTS of maple syrup. Lunch: was always a simple sandwich with milk - since we didn't like milk but, during the 40's and 50's it was considered essential to have at every meal, our milk was always enhanced with either Bosco or Hershey's chocolate syrup. Dinner: mostly chicken, or steak and canned vegetables...although we were often given the option of Franco-American spaghetti - in a can.
None of the three of us has ever had a weight problem and we all have grown up really thoughtful and conscious of eating a basically very healthy diet. We are relaxed about food...not neurotic. There was one rule: as we left the dinner table we had to compliment my mother on her cooking or some aspect of the meal. (I was very popular - my candy-deprived friends would visit regularly!)
It is important to me to teach my daughter healthy eating and living habits. I am grateful that my parents taught them to me. Eat slowly, enjoy your food, drink water, take time to talk, and listen, at the table, listen to your body and what it wants. Try to move your body every day. Enjoy vegetable and fruits and also desert, but really enjoy it. See dessert as a privilege to be savored and not a right. I try to present good food and to model healthy habits for her. We like to cook and have always fed her what we eat and I think this has made her more of an adventurous eater. We also live in a city that is filled with food from all over the world and we enjoy it together. She is more adventurous than I am, truthfully. I do think many children learn to eat mindlessly and like it's a speed-oriented sport, and I am trying to help her learn different habits. I will say that she and her friends seem to have much better body images than I did at their age (12). She goes to a progressive girls school that has focused on rejecting/reimagining the thinking about body ideals that we grew up with and I think this has helped a lot. It's kind of amazing to see this. Relatedly, there is a great book called First Bite: How We Learn to Eat, that you might enjoy. I thought it was great.
I asked my son and daughter to help us cook. When we sat down for a meal, I said Bon appétit!
This resonates so much with me. I've definitely gotten into some battles with my 9 year-old, which she has won by chewing food up and spitting it on the floor! Not the dynamic I was aiming for. I've recently had some success at insisting that my kids eat *some* dinner and not make a big deal of it, and then trying to be pretty lax about snacking at other times. Recently when dinner was being a miserable battle for several nights, I collected everything sugary or snacky and put it all in the basement for two weeks. Maybe that's too shame-inducing... I do think I succeed at not shaming my kids about the quality or quantity of their eating in general. One effective thing we've done since they were little has been to say that only a few nights a week are "dessert nights" -- but on those nights, as long as they ate a decent amount of real food, they can eat however much candy and ice cream they want. But in general, I suspect that I'm too much of a helicopter parent about their eating.