Parenting In Focus: Decision making begins with food

Published 1:30 am Wednesday, April 17, 2024

Life is filled with choices and decisions. They begin early and become more complicated and increasingly important.

Food is a special issue for people and is an early choice that our parents make for us. Many of us learn about food issues when we try to teach our dog not to overeat. This is not an easy lesson to teach your dog, let alone teach your child. At the same time, teaching your dog is a lot easier than teaching your child about food.

People have been fighting over which food is appropriate for children for years. These disagreements begin early over breast-feeding or bottle-feeding.

Feeding issues continue, particularly as your child becomes old enough to eat solid foods. The controversy remains over when to feed solids, when to wean your baby and how much to feed him. Some parents, particularly moms, feel guilty when others judge them doing the wrong thing with their child.

Even with disagreement on this matter, babies thrive. Some things are worth fighting about and others just aren’t. A fight over food is one of those things that really isn’t. It isn’t worth fighting about with your child who has strong views on which food he likes.

The best reason not to fight over food with your child is that you will lose. If your child is full, let him down from the table or highchair. If he doesn’t want to eat the peas, let it go.

None of this means you give him ice cream instead — nor should you give him food again in five minutes. Remind him he was full and go on about your business. He will not starve.

It just means he made a choice, and you will go along with it. This isn’t an easy thing to do as a parent. You want your child to be healthy and besides, you prepared a nice meal for him. But you don’t want to make an issue over food. It is just a battle you can’t win by insisting.

Raising children is filled with making choices about how to be a good parent. No matter how overwhelmed you are with trying to make the right choices and decisions for your child, he or she will thrive and move on to another set of problems for you to worry about.

Some issues are for your child to decide, and others are more serious, and you will need to be involved. In many ways, these small issues help a child learn how to make bigger, more important decisions that will face him.

Think about each issue that you or your child must decide. Remember, the issues will grow. When this same child is a teenager, you will be faced with choices to make about his driving or what she wears. Your child will find the smaller issues are now replaced with bigger decisions for your child.

Some of these bigger issues will be ones that are left to your child. Some are ones that have major consequences, and your child must learn to give them serious consideration.

Some of the issues your child must solve by himself, and you are laying the foundation for him to make even far more serious decisions. Help him by teaching about deciding on these earlier lessons.

Cynthia Martin is the founder of the First Teacher program and former executive director of Parenting Matters Foundation, which published newsletters for parents, caregivers and grandparents.