Hi everyone. Welcome to this week’s video blog. Today I wanted to talk a little bit about food issues. One of the popular questions I get asked is, “How do I make my child eat”? I just want to have a quick look at that from the perspective of a child. I want to remind you, and if you can keep this number one thing in mind, even write it down, this will save you a lot of heartache and grief around meals. Here it is you cannot force anyone to eat. You can’t. Just get over that fact. You cannot force anyone to eat. Imagine if you tried to force yourself to eat, or your sister, or your best friend. They would absolutely think you’d lost it. [laughs] We do this to our children all the time. We force them. We try to bribe them. We try to argue with them. We try to force them to eat. You can’t, and you shouldn’t. When you do that you’re setting up a very strange relationship with food for your child. What can you do?

There are definitely some things here that you can do. One of them is structure mealtime appropriately. Try not to let your child go too long without a meal. Often, and this is interesting, what happens with children who go to long between a meal is that they eat less. They get over hungry, and then they end up getting cranky, and their mood goes off, and then at mealtime they often eat less.

Two hours is a good time frame. Every two hours it’s either meal or snack. You can be in charge of that. You can also be in charge in what you offer. I like to give children choice. I think choice is a fabulous way to minimize struggle and battle if you give them some choice.

I would say, “It’s snack time.” I’d put out two or three choices, maybe some cheese, some apple pieces, a few raisins or carrot sticks, whatever it is, and say, “OK, here’s our snack today. These are your choices. Have as many grapes as you want or apples as you want. Have as much of you like of any of it.”

If they eat none of it, that’s their choice. That has to be their choice. “If you eat no snack, OK, you might be hungry, but snack is now over.” They need now to wait until lunch or next snack or dinner. That can be hard. It’s very hard as a parent, because we’re so paranoid that our children are going to starve to death that we tend to back down from that.

An hour later if she wants some yogurt, you give into that. Again, you have to remember what is up to her and what is up to you. It’s up to you to structure and plan and provide. The rest is up to her. If you teach her that this is the way things work around your house, and she chooses not to eat any snack and feels some hunger until the next meal, that’s an internal consequence to eat some snack next time you offer it.

This won’t happen instantly. Again, nothing in parenting happens instantly. [laughs] That’s the hard part. You’ve got to do it day in and day out and day in and day out with consistency until she realizes that “This doesn’t change. This is the way things are every day. I’m at least going to eat a handful of grapes so I don’t feel as hungry by the time we get to dinner.”

That takes the fight out of it. There’s nothing to fight about here. You eat it or you don’t. Those are the two choices you have. I know as a parent that I’m providing you with great nutritious choices at appropriate times throughout the day. I’m not going to get mad about it, and I’m not going to argue with you about it. I’m just going to do this day in and day out, until you get it.
I hope you take some of those pointers today and make mealtime a little more fun around your house. Thanks for watching, and sleep well.