Category: Parenting

We should all encourage healthy eating in our children, most of us do that by making sure they eat the right things, but how many parents have you come across who report that their children will only eat junk food despite eating well in their early years? One possible reason for this is that they are eating only what they saw their parents eating. Children learn a lot from observation, so it follows that to make sure our kids make the right food choices in their later life, we need to let them see us making the right food choices for ourselves in their early life.

I decided to make sure that my child sees me eat a lot of fibre rich foods. There is a family history of high cholesterol and bowel cancer on both sides of my parents, making fibre very important to us. The problem I found was that while I can use Doctor Internet for research it doesn’t give me very much to work with. It gives me tables of statistics, or statements like ‘eat more grains’, but really that just means I’m back to people creating pages for ranking and traffic, not actual use. So, as usual, I did it myself.

First I needed a little science, not too much, but just enough for me to explain to my family what they are eating. I came up with the fact that there are two types of fibre. One type turns into a jelly after you eat it (that’s the soluble type). It helps to make you feel full for longer by helping your body take it’s time to digest the food, as well as soaking up bad cholesterol. The other type (the insoluble type) acts like a cleaner, it collects up all the stuff your body doesn’t need and helps get it out of your body. Obviously you need both.

The amount you should eat is a tough one to establish. Opinions vary from country to country and medical advice ranges anywhere from 20g to 38g per day. Making it even harder is the fact that scientists have struggled to work out how much fibre exists in food, apparently it’s complex. One thing on our side though is that foods generally contain a 50:50 mix between soluble and insoluble and that’s roughly how we’re supposed to split the amount that we eat.

I decided to simplify the entire thing. I reasoned that by finding easy fibre rich foods that I could include in my weekly shop, I would be pretty confident that I’d be seen eating the right foods without number crunching or over thinking. This is the list I came up with:

• Apples. Apples are easy. They can be stewed, sliced or crunched at any time. Each one has between 3g and 4g of fibre.
• Berries are easy too. Half a cup has between 4g and 5g of fibre. Kids love berries, so do I. Raspberry, blackberry or strawberry work well.
• Whole wheat Bread. A couple of slices gives you 6g. It’s not a hard thing to do to switch to this in toast or sandwiches.
• Peas please. ½ a cup gives between 7g and 9g. That’s quite a lot, they’re easy to prepare and easy to eat.
• Sweet Potato. Replace regular potato with sweet potato. It has between 5g and 7g of fibre.
• Spinach gives 4g. Stick it in your sandwich or make it a major component of salads.
• Oats. I replaced all cereal options for myself with oats. 7g.

That’s it, just 7 easily palatable, easily prepared foods high in fibre. If I ate all that each day I’d be eating somewhere between 36g and 42g of fibre. I don’t, but I try, I probably get to about 25g on average though. My aim is for my family to see me eating those foods and that is certainly being achieved.

As ever, if you have any comments, corrections, arguments or suggestions, send them in.

One of the most controversial parenting conversations I come across is how much television young children should be allowed to watch. The topic is heating up right now with the Get Up and Grow report coming from the Australian government, recommending that children under two not be allowed any television at all. This is generating sensationalist headlines in the popular media, probably throwing parents all over the world into a crisis of guilt.

It’s a very different story if you investigate further, which in line with this blog is what I did. If you want the quick version here it is: there is no evidence that young children watching age appropriate television have retarded development, there is no evidence that young children watching age appropriate television have increased development, what is important is that healthy development is being encouraged by the carer.

A no-brainer really. But if you want the longer version keep reading.

It’s normal to worry about this as a parent. We worry about what we put in their bodies at meal time so it’s only natural to worry about what we put in their minds as well. For the most part we all know that children develop through human interaction, physical interaction and creative play, but what we don’t really know is what television adds or subtracts from that. It’s why so many of us look to Doctor Internet for advice and when we read in the media that children who watch television know less words than children who don’t.

Here’s something interesting: there are studies that discovered television viewing was irrelevant when other factors such as the level of the parents education and household income come into play. In other words children of low educated, low income families tend to be slightly less developed than children of higher educated, wealthier families. The fact that the low educated, low income families tended to spend more time in front of the television was possibly largely irrelevant. The studies couldn’t be sure.

I should state at this point that my wife is a primary teacher and so I have access to a lot of literature on this topic. One of the books floating around our house that I have read is this one:

Endangered Minds: Why Children Don’t Think And What We Can Do About It

It’s not a bad read, but she does make statements in one part of it about the influence television has on children and then state later on that there is almost no evidence to support that statement.

The “no evidence” trend goes on the more I look, for example other studies I have read, conducted in the US, continue to support the view that there is no link between television habits in young children and their development as adults. Although some of them imply that they felt there should be, they just couldn’t find the evidence for it.

The only fact that I could find is that none of the studies can be sure. Wilbur Schramm was a noted expert in the field of human communication. He is quoted as stating that “No informed person can say simply that television is bad or that it is good for children” and that “the relationship is always between a kind of television and a kind of child in a kind of situation.” He said that a few years ago but I think that still pretty much sums up the studies being used to justify the ‘no television’ agenda in the media.

This does not mean you can sit your child in front of the television and not worry about it, you still have a responsibility as a parent. There are reasons why you should be concerned with and aware of, the television viewing habits of your child. Firstly media is evolving faster than our ability to understand the impacts of it; your child is being exposed to marketing and technology that didn’t exist when we were children and we have no experience to base our parenting choices on. Secondly, as children develop they learn what influences to take into account when making choices, if you want your children to be influenced by you as a parent more than the marketing team behind Dora the Explorer then you need to put effort in to make sure you are by far the stronger influence.

So if television, all things being equal, and properly managed, is harmless, can it be extended to being beneficial? This would be the argument put forward for buying developmental media such as Baby Einstein. From what I have read those products don’t hurt, but they don’t benefit particularly either. What they may be doing is making parents feel less guilty about sitting their children in front of the television unattended. Essentially creating a guilt free electronic baby sitter.

The final point I would like to look at is the scariest claim of all; watching too much television causes autism. I have a good friend who told me this and because of that she does not allow her children to watch television at all. I looked into the study reported in the mediah, that generated her belief. What it actually showed was that autism in the UK was four times more likely to occur in areas of high rainfall. The correlation being claimed was that higher rainfall equals more time viewing television. I probably don’t need to go into the problems with that any more than to say I think it’s more likely genetic factors are at play here, as opposed to how much it rains.

I guess it would only be fair to end this article by laying my cards on the table. We allow the television to be on, only showing channels that contain no advertising, and only when one of us is present to make the experience more interactive. On my wife’s advice we join in with the television show to encourage movement, language and creative play. I’ve been an owl, a tree, a worm and danced to elephant music, and that was just last week! It works for us and seems to be working for our child, at her last assessment she had extremely high vocabulary skills for a child of her age.

As ever, feedback and comments are welcome.

This morning my wife was updating me on the problems some of our friends are having with getting their kids to eat. The child psychologists call this particular parental pleasure “food refusal”.

If you Google this topic to see what Doctor Internet has to offer you’ll see a lot of articles by ‘experts’ and a lot of forum posts by stressed parents.  Like most of the parenting advice I read online it’s conflicting and overwhelming. My bet is that the Phd’s and child psychologists don’t have any more of a clue after their years of study than I do after my time parenting, but what I do have is some tested practical advice to offer other parents out there. One thing I am going to state first though, is that if you suspect in any way that food refusal is being caused by a medical condition then you need to see your doctor. Now on with the tips.

Tip 1: Stay in control

When a child won’t eat it triggers anxiety in all of us, but particularly in mothers because their impulse is to nurture. At the risk of sounding condescending, you have to control that anxiety. I find that easier than my wife, perhaps because as a bloke I feel less of that nurturing instinct, so often I take over when we encounter food refusal behaviours.

• Create and stick to a meal time routine. As an adult if you eat at the same time every day your body gets used to it and then if one day you don’t eat at that time you get very hungry. It’s the same for kids. Create and stick to a routine and pretty soon their mind and body will accept it as their normal day. Eventually they could be telling you when meal time is.
• Warn them that dinner time is coming. I find that this works brilliantly. About 30 minutes before food time I’ll ask her if she’s hungry. Most of the time she’ll say no. 20 mins later and she always says yes. Then when we eat it’s never a problem. Some parents might interpret that as the child being in too much control, but read that again and tell me who is really in control.
• Should you feel yourself losing that control, if it’s possible, let someone else take over. My wife and I swap if one of us is going to start screaming when, for example, the kid has thrown her food at the dog.

Tip 2: Remind yourself you’re dealing with a child

This might seem obvious but it’s easy to forget when you’re getting stressed. I’ll bet at 2am in the morning when your child just won’t let you sleep you’ve felt like shouting at them. It’s the same with food refusal. This isn’t personal, you’re just dealing with a rapidly developing child who is learning what to do and which buttons to push.

• Make dinner time fun. Sitting at a table and eating is never going to be as interesting as toddling or crawling around the house, or even as interesting as the TV. What’s more, it’s normal for them to be easily distracted. As a father part of your job is to be a clown, and using those clown skills to keep your child sat in a chair eating, is a good use of them.
• Don’t nag or argue with them about the food. It’s unlikely they’re going to respond well to that anyway and really all you’re doing is teaching them that a negative behaviour gets them some attention. Disapproval is still a form of attention in a child’s mind.
• Don’t resort to using food to influence their behaviour. This is good general advice in my mind but it’s one of the more contradictory topics on the internet. For example the webmd says this is a bad thing but the netdoctor says this is a good thing. Who knows which one is right? All I would say is that when you tell a child they can have desert if they eat their greens, they’re always going to create a problem when faced with greens, because that enables the argument which results in them getting desert. I think that desert should be something special and always outside their control.

Tip 3: Don’t assume it’s long term

It’s easy to think that the problem will never go away, that there’s something wrong, that the child is somehow broken. We’re so used to hearing about how perfect life could be with the right quick fix that when we encounter a problem, which by the way is probably entirely normal, we assume somehow we have failed forever.

• There is no evidence, at all, that food refusal leads to eating disorders in later life. Anecdotally people will tell stories, my wife has one herself about a friend who didn’t eat as a child, whose parents were told not to worry about it, and as an adult that person barely eats. But there’s no evidence to support the cause and effect implied in those stories, so you can probably stop worrying about it.
• If your child has a weight problem then it will get picked up through the regular check ups kids should have. Don’t assume that a phase of food refusal will automatically lead to malnourishment. If you’re worried go and see a doctor.

Tip 4: Pace yourself

As adults we tend to treat meal times as a rush job, something to do as quickly as possible. That’s why we invented fast food. We want as much gratification as we can get for the least amount of effort we can put into it.  That’s a very 21^st century ideal. It’s not great for kids. You have to change your mind set to feed a child. It’s also important to remember that the more time you take to eat, the easier the food is to digest and the more control you have over when you get full. That’s important for your health as much as theirs.

• Don’t only give them what you eat for the sake of convenience. I have no idea what tastes good to my child, I hate the taste of broccoli but she seems to like it. Meal times should be used to encourage experimentation with variety and you need to allow the time to do that. It’s also a good idea to encourage them to eat across the plate, what I mean by that is that they don’t just eat one thing at a time but that they alternate with a little of everything. Again this needs time to encourage.
• They need to see you eat a variety of foods and they themselves need to eat a variety of foods. Nutrition for children is not the topic of this post but one thing I will say is that making sure that your plate and theirs are as colourful with foods as possible is a good idea. Take the time to prepare that sort of meal for both of you.
• Don’t force them to eat everything. There is no rule that says they should eat everything on their plate. They should try everything at least once but you haven’t failed if they suddenly stop wanting to eat scrambled eggs.
• Dipping. I don’t think there is anything wrong with dipping. I know some parents who think sauces are bad, but dipping is fun and if it’s encouraging my child to try new foods I’ll let it happen.

That’s 4 tips broken down with some suggestions for you.  I’m realy just voicing the opinions I have developed based on my research , my trial and error as well as on conversations and observations with my friends. If you have any opinions or suggestions of your own then by all means comment below or send them in.

My wife and I began a family about 18 months ago. At that point I decided that I needed to bring together my thinking on topics such as health, lifestyle and parenting. I had no strategy to help my kids navigate this increasingly complex 21^st century and I needed one.

It took me some time after the birth to go from being aware of the problem to doing something about it, but eventually I began to make progress.  I’m finding ways to navigate the mess of information available to us all every day in the media.

I made the decision to take this self improvement project of mine online. This was based on a very selfish reason; if I can connect with other parents like me then I can learn from them and perhaps make this project more than I can on my own.

So I’ll be writing about issues that concern me as a parent. Mostly based on my research and experiences.