"Starving" Your Children
Posted by Maggie Tue, 29 May 2007 19:34:00 GMT
I promised another post about how I “starve” Hannah. What is ironic is the day after she ate all those pepper was a day that she only ate dinner. So it is fresh in my mind how I handle these situations. I’ll just go over that day with you and then maybe summarize at the end.
The day started out sort of rushed, I forget why, but Hannah only had milk for breakfast. This isn’t a problem for Hannah, she doesn’t eat much in the morning even if I do put food out in front of her. Although this is something I need to work on. I’m sure if I limited that morning milk and had a nutritious meal in front of her she could learn to eat it just like the other meals.
Lunch came around and I had some leftover mac and cheese with peas in it. One of Hannah’s favorites. So I heated it up and set her at the dining table and we prayed for lunch. She didn’t touch it! She was acting cranky so I sent her to bed without lunch.
After her nap we tried again, still wouldn’t touch it. By this time though she was hungry. But this is what I had for her and I knew she liked it. So we held off all afternoon. By 4 she was very hungry, but since I didn’t want her to spoil her dinner by eating all of her lunch I just gave her 1 glass of milk. We had an impromptu date night so Hannah got to go to Aunt Debbie’s for lunch and apparently she made up for not eating all day with lots of chicken and cantaloupe and whatever else they would put in front of her.
So here are some guidelines:
1. Once food is put on the table that is what is available for that meal. Sometimes for snack or the two earlier meals I’ll ask her what she would like, but once a decision is made that’s it, no changing your mind. And if I decide, and don’t give her a choice, that’s my right as a parent and she gets no say.
2. I don’t have a bite rule, if it’s something new I’ll try and help her eat it, but if she doesn’t want to eat I won’t force her. As someone who has struggled with their weight all their life I find it difficult to make my child eat if she don’t want to, no need to finish her plate either. I’m trying to make serving sizes closer to what she would eat as not to waste food, but if she eats a few bites of all the food groups I’m happy and John will eat the rest. :)
3. If she does not eat the food she does not get to eat until the next meal. Even if she does eat food she doesn’t get to eat until the next meal. The rare exception to this is if she eats a lot at a meal and then is still hungry a short time later, she may be going through a growth spurt, so she can have extra snacks. In the above instance she normally gets a snack sometime between nap and dinner, so she was offered lunch again. I don’t always carry over the skipped meal to snack, especially if it doesn’t save well, but she may not eat until the regular eating time (usually a time frame, not a set time).
4. If she doesn’t eat dinner she gets one cup of milk before bed, no more than that. She normally gets milk before bed and will sometimes ask for a second cup, if she ate well she may have it. But if she didn’t I want her to see that she is still hungry because she didn’t eat the meal, the one glass of milk is usually enough to make it so her tummy doesn’t hurt from being hungry and she’s able to go to sleep. If it’s during the day though I let her tummy hurt until the next meal. She has never gotten sick from this, never wasted away and usually eats a ton at the next meal. This also does not happen very often.
With these guidelines Hannah learns there are meal times, and that is when food is available. We have breakfast after waking up, lunch around 11 (usually 3 hours later), snack after nap (around 3ish) and dinner when daddy gets home. If daddy is late or dinner is behind then she can have a pre-dinner snack, we don’t like a cranky girl for daddy’s homecoming. Plus he’s usually pretty hungry when getting home so if dinner’s going to be longer than 1/2 an hour they’ll share a snack together. Usually fruit or trail mix, so if she fills up on these and doesn’t eat a lot at dinner at least it’s nutritious food. :)
She also has the option of not eating if she’s not hungry, but it would be in her best interest if she would eat a little bit because it’ll be 3-4 hours before eating again. I try not to have gaps more than 4 hours between meals so that all of our blood sugars stay level. Hope these tricks help with meal time woes. :)
You must have nerves of steel :) We have meal time woes too. I think I may try your approach and see if it helps. I've tried before, but my heart breaks when the kids are cranky because they are hungry, because it still must be disciplined. It's hard to bring myself to administer discipline instead of a cracker. I think I just need to set it in stone so the kids ALWAYS know what to expect.
I'm working on being consistent with discipline for crankiness/fits. But one thing I am consistent about is if she whines or throws a fit because she wants something she certainly doesn't get it. I don't always discipline for hunger induced crankiness. Sometimes I just explain to her why she's hungry and that she has to deal with it and maybe try and distract her from the hunger or give her some water. Consistency is so hard, especially when it seems like if you're to be consistent you would be disciplining all the time.