Why children shouldn't be forced (or persuaded) to eat if they don't want to. Weight problems in children: because of what the child does not gain weight. What to do if your baby is not eating well and is this a serious cause for concern?
Did you know that there is a direct relationship between how a child was fed in childhood and how he will eat in the future in adult life? That the overwhelming number of weight problems (overweight or, on the contrary, insufficient) in adults arise from infancy? Have you ever thought at least once about whether you are feeding your child correctly? Or do you seriously think that this is a simple and understandable, self-evident, routine activity? No matter how it is! The mechanism of psychological perception of food, which determines the strangeness of eating behavior, is an extremely relevant topic today.
Poor hungry child!
To begin with, sometimes eating disorders occur in ... parents! Yes exactly. An unhealthy attitude towards food and psychological problems in relation to it, when an adult cannot "make friends" with food, is the real root of evil.
How does it usually happen in life? I'll give you a simple example:
“Anya lived very modestly in her childhood. Even poor. The family was constantly short of money, even more so for sweets and children's joys. And now our Anya grows into an adult woman, she now has a stable, well-fed life, prosperity and peace in the family. But what does she do when she herself has a child? As if deciding to transfer her own childhood to him, in a peculiar way to make up for lost time, Anya continually feeds the firstborn with everything he asks for. And what does not ask - too. Chocolates, donuts with condensed milk, cookies, chips, soda ... An endless list of gastronomic abundance, which she herself could hardly dream of as a child ... "
In fact, overprotection is the most common and common abnormality in most parents (especially compassionate grandmothers). It literally seems to them that a full stomach and health are somehow interconnected. That a well-fed child simply cannot be unhappy.
Think carefully about whether you are making the same mistake. Do you transfer to your child the long-standing problems, the experience of negative experiences? The golden mean rule is still relevant in our world, and regular overeating is no less harmful than a meager or monotonous diet. And yes: most nutritionists are inclined to assure that sometimes overeating is indeed much more harmful than malnutrition. Remember this if you once again want to force the child (or typical tricks and bribery) into the last spoon "for mom."
Why don't kids eat
Let's look at the picture from an objective angle. A hungry person will not refuse food. In addition, any doctor will explain to you that biological rhythms in our body are arranged in their own way, and if yesterday your child had a particularly good appetite, today it may already be normal. Or even bad.
Our body itself regulates needs. This helps not to gain excess weight, to get as many calories from food as is necessary to actively move and feel good. A sick child is a direct proof of this. He lies in bed, does not feel well, his body simply has no need to demand large amount of food... Even a pediatrician from a district polyclinic will ask you not to pester the child with attempts to feed (meaning overfeeding), but leave him alone.
Another example - a thin child eats a lot (from the point of view of his parents), but at the same time remains the same thin, stubbornly refusing to round up and please grandmothers with liquid cheeks. What's the matter? Just watch your child carefully. How he runs around the apartment all day, how he jumps in the street in the courtyard, dances to music from cartoons and performs a whole series of active movements. Everything that such a child absorbs from food, he processes into energy. And it is right! He doesn't need to save unnecessary calories for a rainy day in a layer on his stomach or in his double chin. Such a child is perfectly healthy. He has no worms (yes, you can not worry), no hormonal disorders, and God knows what else that worried parents are ready to invent.
In a number of rare cases, it is really worth paying attention to the appetite of your beloved child (and to his health in general), for example, if:
- The child suddenly began to eat little or completely refuses to eat, quickly loses weight;
- The child looks overly pale, most of the day he is inactive and lethargic;
- He flatly refuses the food and delicacies he previously loved, does not show any interest in food;
- You notice that the child looks exhausted or haggard.
Thus, I logically lead you to the conclusion that if a child's appetite suddenly decreases, but he remains habitually cheerful, shows activity and does not complain about anything - just leave him alone! As soon as he gets hungry, he will ask you to feed him, otherwise it cannot be.
Food is a natural requirement of the body. Hunger and thirst are the primary instincts for self-preservation. Try to forget to feed the baby. He will notify you of hunger with a loud cry and will not calm down until he is fed. The child knows better when and how much he needs to eat.
From a donut to a living skeleton
Parental overprotection threatens not only obesity for the child. Increasingly, in the practice of psychologists and nutritionists, cases have begun to come across when anorexic patients and people with severe eating disorders come to them. Where does it come from?
A child fed like slaughter grows up, goes to school ... There, no one considers his plump sides or pink cheeks cute. On the contrary, an overweight child is subjected to general pressure, he can be cruelly mocked and mocked, he feels like a “black sheep” among classmates day and night. He develops strong attitudes: food is overweight, overweight is an unhappy life.
While such a person is in the family circle, it is impossible to break this vicious circle of endless gluttony. But now he finishes school, grows up, breaks free from parental care ... and stops eating. He seems to be gaining wings - losing weight before our eyes, receiving compliments and positive reviews from his acquaintances and friends, he can no longer stop. And the nightmarish experience from the "hospitable childhood" spurs him on even more.
“I was approached by a twenty-year-old boy. Rather, he was practically dragged into my office by force. His weight at that time was about fifty kilograms with a height of 179 cm. At the very first session it turned out that the emaciated young man had recently entered a university and left for a nearby town, and then problems began. He left as a plump teenager, returned emaciated, emaciated to the bone. Relatives sounded the alarm, tried to fatten him on their own at first, but the young man categorically refused to absorb at least any food. Then it became known that he had lived all his life with his grandmother and mother. Lonely women made the boy the center of their world, bought kilos of sweets for him, constantly treated him to pies and cakes. The child was terribly complex about his excess weight. When the overprotection of mother and grandmother was left behind, he decided to end it ... "
As you yourself can guess, parents are directly to blame for this typical situation. In this case, the mother and grandmother. And the specialist had to work with the whole family. So that this situation would never happen again, it was important to convey to women the idea that the problems of their beloved son and grandson arose and developed directly through their fault.
“How can you not force him? He himself will not eat all day! ”- Of course not. If he was previously constantly forced to eat, and then suddenly left alone, for some time the child will enjoy the right not to eat anything and defiantly move the plate away. But then the instinct of self-preservation will prevail over ambition. It is important that at the same time there are no cookies, sweets and other sweets in the public domain. Otherwise, the child will only eat them.
Fear that your child will go hungry? Believe me, the child is not his own enemy, he has not yet broken contact with the body. Eat when hungry.
The golden mean - where is she
Probably, a certain category of readers will think that I urge their families not to feed their children, let their poor appetite take its course, and let the child do whatever he wants. No, it’s not.
Food is an important link in the life of any person, and even more so for a child. The diet must be balanced, your child must receive all the nutrients, calories and vitamins with food in order to grow healthy and active. But eating well is not synonymous with overeating. On the contrary, an excessively heavy dinner harms the body, interferes with a full night's sleep and causes significant harm to the digestive system. You need to be a wise and reasonable person in matters related to the nutrition of your own child. To be able to look at the situation with an objective gaze, and not be guided by a blind animal instinct to fill a child's stomach to capacity, so that he even lost the ability to move.
If your child is picky and often refuses your meals, try to treat him to others. Even from such a banal product as potatoes or buckwheat, you can cook a huge number of variations, and of them something, yes, your child will like. Try it, experiment!
Do not neglect the appearance of the food that you put on the table in front of the child - this is also important! If you show a little imagination, decorate the dish and come up with a fascinating story about it, then a rare child will refuse to try it.
In conclusion: do not force your children to scrupulously collect the last crumbs or lick the plate white. Leave it to the child to decide for himself how much he has. After all, it is a separate human organism with its own unique biological rhythm!
What complications for the child are fraught with "one more spoon for mom." Julia Lumeng's research
Children should not be forced or persuaded to eat if they do not want to. According to scientists, our persuasions to eat an extra spoon work very well, but they do not bring benefits to the crumbs.
And obedient children suffer from excess weight as a result. Today, when childhood obesity is steadily striding across the planet, it is especially important to instill in a child the right eating habits from an early age.
But it is even more important not to kill the natural instincts in the baby, which suggest which piece is superfluous for the body. And our persuasion to eat a little more just kill these healthy innate instincts in the child.
Such conclusions were made by scientists from Michigan State University in Ann Arbor, and Julia Lumeng led the study. For the experiment, scientists invited 1218 mothers with babies to the laboratory.
Mothers and children were filmed while feeding. The experiment was repeated three times with the same families: when the child was 15 months old, 2 years old and 3 years old.
And it turned out that the mothers who persuaded the baby to eat another spoonful had larger children. This trend was observed regardless of the level of family income.
As the author of the study, Julia Lumeng, noted, the main problem is that babies are too capricious in food, and therefore parents worry that children are malnourished. And so they begin to persuade them to eat a spoon for mom, because a spoon for dad.
But this is exactly what you should not do, because during such persistent feeding, the child's natural instincts are dulled, which save him from overeating. Figuratively speaking, the child's ability to pick up signals of satiety is dulled.
Julia made another interesting observation. It turns out that children whose parents are worried that their children are malnourished and gain weight too poorly have a very normal weight for their height and age. Scientists published a report on the experiment in Reuters Health.
The opinion of specialists from the Russian Research Institute of Food and Nutrition of the Department of Science and Technology
Children should not be forced to eat - this is the conclusion reached by the specialists of the Russian Research Institute of Food and Nutrition of the Department of Science and Technology. In their opinion, children and adolescents refuse to eat this or that food, due to many factors, both psychological and physiological. For example, babies from one to three years old are very sensitive to food color, taste, texture, temperature, and also to the atmosphere in which they have to eat this food.
Research Institute experts have come up with a number of guidelines that can help parents feed their child. This list includes well-known tips such as “always eat with your baby,” “mix foods that your baby doesn't like with your loved ones,” or “change recipes frequently” and “be creative with food.”
- Never force a child to eat. This will lead to the fact that he will more actively refuse to eat.
- If the child does not like fruits and vegetables, offer them when he is very hungry.
- Encourage your child to plan the menu and prepare meals. Then the child will definitely want to try what he has prepared.
- Food is a must. Therefore, it should not be used as a reward, or depriving the child of lunch as a punishment for something.
- The relaxed and friendly atmosphere at the table increases the appetite.
From the forum
http://www.woman.ru/kids/medley5/thread/4197311/
I have no children, I'll write right away. But my best friend has a son 1.10. Once she was visiting her and accidentally caught a feeding. The child did not want to eat soup and my friend forced him to eat this soup and did not act very well in my opinion ... At first, songs and books were used, then my friend became noticeably nervous and began to raise her voice, beat on the table ... was smeared with soup and bread. Then he knitted his hands and began pouring this soup into him! He spat everything out and the girlfriend just threw the plate on the kitchen table with a roar and kicked the child out of the table. She just pushed me with the words “well, go, go hungry. I do not care". Then I could not stand it and asked why she was doing it, the child, if he wants to eat, will eat, and so why force? To which she replied that he was just being capricious, showing character and for several days already arranging a concert for her at any meal. It will bite the food a little bit, then spit it out, maybe even refuse to eat, etc. I don’t understand how this is possible ... After all, you can frighten a child with his behavior and he will never touch the plate himself. Here is her rule: if the soup is prepared, then the child must certainly eat it, and at exactly that number of hours. Or maybe the child doesn't want soup, but wants pasta, for example. Why can't you cook multiple dishes? Personally, I have had a bad aftertaste since that day. How can you mock a child like that?
>>> it seems to me until you have children it is easy to argue whether he ate or not, but when he already has his own, you will worry if he is hungry, but it affects the stomach that he did not eat, etc.))) so here everyone has their own truth, someone shoves food, someone does not.my sister also quarreled with my nephew, and I scolded when I lived with them, why she doesn't eat and is so dead, of course you worry that he didn't eat and will be even thinner))) now he is 11 and began to eat, although he still walks dead, but already the male appetite breaks out. I don’t know how with my children, but maybe I’ll also start making them eat)))
>>> I have two children. But I have never encountered such a problem. We had a routine: breakfast, lunch, dinner. Small fruit snacks in between. The children always ate normally, apparently, they had time to get hungry. If someone started to wander about: “I don’t want to and I will not,” I never insisted. If you do not want it, then you are not hungry, you are free, go for a walk. But unfortunately, in the families of my acquaintances there were battles over food of the type described by the author. I never could understand how parents bring the feeding process to such a state. Well, I don’t understand. The child does not want to eat - let him go to play. Just don't give him anything until the next meal, no cookies, no sweets, no other rubbish. He will come running and ask for the same soup.
>>> my husband as a child (he told me) ate semolina porridge with onions, because he was sick of the smell of semolina, and my mother stood and forced. So he ate, choked, cried and ate. Now he is very picky about food. He doesn't eat milk, boiled cabbage, he just can't stand it, too, my mother made me eat borsch, but he was sick. So much for the consequences. The mother-in-law herself told how he refused, and she with his face on the plate. I decided for myself: I won't torture my children like that.
>>> What a horror. Mom doesn’t know, it looks like eating under a lot of stress is worse than not eating at all. There will definitely not be any benefit from this soup. It is better to wait until dinner and offer the hungry child the same dish as for lunch - and then it will be judged whether the child was capricious before or really cannot eat what was offered.
>>> the author, of course, you can't force it. I do not understand at all how a purely physiological process can be initiated and controlled by force .. I was also forcibly fed in childhood, I still remember how terrible it was and hated it all, how food was associated with crying, with some kind of inevitable violence. Well, in the end, I was completely cold with food until adulthood, as a teenager I could not eat almost anything (in the children's camp I threw off 7 kg in a month, because I just stopped eating, because no one forced me there, but I was already thin). Only after 25 years I began to eat some things that I could not stand before (milk, fish, cereals - everything that I stuffed). I always eat little and weigh little (but that suits me))). But since childhood, stomach problems - gastritis and all things, gastrointestinal sores develop very easily if food is associated with stress and stress in childhood is associated with food.
