WORDS JESSICA ELLIOTT
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ILLUSTRATIONS BY BEASTFROMEAST
ight after night, Cindy James’ sons Wyatt, 7, and Iain, 5, would ask for the same meal: chicken nuggets. The Dallas photographer and her husband both work full time, and making two nutritious meals daily was out of the question. “We gave into it in the beginning,” she says, “but I knew they weren’t getting any nutrition.” It is a common conundrum for parents: In an effort to ensure our children eat, we give them what they want. “Our basic innate parenting instinct is to nourish our children,” says registered dietitian Angela Lemond of Lemond Nutrition, which has locations in Plano and Rockwall. “The problem is that we start worrying when it’s 6pm and they aren’t eating a balanced meal. So we start subbing chicken fingers. Most families try to give their children a healthy food, but when they don’t eat it, that’s when things start going awry.” Enter the creation of the short-order cook—parents who craft entirely separate meals for their picky kids or hit the freezer for what are often less nutritious options. The desperate haste to get something on the table and into our kids’ stomachs can also lead to less-than-ideal strategies like bribery. (In a well-meaning attempt to encourage adventurousness, my own mother once promised a piece of cherry pie if I would eat an entire blue cheese-topped burger—I did. It took me 20 years to eat blue cheese again.) If you’re tired of begging, bribing or cooking to order, try a new tactic to break away from the kids menu. KIDS MENU? WHAT KIDS MENU?
Children in other countries often eat what their parents eat (lessons can be gleaned from French Kids Eat Everything by Karen Le Billon) while convenience foods are a staple in American households. Societal pressures—like seeing what their friends are eating at school—
also influence young children’s diets, and the lack of variety on restaurant kids menus makes it easy to stay in the rut; cheeseburger, grilled cheese, chicken nuggets, repeat. “I wish we didn’t even have kids menus,” Lemond says. She believes that parents should make one meal and serve it to the entire family. After nightly chicken nugget requests, that’s exactly the process James instituted. “I say, ‘You don’t have to eat what I cook, but I’m not cooking another meal,’” she explains. She does provide two other options: They can eat anything from the counter (always fruit) or make their own dinner as long as it’s not packaged. (She says Wyatt once made a “salad” with carrot slivers and two pieces of spinach—and was thrilled.) “They don’t have to clear their plates,” James says. “But if they get up from the table once they are excused and didn’t eat, they aren’t allowed to have anything later. Usually they realize they aren’t going to get anything later and eat.” While it doesn’t work every night—she still serves up chicken nuggets on some busy evenings—it’s successful more often than not, she says. “We’ll sometimes do something easy like sandwich night or breakfast for dinner. It’s not always this sea of nutrition we are eating, but we are realistic. If we do 70-30, then we are good.” Dallas-based registered dietitian Robin Plotkin suggests including one or two items per meal that your children will eat—as long as it’s part of the family meal and not something special for the child. “If you know your kiddos will always eat blueberries or cucumbers and ranch, then terrific—serve them to the rest of the family too,” she says. You can also serve meals buffet style, Lemond suggests. But if your kiddos still won’t eat, it really and truly is OK for them to go to bed without emptying their plates. “We have to remember that as parents we are not sending them to bed hungry—they are choosing not to eat,” she says. “Sometimes children pick at food
fortworthchild / april 2018
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