Many parents were amazed that my children would eat vegetables and a proper meal. They would complain that their children refuse to eat vegetables and their main meal. After talking to quite a number of them, I found that these are common problems that caused their meal times to be unpleasant:
1)A lot of parents or care takers allow their children to munch on snacks (and I should say mostly unhealthy snacks) throughout the day, how do they expect the children to have appetite during meal times? They were already full from eating all those junk food!
2)A lot of parents seem to be very afraid that their children won’t eat. So, if they ask the children to eat vegetables, and their children wouldn’t, they just gave in. Some children even went to the extend of threatening their parents that if their parents insist that they eat vegetables, they will just starve and not eat. So I told the parents, ‘Why don’t you just not let them eat anything? They’ll come round after that’ But the parents are too scared to do so. I think if we get to this stage, then we are allowing the children to parent us, rather than us parenting the children.
3) I believe that dairy products are not good for humans, and they make children (and some adults) loose their appetite, because their stomachs are unable to disgest the lactose from dairy products. This causes the children to be uninterested in eating. I was a victim of lactose intolerance since young, but my mother didn’t know that, so I had a poor appetite from childhood all the way to adulthood, until I realize that I am lactose intolerant (so are most people). But I never had problems eating vegetables, because my mother trained me well.
4)I think a lot of parents pamper their children too much and allow their children too much freedom to decide what the whole family should eat. I mean, if parents are not in control of their children, and instead, let their children be in control of them, then why do we need parents? So, some parents bend their backs to meet their children’s whim and fancy in terms of food. And of course, the children would choose all the extremely tasty but unhealthy food to eat, and in return, the parents have to run around to deal with the consequences of poor food choices such as obesity, etc.
5)Some parents are caught in a chicken and egg situation. Initially, they didn’t enforce good eating habits. But when they want to enforce the rules, the children would rebel, since they are not used to the rules. Then the parents became tired and gave in, and the circle repeats itself. In some situations, the children were brought up by care takers who didn’t enforce good eating habit which result in the children becoming picky eaters, and the parents feel very helpless.
