How to Feed My 4 Year Old Dessert?

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  • SarahBeth0625
    SarahBeth0625 Posts: 685 Member
    I am a plate cleaner and it's a very hard habit to break. Honestly, I don't remember ever NOT cleaning my plate. Crazy, I know! I feel too wasteful, so try to only put on my plate what I will eat. Anyway...

    for my kids, it would depend on how much they ate. If they eat MOST of their food, they can have dessert, but by "dessert", it depends. If we are at my mom's house or someplace, dessert might be ice cream. At home, we have fresh or frozen fruit as our snacks, so the kids are used to that being "dessert". :smile:
  • Graelwyn75
    Graelwyn75 Posts: 4,404 Member
    Adding this: Our son is 11 and we never make him clean his plate. That kid can eat 1/4 of a cookie and just leave the rest cause "I've had enough."

    I think one of the dangers of the clean your plate strategy is you get a kid who doesn't know his/her own hunger signals.

    Adding this:

    Yes, indeed, you are the parent (as I am), but what I want to teach our child is how to make good choices...not to force choices on him. You could sit down with her and say:

    You know it is important to eat healthy foods so you'll continue to grow and be healthy. Someday you might want to (play soccer, be a ballerina, be the strongest geek in the library). Eating veggies and fruits are a part of that.

    So, you give me 3 ideas about how you can get more fruits/veggies into you during the day. And, then modify the ones which work for you.

    I've found that our son is actually pretty resourceful at figuring out ways to do what we want him to do if we present it to him as being in his best interest.

    Agree with this.
    Too many parents seem to project their own food issues onto their kids. And too many parents underestimate a child's ability to listen to their own bodies and know what they need. I find it absurd. Stop messing up your kids future by dictating what and when they should eat for goodness sakes. Give them healthy food choices from the start, and let them eat what they will of that healthy food. It is very rare a child will allow itself to starve. The idea of deciding when someone else should be hungry is just ridiculous to me. If a child is not hungry at dinner, fine. Let them have something healthy when they are hungry. A child is not a dog to be leashed and controlled, they are not your property or an extension of you, they are a unique individual.
  • SarahBeth0625
    SarahBeth0625 Posts: 685 Member
    When I was 4 or 5, I vividly remember being force fed a bun down my throat by my dad (clearly, the man had issues and it was just one of many reasons why he's not a part of our lives anymore). Because of that day, I did not eat bread again until I gave it another try at age 18. It would make me gag/heave. And he would torture me further by trying to get me to eat it at mealtimes, telling me I was "eating like a dog" if I wanted a plain hamburger (this was pre-Atkins, apparently). I would sneak the bun into a napkin and discreetly throw it away or one time around age 8, I even flushed a bun down the toilet.

    To this day, and I am about to turn 33, I cannot eat a plain bun.

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