The post Why I let my kids start their meal with dessert by Natalia Stasenko appeared first on Feeding Bytes.
How often do your kids start their meal with a chocolate macaron? This is exactly what my 3-year-old did yesterday, and I am completely fine with it. Are you puzzled? Let me explain why I allowed this to happen, and I hope you will let your kids do the same – start the meal with it’s frequently most desired course. But first, let me give you a little background. I took two older kids to Paris last weekend, and we brought lots of yummy food, including a box of most amazing macarons. As we came back from a morning walk and my 3-year-old, she saw the box and, naturally, asked for some. But it was almost lunch time, I just needed to warm up the food and set the table, so I told her to wait. I serve my kids dessert with dinner and you should too. Here is why.Click To Tweet Her natural response was to keep demanding a macaron, nonstop, for about 10 minutes it took me to get the lunch ready. And in those 10 minutes, I repeated maybe a million times: ” We will have some at lunch when we sit to eat.” She finally got a macaron after all the food was on the table, her hands were washed, and she was ready to eat. Naturally, she gobbled down the coveted sweet right away. And then (naturally) she asked for more. I explained that we could have more at dinner and, after a couple more requests, she proceeded to eat a good portion of her lunch (cucumber and celery sticks with hummus, lentil soup, and blueberries). Did you notice how many times I used “natural” or “naturally” in the last three paragraphs? It’s because it is very normal and appropriate for kids (and adults) to enjoy and desire sweets more than other types of food. But we also know how important it is to eat a balanced diet. The good news is that we can be responsive to this natural penchant for sweets while “taming” it through the structure and even helping kids self-regulate better. So let’s look at how this approach works. To make it more relatable, I will use the questions I get asked the most when I explain this strategy. 1/ Why not to give her the macaron right away, while I was setting the table, just to get her out of my hair (or off my leg)? The answer is: the structure is critical! If I do not follow the meal and snack schedule, what can I say if she asks for a cookie 30 min after lunch or a granola bar 15 minutes before dinner? So I stick to my guns and serve the treats only at mealtimes, together with the rest of the food. It is super hard to endure the whining and demands, but as kids grow, they usually have no problem waiting for their meal. 2/ Why not to ask her to eat the entree first, before handing […]
The post Why I let my kids start their meal with dessert by Natalia Stasenko appeared first on Feeding Bytes.
