Feeding kids negative feelings towards food and rewarding them with sugar can lead to toxic eating habits.
Forcing your child to eat, bribing them with sweets if they eat vegetables, and enforcing people-pleasing rules at the table can send kids unhealthy messages that may warp their relationship with food, registered dietitian Jennifer Anderson wrote for CNBC’s “Make It.”
“Having spent years observing kids’ eating behaviors, I’ve found that certain phrases make them go off the rails,” Anderson, founder of “Kids Eat in Color,” a resource for parents to learn about childhood nutrition, wrote.
First, she urges parents avoid using the phrase: “You can have dessert after you eat your broccoli.”
“When you use sweets to convince a child to eat something, all they hear is: ‘Just so you know, broccoli is bad. It’s so bad that I have to bribe you to eat it,’ ” Anderson wrote.
Instead, the idea is to give kids a “balanced perspective” on food, not pit different types of food against each other. She suggested saying: “You can eat the broccoli when you’re ready” to ensure kids are given a choice.
Bribing kids with sweets so they eat their veggies is also a no-no, according to Anderson, who advised against phrases like: “If you’re quiet, I’ll give you a cookie.” Since the cookie is the reward, kids will start putting sweets on a pedestal and as a result, may crave them more and begin associating good feelings with sugar or depending on them when they want to feel better, she noted.
Instead, she suggested rewarding kids with something that’s non-food related, saying something like: “We can play your favorite game tonight if you’re quiet.”
Having a positive dialogue with kids from the time they start eating solid foods and as they grow could help nurture and support their feelings towards food, rather then fostering habits of restriction and shame. Rates of eating disorders are prevalent among young girls and boys under age 12, a critical time for physical growth.
More than 1 in 5 kids and adolescents globally show signs of an eating disorder, according to research, which comprised of 32 studies from 16 countries, that was published earlier this year in the journal JAMA Pediatrics.
Researchers found that 22% of kids and adolescents showed disordered eating behaviors with those numbers higher among girls and those with a higher body mass index (BMI).
Anderson also frowned upon parenting demands like: “You have to take one more bite before you can say ‘no,’ regardless of how you feel.” This wording communicates to a child that their eating should have no limits, pushing them to ignore their feelings of hunger and fullness, she explained.
“As they grow older, they might struggle with saying ‘no’ to things they’re uncomfortable with,” Anderson wrote.
Instead, she said to try: “We say ‘no thank you’ when we don’t want to eat something” to teach them that it’s okay to politely say “no” to more food.
Lastly, Anderson exhibited how phrases like: “It would make me happy if you took three more bites,” could teach underlying people-pleasing tendencies.
“It only teaches kids that they should develop good eating habits that make you happy, when they really should be focusing on how nutritious foods help them,” she wrote.
Parents can successfully communicate a food’s nutritional benefits rather than attaching an emotion to the food with language like, “Carrots have lots of vitamin A, which is good for your vision and helps you see better!” Anderson explained.