Food for Thought: Modeling Healthy Eating Patterns

Follow our series on the who, what, where, when, and how of feeding our children of all ages!

Our Readers Ask:

My daughter is nine months old, and soon she will be ready to eat exclusively solid foods. I am feeling extremely anxious about this transition, and about her subsequent eating patterns. I struggled with an eating disorder for many years, and while I'm working on my own issues, I'm terrified of unwittingly imposing food and body anxieties onto my daughter. It seems like there are so many extreme perspectives on how children should eat and so much judgment from other parents. Even reading some of the online parenting forums on food are sometimes enough to trigger my old negative thoughts. How can I make sure she is getting the nutrition she needs without making her (and myself) anxious about food?

 First of all, kudos to you for making an effort to untangle your own anxiety from your daughter's needs. So much of the judgment that you so acutely experience stems from the fact that not many adults make this same effort, and ultimately project their own health concerns onto their children. Unless they have witnessed adults expressing anxiety about fat, sugar, and gluten, or whether their thighs are too big or their belly is too round, children do not naturally express the same fears. So one of the most important things you can do to help your daughter eat healthfully and enjoy food is to maintain this separation between you and her. If you're having negative feelings about your body, don't verbalize them in front of her. Try not to talk about food and eating in terms of vice and virtue; eating and loving vegetables doesn't make you "good," nor does eating a lot of cookies at a party make you "bad." And if you do notice yourself starting to slip back into some of your old thoughts or behaviors, have patience and compassion for yourself, so that you can be patient and compassionate with your daughter, and allow her to cultivate these same qualities. 

You will help yourself and your daughter best by demonstrating that balance and variety are healthier than extremes. From the moment you put your little girl in her highchair, it's a good idea to also have an overview that you intend to make it easy and comfortable for her to enjoy a wide range of foods, identifying her favorite things to eat but also being open to trying new tastes and textures. It is even more important when serving her to offer small amounts at a time. This way if she wants more, she can ask for it and learn what fullness means to her- "to her" being the operative term here. As long as she is eating something, it is her prerogative to decide how much or how little of it she wants to eat. This is true of all food groups, including and especially desserts. Prohibiting desserts or using them as a bargaining tool ("I'll get you ice cream if you behave at the store") gives desserts power, and causes children to fixate on them. If you allow your daughter to enjoy desserts in small amounts after her lunches and dinners, she will learn that it is totally possible, and even normal and healthy, to enjoy a treat without losing control. Keep in mind that "dessert," like any other food group, should vary- it can mean anything from fruit, ice cream, cookies and cake. (The French even enjoy fruit and cheese as a dessert!) 

This is a valuable lesson to learn while she is young. You must trust your daughter's awareness of her appetite and her ability to regulate it. Don't comment on how much she eats, and if other family members or friends say anything to that effect, shoot them down by firmly saying something like, "She knows when she's had enough," and then changing the subject. If she can sense that other people (especially you) are having anxiety about her eating, she in turn will develop anxiety about eating.

Let us reiterate that children are much more likely to develop eating disorders in homes where there is a culture of deprivation and food as punishment or reward, and where food is endowed with loaded social and emotional value.  

-- Dr. S & Dr. G

Food for Thought: How to Handle a Picky Eater

Our Readers Ask:

My 4-year-old son's picky eating habits are driving me slowly insane. On a good day, he will eat three things, usually of the white toast with butter, chicken nugget, and plain noodles variety. The only exception, of course, is for desserts. If I try to add any vegetables to his meals or God forbid substitute brown rice for white, he will scream bloody murder. I end up feeling really frustrated when I've put in the time to prepare a balanced meal for the whole family and it results in a battle of wills with the 4-year-old until I finally relent and make him something else. How can I get him to eat new things? Aside from being concerned that he's not getting enough vital nutrients, I don't want him to be a 30-year-old who only eats chicken nuggets.

Let us assure you that some degree of neophobia, literally a fear of novel things, is completely normal and even adaptive in toddlerhood. Whether or not your son will become interested in expanding his palate actually depends largely on your reactions to his eating and to food in general. The most salient happy memories of family mealtimes have more to do with the atmosphere at the table than what food is being served.  It is difficult for a child to develop positive associations with food when he repeatedly experiences mealtimes as a source of conflict and anxiety. To that end, before you start implementing strategies, take a look at your own behaviors and perceptions during these strained interactions. 

Sibling Spacing: Waiting 3 or More Years

Our Readers Ask:

My husband and I have been thinking about having a second child, but our first child, now 2 and ½, just seems like such a baby still; we are thinking about waiting another year or more, but wonder if we are making a mistake, since everyone we know seems to be having their second child already!

There are several common reasons people have their children close together. There are parental age and fertility concerns. Parents may want to get the really tough, sleepless years over with sooner than later. Those who liked having a little baby may miss that stage when they encounter the more complex demands of toddlerhood. Some parents want their children to be close in age to foster closeness between the siblings.

It is important to try to tune out the “everyone is doing it” mentality. There are several reasons it may be preferable to wait more than 3 years to have your next child.

A child over 3 who has mastered the art of going to school by himself, or of tolerating longer periods of separation from his mom, is on his way to achieving an important psychological milestone: object constancy. This refers to the ability of a child to keep his mother in mind at all times, even when she is not present, as a comforting and loving figure inside his mind.

The main experience young children have when new babies are born is one of both real and imagined loss—real in the sense that Mommy’s time and energy are divided, and imagined in the sense that all children worry their mom has chosen the baby over them, has brought the baby into the family as a replacement, has lost interest in the first child—or worse, has rejected the first child because they are bad. Even children in the most loving and secure families have thoughts like these. A child who is closer to achieving object constancy (usually not fully developed until age 5!) is more able to balance these thoughts with other thoughts: “My mommy still loves me and cares about me”; “I am special and could never be replaced.”

But, your friends say, my child has been separating from me at daycare every day since she was 3 months old, and still seems to be securely attached: she must have object constancy, even at the age of 2! We think there is a difference between having a healthy attachment and having truly achieved object constancy. Young kids with working moms adapt to separations primarily by attaching to surrogate figures during the day. They do retain a sense of mother, and a knowledge she will return. But the birth of a sibling is an emotional challenge of a different order. The child with incomplete object constancy is less sure of the stability of mother’s love and positive regard for them. Negative thoughts ring louder and truer, and the positive thoughts that mitigate them are harder to access. The child with more complete object constancy has a better chance of mentally surviving, and developing a tolerant and even loving orientation toward the baby. This is no small matter.

Of course, the main factor in how a child achieves object constancy is the security of the attachment between mother and child. A child whose mother is sensitive and attuned to their difficulties in becoming an older sibling, who takes time out every day to do pleasurable things alone with her first born, and who makes that child feel special, is better off than an only child whose mother does not make these efforts.  

-- Dr. S & Dr. G

Sibling Spacing

Our Readers Ask:

I have a 10-month-old and would like to plan the ideal spacing between our children.  My husband and I have been given so much conflicting advice!  We think it’s better for our kids to be closer in age, and get all of the bottles and diapers out of the way, but we worry that  spacing them 2 years apart or less will cause more sibling rivalry. 

There is no one way to do this---if there was, everyone who could control their reproduction would have caught on by now! There are pros and cons to each degree of spacing, and the solution depends, in part, on which of the issues is more important to you, to your life style, and,  believe it or not,  to where you fit into your family of origin. Did you—maybe, do you-- fight like crazy with your little sister, who was only 18 months younger than you? Or do you feel too distant from your 4-years-older brother? Ironically, we often try to undo the mistakes we think our parents made by doing the opposite with our children.

 Let’s start with how your child will react to the introduction of a sibling. As wonderful as it is to have a sibling, for a child under 3, the experience of adjusting to a baby is primarily stressful. Think about it: he is giving up a great deal of mother’s time and attention, he has to share his space with an extremely needy and disruptive other person (who may be keeping the whole house, himself included, up at night), and despite probably having expressed a wish for a little brother or sister, he could not have anticipated what that actually would mean to his everyday routine.

Often, in fact, parents respond in desperation to their first-born whining about having to share Mommy, "But you wanted a baby sister! " Needless to say, that can only make her feel more terrible about having unwittingly brought this doom upon herself and her tired, cranky, overwhelmed mommy!

Children under 3 are not yet cognitively equipped to understand that Mommy is occupied with another little being who needs her just as much or more than they do. Plus, toddlers (18 month olds – 2 1/2) are notoriously bad at regulating themselves. They feel emotions strongly and have little ability to control them.  They don’t have enough language skills, either, to express their feelings, and may let you know how they feel by refusing the potty, or regressing to hitting, biting, or throwing.

But, there is a plus side to spacing children closer together, in addition to the practical reality of getting the diapers and gear out of the way. Firstly, on the other side of the cognitive coin, children under two have not really formed a concrete sense of themselves as separate little beings. This lack of differentiation between “self” and “other” can make the older child feel more like a twin to the younger one. This can foster a much closer relationship, more intense and mutually gratifying, making them into “buddies” and “best friends” for life. They share the same toys right from the start, more or less, can enjoy each other’s play-dates and friends, be more on the same wavelength in school and in their ongoing everyday experiences. They also share the same view of their parents; children who are spaced very far apart often see their parents differently, as parents evolve themselves –emotionally, financially, educationally, even politically, over the course of their adult development. 

In our next blog, we’ll talk about pros and cons of spacing your children further apart!

--Dr. S & Dr. G

Your Baby's Learning Patterns

Our Readers Ask:

I've noticed that you refer to patterns and routines a lot when you talk about infants. I, myself, prefer variety, and have presumed that it would be a good idea to keep changing things up to keep my little one amused and interested, rather than bore him with the “same old, same old.” Am I missing something?

Not exactly. Human beings are “programmed” to flourish on both predictable patterns and on novelty. From early childhood through old age, we thrive on regular times for eating, sleeping, moving our bowels, and recreation that are determined by our biological systems and monitored by hormones and brain chemicals. These systems tell us when we are hungry, tired, and even what time of day we should do something as specific as strength training versus cardio training! One exception is that infants thrive equally well during their first months regardless of whether they are fed on a schedule or are fed on demand.

Our minds begin organizing in the early stage of toddler hood, and you can see this take place in both language development and in play. Children learn language patterns from repeating sounds they hear from their parents—at birth, a child can learn any language, or even multiple languages, all based on what she hears in her environment.

However, the ability to learn a language is embedded in the brain, and is just one component of a child's innate expanding mental organization of her experience. Similarly, at about the middle of a toddler's second year of life, you can see another example of the organic momentum toward "organization" in the development of a new kind of play. Typically, at about this age, children have moved away from their fascination with putting toys into their mouths, or dumping out their toy bins, and have begun assembling their toys together in “collections,” lining them up, or grouping them together.

You can see this as well in animal life, whether your dog is collecting bones in his bed or trying to herd your "family" together. So, with all due respect to our genetic endowment, we, as parents, also realize that infants need to learn patterns and rhythms of daily life so that they can feel safe, can learn, and can have a basis from which to reach outside of their patterns and learn new things.

Herein lies the importance of novelty. All human beings are programmed to respond to“curiosity” or “novelty” above all other factors in any given situation. This is apparent to you when you can distract your baby or 5-year-old with something new—a new toy, a new experience, a new expression on your face, or a new change of scenery.

In fact, we rely on this to soothe the tantruming 2-year-old, or the tantruming 7-year-old,for that matter. “Changing the subject” by some sudden introduction of novelty almost always works for any one, of any age. And, as you may have experienced,the “new" thing doesn’t often work a second time, or you'll get an “I know what you're up to!” reaction from your child. Or, if the experience wasn’t pleasant, you won’t get an opportunity to try it again. So, novelty has to be used carefully and wisely to put it to best advantage.

We can see this difference demonstrated in quality of reaction in a baby or child when exposed to music or art. Through brain receptivity, babies instinctively prefer music that has regular rhythms, where the next beat can be anticipated, like Bach, Mozart, or popular music that has repetitive, predictable rhythms. Babies do not respond well to Prokofiev. Similarly, babies prefer some decoration, but not overstimulating decoration; they will enjoy having some toys or mobiles they can reach, but not so many that they cannot discriminate between the individual parts.

Adults, too, often feel more soothed by rhythmic music or paintings with familiar motifs,and are excited and stimulated by less predictable music and by demanding abstractions. Babies are notoriously fascinated by commercials on television because all commercials are pitched to the  brain’s unconscious receptivity to the repetitive patterns in the sounds and “beat” of the commercial.

Many of the truisms of child-rearing are predicated on our innate sense of the familiar versus the novel. For example, when we want to introduce a new food to a baby,we typically feed her only one new food at a time. The rationale for this is not only to keep an eye out for allergic reactions, but also because it is easier on the baby to add just one food to her repertoire to allow her to become acclimated to it before introducing another one.

As a final point, babies are fundamentally different from both adults and older children in that their concept of the world is changing literally every single day. It would be as if one day you could see only outlines of objects, then make out shapes the next, then discern colors, then to three dimensions, and then on to x-ray vision! You wouldn’t need the subject you were looking at to do anything dramatic to remain interesting, because the interest for you, as the beholder,lies in your rapidly changing capacity to behold.

Mothers can take some comfort in this. Instead of forcing yourself to provide novelty for your baby all the time, turn your attention to the small differences in how she reacts to the same things. And by all means, if she is bored by something, and is ready for a change herself, she will let you know!

--Dr. S & Dr. G

Supermom Issues: Time Allocation

Our Readers Ask:

 I know there has been a lot written about combining child-rearing with work. However, I can’t find any way to deal with my very uncomfortable feeling that I am always in the wrong place at the wrong time! I can’t figure out just how much time is “enough” time to be at home. I was raised by a stay-at-home mom, and turned out to be “successful” in my career, I constantly worry that I am doing them a disservice by not being like my own mother!

The joys and satisfactions of combining a career with child-rearing are often offset by the uncomfortable emotions you are probably experiencing—anxiety, guilt, and self-doubt. Women who are ambitious and successful in the workplace usually have aspirations and expectations for their children that mirror their own paths to success. Having such expectations, but choosing not to be home full-time to implement them, invariably creates many areas of stress. You are feeling challenged by having to allocate your time. We presume this applies not only to dividing your time between your workplace and your children, but also to taking time with your spouse or partner, your extended family and friends, and yourself. Most women feel the most guilt about taking time out for a manicure, or trying to see an exhibit. Even without one’s own nagging thoughts, children are pretty guilt-provoking too: “Mommy, why didn’t you come to my play, all the other mothers were there!” or, just wondering and worrying about whether your toddler needs you more, but can’t yet say so.

Mothers who need to work in order to provide for their families tend to feel less guilty about being out of the house than women who have more freedom of choice. It is easier for a woman who has to work to support herself and her family to put in a specified amount of time at her job, that she can walk away from when she goes home at night. Although some jobs are more flexible, without fixed time requirements, in some ways those jobs can be more stressful. Primarily, guilt can arise about what amount of work is adequate to get the job done, such as having to travel or to take work home at night, or whether the number of hours  put in is directly related to one’s job advancement. The fast track in law firms has always struck us as one of the most stressful of all, especially now that we carry our iPhones in our pockets. The call from a client always seems impossibly pressing, but then so is the howling toddler who is trying to take your phone out of your hand!

Our advice is to worry less about whether or not you are splitting your time adequately, and instead focus on certain precepts that we think are important. First, be consistent and predictable. Make a routine for yourself, your child, and your caregiver (or day-care). You should have a stable routine, a schedule that your child understands (whether consciously or not,) and is dependable.  It is important to establish a routine around your departure and arrival, and keep to it. In addition, know when to transition your schedule in keeping with the fact that your child’s needs and capabilities change over time. For example, it is very easy to leave an infant for an unspecified amount of time: for him, it is “out of sight, out of mind.” But once your baby knows you, and your departure is very real for him, you should be mindful of keeping to a schedule so that he can anticipate that. For instance, you will be home during the week before bath-time, followed by a little play, story, and bedtime, and that you will always be home on the weekends. You will not want to come home and go out again within any three hour period—rush home to kiss him goodnight on the way out again to the theatre. It is better, then, that you not come home at all! The toddler period is traditionally the most difficult, as toddlers know “you are gone” but can’t really tell time, nor understand the concepts of hours, times of day, or sequence of days. At precisely age three, however, your child will suddenly know exactly what you mean when you say, “I won’t be home to kiss you goodnight tonight, but I will see you when you wake up in the morning!” He will also, hopefully, be able to listen to you, if not actually respond, when you call in, and not burst into tears of anguish.

The satisfaction at having one’s self-worth be measured by performance and success at work can be a great offset to depending upon, and being vulnerable to having one’s self-worth be measured by the academic, social, and creative achievements of one’s children. We really have less control on their “outcome” than we would like to think, no matter how much time we spend at home “child-rearing.” The identifications a developing adolescent might have made with individuals other than her own parents may often have propelled her into the workplace, and into professions even outside her own mother’s imaginings. These are important too—we form “ideals” about whom we are that are important in forming our identities, and in doing justice to them, we do not harm our children. 

--Dr. S & Dr. G