Helpful Mom

Has this ever happened to you?  My daughter says I’m hungry.  So you start pulling everything out of the diaper bag one at a time to which she says no, no, no to each one.  Then you have the whining and fussing as you try to explain that is all there really is, as if you are hiding the good stuff somewhere.  So one day I decided on this quick easy fix.  I bought a lunch box that I keep in our diaper bag.  Each morning before we go out I make sure it’s packed with about three different healthy choices, like a baggy of cereal, grapes, and apple slices.  Then when she asks for food I can just hand her the lunch box and she can pick out whatever she likes.  It gives her healthy, non-messy options, and lets her exercise her ability to choose for herself.  And it ended that debate about if there was anything else, now she can plainly see that all her choices are right there to pick from.

And we keep the treats separately in the diaper bag.  They only get any kind of treat if they have finished a serving of food.  So if she finishes the cereal she would get a Kellog’s fruit snack.  Or they might get a lollipop.  It works really well!  The other day I took Katrina shopping and she’d asked for a sucker and I told her she could have one and we’d get one for her sister too who wasn’t with us, but that she’d have to wait til we’d paid for it and got in the car to eat it.  So she agreed, but when we went out to the car she spotted her bag of cereal she’d started before going into the store and she gave me her sucker back!  Saying she had to finish her cereal first.  I was stunned and amazed.  And what’s funny is I’ve had her do that again since then!  It’s one of those small victories that you have to step back and appreciate.  Realizing that they are learning even when sometimes it doesn’t feel like it.

I used to feel guilty about rewarding eating with treats but then I read this great book called Creative Correction which said that even God used rewards and incentives with the Israelites.  He would say if you obey your parents you will have a long life, or if you follow me I will take you into the promised land.  So if even God offers incentives to His children then why can’t I.  And I recently heard Dr. James Dobson say that the whole world is operated by incentives and rewards.  You go to work and get a paycheck.  Noone is going to work if they aren’t receiving something in return.  So there is nothing wrong with offering reasonable rewards or incentives.  I’m not saying go crazy buying them stuff but there’s no reason to feel guilty about rewarding your child.  It works, my kids know not to ask for treats all the time because they know the answer is no.  And they are learning that it’s important to eat the healthy things first, if you aren’t hungry enough to finish the good stuff then you certainly don’t have room for a lollipop, and learning what foods are good for you and what things are just not.

Has this ever happened to you?  My daughter says this morning, “I’m hungry”.  “What would you like?”, I ask.  “I don’t know” is the response.  Then the suggestions begin, how about grapes, no, strawberries, no, yogurt, no, sandwich, no, oompaloompas, yes!  She just gets silly after a while and I realize it’s become a game.  That is why a few months back I created a picture menu for my girls.  The idea came from a friend of mine who had made menus by cutting out pictures of food and made menus for the kids to play restaurant.  I took that idea and ran with it.  I used clip art to create a simple picture menu of the food items they like to eat on a regular basis and left a blank area where I could tape on “Specials”  such as cantelopes which we don’t always have around the house each week.  Once the specials have been consumed I take them off the menu.  That way when the kids are hungry but don’t know what they want they can peruse the pictures until they decide instead of my having to play 20 questions.  My husband laughed at me because it took a bit of time to make but it’s saved me lots of time in the long run.  I also laminated the menu to keep it intact for years to come.  This allows you to tape pictures to it without tearing the paper and you can even write on it temporarily with dry erase markers.

Speaking of dry erase markers, they are life savers at dinner time.  We have a collection of laminated place mats for the girls that include Dora the Explorer Laminated Placemat, Blues Clues, and Sesame St. among others.  They have things like practicing your letter and number writing, games, and color and shape matching.  And they help dinner go smoother by entertaining the kids while we finish our meal when they are done or not interested in eating.  I have found these mats at Riteaid and Walmart for $1-$3 and have found them at garage sales and thrift stores.  We keep a cupful of dry erase markers on the table and rotate the mats to keep them interesting.

To make food fun I like to use a melon baller on cantelopes and watermelon, somehow foods more fun if it’s shaped.  It only takes a few minutes more but the food gets eaten even faster.  I also use this trick on sandwiches with cookie cutter shapes.  You can cut out big shapes or you can cut out lots of little ones.  We’ve had penguin, angels, leaves, even foot sandwiches.  You can make shapes with your pancakes, like one mom who doers a letter of the day so she’ll make pancake letters.   And I’m a big proponent of food color.  Have you ever had purple pancakes or orange waffles, or yes we have done it green eggs!  My husband even colored mashed potatoes once.  Kids are so much more excited if they get to pick what color their food could be.  And you can teach them some fun tricks about how if you mix red and blue it makes purple or yellow and blue makes green.  And let them “help”  I know it’s messy but if they’re helping they are not standing by whining about if it’s done yet?  And if they help make it they are more likely to eat it.  I also stick cereals like fruit loops or cheerios on strings so they can have necklaces  to eat that are fun.  I will make the whole bag of cereal into necklaces at once and bag them individually so I can pack them up quickly when we are going out for the day.  They come in handy when grocery shopping or waiting at the doctors office.