In looking for something to blog about, I came across the Dietary Recommendations for Children and Adolescents: A Guide for Practitioners. It’s a consensus statement from the American Heart Association and was published in 2005 in Circulation, the AHA’s journal.

There was plenty to, yes, chew on in this, but here’s a gem in the ages 2-6 section: “Two natural parental impulses, pressuring children to eat and restricting access to specific foods, are not recommended because they often lead to overeating, dislikes, and paradoxical interest in forbidden items.”

This comes after a reminder that parents choose what is eaten, and when and where, and kids decide whether to eat and how much. Of course, the article is full of reminders about what we want kids to eat, and even suggestions about ways they might actually eat it.

All this leads me to the dilemma of the fish nugget. I cooked dinner the other night, and our 2-year-old was really only interested in his macaroni and cheese. I heated a fish nugget despite his warnings that “I don’t want that, daddy.” He took one bite. I could hear that voice in my head, “He’s got to eat more.”

How many times did we hear that as kids: “You can leave the table after one more bite.” To this day, I hate Brussels sprouts because that “one more bite” made me once want to gag. Perhaps there’s a lesson to be learned.

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