Raising Girls: Why girls are different – and how to help them grow up happy and confident. Gisela Preuschoff
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you avoid giving your daughter sugar (in the form of lollies, biscuits or fizzy drinks, for instance), you’ll be doing a lot for her nutrition – and her teeth.
Moreover, this way you’ll have your child eating almost everything you offer her. If she doesn’t like a certain type of vegetable, don’t be concerned. As long as your daughter hasn’t got to know sugar and other processed foods (see below), she will choose what she needs out of the range of things you offer her. And remember, a healthy child also helps make her parents happy!
Limiting sweets
If you do not stock unhealthy foods in your home, no problems can arise. When your child comes into contact with sweets, stabilisers, emulsifiers and other harmful substances – in school, perhaps, or at friends’ houses – she will be less vulnerable to such offerings if you’ve already laid the basis for good nutrition.
Parents have often disputed this with me, saying that their child will in fact go to neighbours’ or friends’ places to lay into the sweets there. First, if your child is still a toddler, she won’t be going to a neighbour’s house on her own, and will never be left alone there. So there is no reason why the adults there can’t monitor what she eats. And if, when she’s a bit older, she does eat sweets at her friends’ homes, don’t make a drama out of it. You’ve done your best, and that’s enough – because that’s all you can do. Anyway, if you look at the amount of sweet food your child eats in situations like this, it will almost always be the case that she eats less than her friend does. Children raised to eat healthy food do not, generally, choose to eat a lot of unhealthy food even when it is available.
When your child is in childcare or school, as well as giving her food to take with her, you can talk to the centre’s staff and to other parents and ask for healthy food to be provided there. You may be successful with this. If you cannot get the centre or school to agree, at least you’ve shown your daughter how important healthy nutrition is to you. That helps her. And remember how important it is that your child knows your opinion, and sees that you know how to lead a happy life while following your own convictions.
How much food is enough?
Don’t be too worried about whether your child eats too little or too much. A healthy child eats exactly as much as she needs. But note that this rule applies only if your child is fed an almost sugar-free diet. An excess of sugar leads to a desire for sweet things, and from there it’s a slippery slope to deficient nutrition.
Food and power
If your daughter feels that she has power over you through her eating habits, she will exploit it. She’ll say something like, ‘I’m not eating that.’ She knows that you care about this issue, and that her nutrition is very important to you, so she might think that you will immediately start to prepare something else for her. The result of this kind of exploitation is fairly common knowledge: processed food like fish fingers and tinned spaghetti will alternate on the table night after night, and if this sequence is broken even once, the little one will require serious persuasion to eat anything at all. Don’t go down that path!
She can help you cook
Cook with pleasure, delight and love, and involve your daughter in the cooking. As soon as she’s old enough, let her help choose what to cook, take her with you to the supermarket, help her learn to tell good-quality food from bad, and allow her to help you prepare meals. You can show a two-year-old daughter the proper use of a kitchen knife – as long as it’s very blunt! These sensory experiences increase her interest in food and her familiarity with the taste and texture of different foods, and help to develop her intelligence.
In the first few years, children learn only through sensory experience – imitation, touching, playing, sucking and exploring things with their whole bodies. When you allow your daughter to be part of such a sensory activity as food preparation, she will receive just the stimulation she needs. And if you think about it, preparing and consuming food engages all five senses – sight, sound, smell, touch and, of course, taste – like few other activities.
On the other hand, if your daughter experiences mainly tinned or frozen food, she might reasonably assume that milk comes from a carton and carrots come from a freezer!
If both you and your partner are working, try to cook with your daughter on weekends and shop beforehand. If you live in the city, you could drive to the country now and then and visit a farm, so your daughter can see how vegetables are grown and harvested.
Don’t be too concerned about whether your child is eating enough – every healthy child eats exactly as much as she needs
Mealtime behaviour
This is at least as important as your choice of food. Meals should take place in a friendly, peaceful atmosphere, if at all possible. Anything else is unhealthy. Don’t criticise your child or partner during meals together, and don’t argue. If problems need to be aired, go for a walk or sit in the living room and talk after the meal.
Find a quiet time to discuss with your partner what table manners you think are appropriate. Is your daughter allowed to leave the table when she has finished eating, or should she wait until everyone is finished? Can she play while she’s eating? Can she serve herself at a certain age? If so, what age? And must she then eat everything she has put on her plate?
There are no fixed or right answers to these questions. You develop your own family culture by seeking answers together and emphasising the things that are important to you. In days gone by, for instance, a prayer was usually said before meals, children weren’t permitted to speak at the table – unless spoken to – and everyone remained seated until everybody had finished eating. In many families, things have changed: these days there are some families who never sit down together for a meal.
What do you want for your family? How do you want to shape your family life in this respect? The moment your toddler sits at the family table, she learns something about food. What she learns is in your hands.
Important points about food for you and your daughter
Meals with the whole family are fun.
We should be grateful for our food – the amount and variety we have available are not things we should take for granted.
Healthy nourishment keeps us well.
Everyone can help with preparing meals.
Children learn table manners most easily through example and praise – not through criticism.
Everyone’s body belongs to them – each person should therefore choose (from a healthy range of food) what and how much they eat.
Fruit and vegetables should always be allowed as a snack.
In a nutshell
Accept and bond with the baby girl you actually have, not the one you might have been anticipating.
You are doing your daughter a favour when you say no to her for a good reason.
Good role models are vital for a girl’s healthy development.
Your daughter is more likely to have positive, healthy attitudes to eating if you start her off with fresh, natural food and limited sweets.
Not tied to the apron strings!
Everybody was busy in the kitchen when I announced that, instead of receiving presents for Mothers’ Day, I would not be cooking for three days over the Mothers’ Day weekend. I wanted a rest.
There was a sudden silence. Everybody looked at me, and then my two boys – aged 18 and 15 – and their father turned to the youngest, Jesse – aged ten, and