My husband and I have both decided to
follow the lc way of life. We're cutting out
bread, sugar, potatoes, etc.

We have a 3 1/2 year old dd who is a picky eater (unless it's sweet or potatoes!) I've decided to get rid of all the junk in the house and encourage her to eat the way we do (adding whole wheat bread and fruit , along with corn just for her)

It's hard going right now as we've really
just let her eat what she wants (mostly
spaghettio's, chicken noodle soup, and
pb sandwiches) She does eat a good
breakfast every morning (eggs, bacon or sausage, and a slice of bread) No jelly.

I've also been giving her a multi vitamin.

Do you think this is okay? Is it mean to say either eat your meal or nothing else until the next meal? That's what we're trying now. We don't force her to eat it... it's her choice, only we don't supplement with the spaghettio's just for her anymore.

I hope this makes sense.

Thanks,
Karich

It's good that you're starting it now. I waited too long. My daughter is 11 and still thinks she's being mistreated if we force her to eat what the rest of the family is eating.

At least your husband is with you and she is not seeing "bad" food around the house.

My dd is 2 and a half years. Thankfully, I have kept a good eye on her diet so far. She loves meat, avocado and fruits.
I am slowly limiting her carb load and am buying her only a low glycemic bread for her little peanut toasts that she loves.

I have never forced her to eat. I offer, if she wants it great, if not its her choice. If she asks for something else that is not junk I will oblige. Otherwise she can go hungry, which she hasnt done ever, as far as I remember. Sometimes she doensnt eat much for dinner and I get a bit worried, but she seems fine.

I give her multivitamins and yoghurt daily.

I wish her dad will join me and then I wont have to explain how old and dirty the cookies that she just found are

Hi Cream and Freydis,

Thank you both for responding. I do think I am lucky that dh is committed to this as well. I'm always afraid she will
miss out on some nutrient or other, but she looks healthy, not skinny or fat,
she's about at the 50% as far as weight goes. Neither of us were heavy as children, just don't want her to see us
constantly "dieting" that's one reason we're trying to be committing.

Thanks again.
Karich

and it has been easy to change her eating habits at home - she goes to a Montessori school and they serve very healthy foods there (no sugar, deep fried or white flour).

I simply cut out white flour by slowly upping the grain quantity in bread, started mixing regular pasta with whole wheat until she developed a taste for wheat - it does taste a little strange (okay, so it required using two pots to boil, but eventually I got smart and did a few servings worth of white and wheat and would put them in the fridge to micro zap and serve instead of doing it each night), I started offering nuts and sunflower seeds for snacks AND CUTTING OUT JUICE - that was the big one... its just junk in a sippy cup!

Of course, she still has the occassional Teddy Graham snack and grandma gives her juice.

I cut back her milk at home and give her a multivitamin. She drinks water now primarily. In fact, since we have a water dispenser, she can help herself.

She is very slim - about 31lbs at 36 inches tall. But no matter how much she eats, she burns it off.

I don't really think that with kids at this age its about limiting carbs - its more about limiting bad carbs and controlling the sugar.

HTH,
Lisa

Hi Lisa,

Thanks for your suggestions. Sounds like
you dd is doing fine on low carb I think
mine will adjust too. I'm sad I didn't start it right away, but still she's still young.

Thanks again.
Kara

PS
Thanks for the hint on introducing new tastes... I hadn't thought of mixing it.
Great idea!

Hi Karich - I'm sorry to jump in with a question rather than an answer. I'm in a similar situation. I have a 3 1/2 year old very picky eater who only eats carbs (& maybe protein once every 2 weeks). She's obviously carb addicted & is already overweight for her height. I've been on LC'ing for 7 months & putting healthy food in front of her every meal, but I've been giving in & allowing bread (typically all she will eat during a meal).
She also binges on juice, goldfish crackers and cookies when we visit other people.
I was curious how it's been going with your little one; have there been some changes since you started refusing to make separate food? I worry about trying to control her eating as I don't want her to wind up with an eating disorder, but I feel like I have to do something.
Megan

Hi folks, I've thought about this issue a lot over the past 17 years (my oldest kid is 17). There is a fine line between encouraging kids to eat healthfully and creating eating disorders. I think that my parents always felt as though they were encouraging me to eat heathfully by banning or severely limiting sweets and starches, but actually what I learned was to sneak around behind their back. My son has a friend whose parents banned all sweets in their house. I remember an occasion, back when the boys were 4 or 5 years old, when he came over to my house and I put a bag of cookies on the table as a snack. My son ate two or three cookies and stopped (he was used to getting cookies); this kid polished off the entire bag! I think his parents' strategy was back-firing.

In reaction to my parents, I may have erred too much in the other direction. After making sure that they had eaten something healthy, I always let my kids eat whatever else they wanted. I did talk to them about nutrition, but I never really tried to control their eating. I always have boxes of macaroni and cheese, totellini noodles, cookies, ice cream, etc. in the house. For whatever it is worth, both my kids are low to normal weight (son is about 6'2" and 155 pounds; daughter is about 5'6" and 120 pounds). Both my kids went through a chubby phase right before they hit their adolescent growth spurt and then grew out of it. The boy whose parents banned all cookies (and who polished off the bag of cookies at my house when he was 4 or 5) is huge today at age 16.

All I'm trying to say is think very carefully before you try to control your kids' eating habits too much. Kids naturally rebel against people who try to control them and all adolescents rebel to some extent against their parents. You don't want to raise kids who rebel through eating junk. Sometimes it's better to incorporate unhealthy foods into their lives in a natural manner rather than to hold them out as forbidden.

I do discuss nutrition with my children. They understand the importance of protein and vegetables for their health. However, I let them make their own decisions about what to eat. I wish they ate somewhat more healthfully; however, I am grateful that neither one of them has an eating disorder. I expect that as they get older they will naturally shift to eating more healthfully of their own free will.

When my kids were going through their pre-adolescent chubby phase, it took everything in me not to try to control their eating. The only thing that kept me from doing it was my memory of my own reaction when my parents did that to me. My mother actually got very angry at me, telling me that I was allowing the kids to get fat and they would blame me for their entire lives. With the benefit of hindsight, I am glad that I just let them eat and never mentioned weight to them.

Hi Liz - very good points. I'm sorry I'm new here & feel like I'm highjacking this thread a bit.
I actually had an eating disorder as a teen & have been going out of my way not to classify foods as good and bad or limit what my daughter eats.
The problem is that she eats only 2 food groups - dairy & carbs - absolutely no vegetables, fruit, legumes or meat.
I wonder if you (or anyone) could give me an opinion about what to do in these situations:
1) During a meal she might eat 6 Minigo yogurts or 4 slices of toast with jam in a sitting (& that's all she will have for a meal). If there are cookies or dessert, she will have seconds or thirds without having eaten anything else. As of yet I have not made a fuss about this.
2) She'll ask to make cookies daily. When we do, she's not interested in the actual cutting out & baking part, she just wants to sample the dough. I've told her she can only have a little bit because of the danger of eating raw egg. She gets very antsy begging for more dough throughout the process like she has an addiction.
3) When we go to visit people who serve white bread products, she will ask for a roll then another then another until she's eaten up to 4. People usually say, you can have another one after you try the rest of the food. There's no way she will. When we get home, she usually asks for more toast. (luckily she's OK with whole wheat at home).
I realize that it's up to the person who has an addiction to be the one to give it up (like I did myself). I just worry that because she's only 3 1/2, I should be doing something.
Sometimes I worry that I'm erring on the side of being too liberal about food, because my parents were so controlling. Now that I'm LC'ing though, I think my own eating disorder (bulimia) was almost 100% to do with a physiological addiction to sugar and starch & nothing to do with my parents.
Thanks for any comments.
Megan

As much as I agree with Liz on the controlling issue, we are talking about toddlers here. Its a stage when habits are formed for a life time, especially foodwise.

I was never refused chocolate, but we could never afford it, so it was almost never in the house. But when there was some available, I could it it all if I wanted to.
I dont have any sweet addictions now. I was raised on fruits and veggies as they were cheep and I still love them more than sweets to this day.

My point?

We as parents built certain habits in our children from the day they are born. My daughter, for example, didnt know what sweets are until late in her second year. She did not miss them! She did not want them...
She loves fruits, veggies and meat especially. Drinks yoghurt with pleasure too.
Now I buy her unsweatened chocolate that she can have when she asks for and dad gives in from time to time with other sweets. Slowly, I will introduce her to the big world and its nasties, but she will have the healthy habits built in already to help keep her in line... I hope. And that is the best I can do. From then on its up to her.

I will not forbid her to eat crap, but she will have to buy it herself. The same way that I will not be buying her drugs or cigarettes if she wanted them, just so I dont make her want them more.
Its all the same.

Geez, this was long!
Sorry

I think that everyone has to find the right balance that works for them and their family. One thing I have learned from having two kids who are very different from each other, is that what works for one kid may not work for another. I had a neighbor who was convinced that she knew how to potty train kids and the rest of us were doing it wrong, because both her kids were toilet trained before they turned two. Then she had a third kid and he was still wearing diapers when he turned three. I remind myself of this when I think I have the answer to how to raise kids correctly. I may have just gotten lucky and had two kids who naturally eat a somewhat balanced diet and who naturally aren't over-weight.

In clarification, I intended my earlier post to say that I think we, as parents, need to carefully evaluate the unintended effects our well intentioned actions may be having on our kids. Our intention may be to raise healthy eaters by controlling the types and quantity of food our kids eat; the effect may be quite different from our original intention. That said, I have no difficulty at all with asserting rules when kids' safety is concerned. I never let my kids eat anything with raw eggs in it and they understood that and respected that rule. It was a given, just like wearing a seatbelt in the car or doing their chores. I don't think that parents should allow kids to rule the household; we are adults and we are in charge. I just think that we need to be very careful about the rules we make surrounding food because, in my experience, those rules often have unintended consequences.

I also may be influenced by the fact that my kids are now adolescents. When they were younger, it was much easier to control what they ate without them realizing I was controlling it. Now that they are older, they do more of their own cooking (two working parents) and eat a lot more meals outside of the house. If I tried to exert a lot of control over what they ate, it would be quite obvious to them.

Hi Liz, Megan, and cream,

I think you all made valid points. It is a very fine line with eating habits. For us right now, we've limited the sweets and chocolate to special occasions or at grandma's house. For dinner we offer her what we're eating (low carb) and add a corn cob or helping of mashed potatoes (these freeze very well!) or other starchy food that she likes. She doesn't like vegetables very much, but she does like those pork rind pancakes, so I put some chopped spinach in them. She also doesn't like cheese, but she will eat it if it's been nuked. Last night we had the taco shells made out of provolone and she ate a whole one and the meat that went in it as well. She will eat turnips fried like potatoes or cut into little pieces like boiled potatoes, I do give her peas as she likes them so much, she won't eat green beans, though I hope that will change eventually. (she likes to help me snap them!)

For snacks I offer her fruit and yogurt. She does prefer the sugary kids kinds over plain yogurt with flavor and sweetener added, but I'm going to start mixing these half and half like Lisa mentioned early in the thread.

For sweet and cookies we've been making our own. She loves the peanut better cookies that is on the recipe board. She also likes nuts. There is an almond cookies recipe I want to try. We also make sugar free meringues and pipe into little pieces, it's like candy and very low carb.

I guess what I'm trying to say is there are a lot of things out there to substitute with that taste very good. I also give her a daily multi vitamin.

Also, she got quite a bit of candy for Christmas. I didn't take any of it away... it's hers. I do make her have a meal first and limit how many pieces she has.

We're still in the learning phase of this, most important to me is that she is healthy and happy.

Kara

PS
Megan do check out the recipes board, the pork rind pancakes are good! And as nearly all of your dd diet is bread, substituting it for soy flour bread or some other low carb bread might be worth while? Maybe even invest in a bread machine and make it with your dd?

Sorry Liz,

if my earlier post sounded like an attack on your opinion. It wasnt. I just wanted to clarify that we are not talking about adults or teenagers here, but about toddlers. I would agree with you wholeheartedly if the issue were with bigger kids. In this case control would be one of the least successful methods for behaviour modification (that sound so heavy )

Kara,
It sounds like you are doing great. Old habits will take some time to overcome, but its not impossible. One thing I would suggest is not to use sweets on "special" occasions. This might bring about a sweet-good time connection. Instead you might just give her some from time to time out of the blue after dinner without much fuss. This way it doesnt become big deal. In my opinion.

Good luck

I have been slowly moving my son to less refined sugar and flour. I don't want to say low carb because I still alow him to eat things like fresh fruit, yogurt, milk, and so on.

I also still allow him occasional cereal for breakfast (multigrain cheerios) and when we go to store he gets a cookie. What gets me mad is he goes to his dad's house and dinner is something along the lines of lucky charms and "bug juice". I have stopped buying him bagles since I looked at the carb count, and also have drasticaly cut down on his bread intake. I might get low carb bagles later.

I just wanted to add something

What multivitimin do you give? Most of the over the counter oens are loaded with sugar. I talked to my ped and asked for a no sugar one. He perscribed one for us, and since it is perscription, insurance covers it