I know, I know - DANGEROUS!
What I've been thinking about is food, or rather access to food.
It started with our puppy Lacey. We free feed her - meaning we keep her dish with food in it at all times.
If it's empty, we refill it.
She eats when she's hungry and she stops when she's not.
I've always done this with all of my previous dogs - a sheltie, a golden retriever, an old english sheepdog (perhaps these breeds are not as food-driven as others?) but none of them have become obscenely overweight.
Slightly overweight yes, but I'm going to chalk that up to being less active and more sedentary - not access to food.
True, this method makes training a bit harder because food can't really be used as incentive to obey.
It did make house training difficult because we didn't always know when she'd eaten, so we were often surprised with puddles we didn't see coming.
Having said that, there is the upside that there is no urgency for her to eat. She doesn't become frantic when we put a bowl down and she doesn't growl or act aggressive at all when the girls come near her dish, or worse still, when Otis sticks his head in to share dinner with her.
She knows she will never be hungry.
I like this.
So it got me to thinking about kids;
I'm not saying that my kids are like my pets by any stretch of the imagination - but there is a natural instinct that all living things have when it comes to feeding hunger.
Where I drew comparisons was in allowing access to sweets.
I have junk everywhere.
Chips, chocolate, cookies, marshmallows, pudding, baking - you name it, it's probably here.
I leave it out, easily accessible to everyone anytime they'd like.
The girls will eat it, but they only eat what they want, they don't gorge themselves just because it's there. They usually ask permission and don't squirrel goodies away anywhere.
This causes Hubby some concern. He would like them to choose healthy snacks - which I absolutely agree with.
I just think healthy can be tempered with junk so as not to create sneaky eaters, or binge eating when snacks are suddenly available.
Does this make sense?
Here's another example; whenever the girls have playdates with friends, there is a frenzy from their guests to grab whatever sugary treats are around. Sneaking chocolates from a dish, pocketing handfuls of bubble gum from the gum machine (which is really more decoration than anything), and eating entire plates of cookies.
Some of that I'm going to chalk up to being at someone else's house and having different treats than at home, but a portion of it (I think) is also a reflection of limited access to it at their own homes.
So who's right?
Can we endorse healthy choices AND allow access to sweets?
Is it a spectrum, or an all-or-nothing scenario?
Am I the negligent mother allowing her children to rot their teeth and eat unhealthily, or am I (at least partially) right that limiting access has more negative repercussions?
I have a couple of examples;
1. I have a "secret stash" of my favourite chocolate in my bedroom. I take a nibble here and there, but I hide it away so that it is there when I want it.
This is the only chocolate in the house that my husband and kids are desperate to get their hands on. The same chocolate is downstairs in the pantry - in the form of Hallowe'en candy bars - but isn't touched.
The limited access to my stash has made it "special" in some way and a temptation that they can't resist?
2. A friend was over today and she told me how her parents never let her have sweets. The result of this "proper, healthy diet" was that as a teenager she rebelled and went hog wild. She finally had access to the 'forbidden non-fruit' so she didn't exercise any kind of moderation. Today, in her home with small children, she has candy jars on display that are full of treats and her kids rarely touch them.
I'm not a nutritionist, dietician, psychologist or scientist.
This is just my experience.
RaiseHealthyEaters.com has an article that touches on this subject.
I'm certainly open to hearing another side of the argument - after all, there's no manual for this parenting thing - any information I get can only help me be better.
Have a great one!
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I think if your children are doing well with it, then it's working just fine. I think I would personally have a much healthier relationship to sweets if my mother had done this. I definitely remember going over to some neighbor kid's houses where the kitchen was open to them and they were allowed much more access to sweets. I remember being absolutely stunned by their take it or leave it attitude. I knew I would have eaten the whole drawer if I had been given such a chance! I didn't understand why they didn't. It was completely foreign to me.
ReplyDeleteNeedless to say, I have always battled weight issues. Unfortunately, I have passed along some of my issues to my daughter even though she was allowed more access. She definitely learned from me that sweets were something we shouldn't have and so they become a craving that is a constant battle. So, short answer, I agree with you.
However, I do have one caveat. I do believe in both animals and people there are some personalities that are gorgers. They cannot regulate their food intake by themselves. I currently have a cat that is overweight and clearly fixated on her food bowl. I have always left food out for both my dogs and cats. They are all rescue animals. But this is the first cat I've had to do this.
Another example is a little girl we knew. She was 3 times the size of a normal 4 year old. Once, when my husband came down to get some breakfast after spending the night there, he found the little girl already in the kitchen. She had pulled up a chair and was standing on it leaning over the stove. She had a large serving spoon and was scooping up old rice that had been left on the stove from the night before. My husband said she was cramming it into her mouth like she had never been given a meal before. A sad situation that I feel would take a doctor's intervention. I divorced so I don't know what the end to that story is.
So, anyway, I've given a long winded answer to say I agree with you. If you can raise children who can put the proper perspective on sweets, that's great. And I think your method of doing that is a good one. However, anybody attempting that method needs to check their own head about sweets, and they need to really monitor their children and make sure they're doing well with that access.
Thanks for the input - I especially like it when people agree with me! lol That's sad about the little one sneaking food… I hope it's not a reflection of her parents putting her one some strict diet or something?
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