While par­ent­ing may come nat­u­ral­ly for some, many par­ents find it chal­leng­ing to deal with the tantrums, back talk and frankly be­ing ig­nored by their chil­dren. One point of con­tention for many fam­i­lies (in­clud­ing mine) is about get­ting chil­dren to eat health­i­er. So this week I got some in­sight from So­phie Bar­cant, a par­ent­ing coach and a moth­er of eight chil­dren, on how to nav­i­gate this im­por­tant life les­son.

Teach­ing your chil­dren about eat­ing a healthy di­et is im­por­tant, how­ev­er in our fo­cus on get­ting them to eat their veg­eta­bles, or in some cas­es just to eat, par­ents can go too far. So­phie shared that par­ents some­times make the mis­take of “brib­ing their chil­dren or be­ing too rigid and un­re­al­is­tic. This can cause kids to sneak and de­ceive the par­ent, es­pe­cial­ly when by friends or at school, trad­ing healthy snacks with junk from friends.” And of course the con­stant “preach­ing, lec­tur­ing and nag­ging” adds to the con­flict. In­stead, we should try to cre­ate a pos­i­tive en­vi­ron­ment, where chil­dren are free to make some choic­es so they feel in­clud­ed. Some­times we get so fo­cused on them eat­ing tonight’s din­ner, that we for­get that de­vel­op­ing a healthy re­la­tion­ship with food takes time.

One way to do this is by of­fer­ing choic­es such as "would you pre­fer car­rots or green beans, broc­coli or cu­cum­ber, wa­ter­mel­on or ba­nana?” On­ly of­fer two choic­es that are pleas­ing to the par­ent so that you can be sat­is­fied that at least your child eats one healthy veg­etable or fruit.

So­phie be­lieves it is im­por­tant to “re­spect the child’s pref­er­ences, es­pe­cial­ly if they do not want food to touch on the plate and not to ridicule your chil­dren. If they on­ly like white meat (chick­en) then try to give them what they pre­fer.” As a picky eater her­self, So­phie shared, “I was able to em­pathize with my daugh­ter a lot as I was even more fussy than her as a child, so I did not give her a hard time. As she grew we sim­ply en­cour­aged her to try new things and grad­u­al­ly, she has start­ed eat­ing new foods. Friends al­so en­cour­aged her to try new things and she did.” It is im­por­tant to not give up on our kids and keep of­fer­ing them health­i­er choic­es as they open up their minds and their taste buds to new foods.

As adults, we may choose to eat plain steamed veg­eta­bles or sal­ad with min­i­mal dress­ings to lose weight or sim­ply based on our pref­er­ences, So­phie sug­gest­ed that we are more flex­i­ble with chil­dren. She says, “I al­ways of­fered salt and but­ter on plain boiled green string beans and broc­coli and cau­li­flower as this is how they pre­fer it. I pre­pared cu­cum­ber chow with lime and salt, and the ta­ble al­ways had mul­ti­ple sal­ad dress­ing op­tions to cater to the var­i­ous palates to en­cour­age them to eat sal­ad.” Chil­dren are very cre­ative and get­ting them in­volved in com­ing up with their own dress­ings and top­pings is a great way to chan­nel that cre­ativ­i­ty and al­low them to have some in­put.

So­phie shared that, “eat­ing to­geth­er as a fam­i­ly,” is one way to help kids de­vel­op healthy habits. But she al­so shared that de­vel­op­ing good habits does not al­ways start at the ta­ble, “Lim­it­ing TV, do­ing things to­geth­er on week­ends such as tak­ing dri­ves in the coun­try, ex­plor­ing new places and pic­nick­ing, play­ing board games to­geth­er, bak­ing to­geth­er, help­ing mom and dad in the kitchen and age-ap­pro­pri­ate chores,” are all im­por­tant foun­da­tions of a healthy fam­i­ly.

And just like try­ing to teach kids man­ners, chil­dren learn more from what we do than what we say. Ac­cord­ing to So­phie, “par­ents must ac­cept that every­thing they do and even don’t do is no­ticed and of­ten im­i­tat­ed by their kids. If par­ents are cu­ri­ous and ex­plore a va­ri­ety of flavours their kids are like­ly to do the same. It helps if par­ents are hon­est with their kids and ex­press that they too don’t like cer­tain foods. This shows kids that par­ents al­so have taste is­sues, but are still brave and open to try­ing dif­fer­ent things.”

So­phie can be reached for par­ent­ing cours­es, work­shops or per­son­al coach­ing con­sul­ta­tion at so­phiebar­cant@ya­hoo.com or 799-9933.