Forcing children to eat...

We sometimes force feed one of my nieces who is 5 years by cajoling her to eat. She doesn't like to eat but play with our neighbour. The article mentions that we should let the child decides when she wants to and how much she wants to and we have done that too on one or two occasions but it ended disastrously as she would sleep without eating much and next day would wake up in bad mood due to hunger. So nowadays her mother feed her herself the amount she usually eats.

There is something called eating through senses, which involves a lot of other development in child. It goes a long run in building physical and emotional fitness of child. When we force feed a child we interfere with that development

Agree with you. Force feeding may prove counter productive As far as possible parents should be patient allow the child to have its own eating habits for some time.the child,definitely will show good eating habits after some time.

It is very important for us as parents to recognise exactly when the child should be fed and how much and also help the child recognise these factors for himself. My friend's daughter is a health eater and when my friend prepares her favorite food, she has to keep an eye how much the girl eats and has to be stopped after a certain limit. Otherwise, the girl ends up overeating and falls sick the next day. While my son, no matter how much he likes something, will always stop after he has eaten the amount that he is used to. He usually eats one roti or paratha and no matter how much he likes a certain paratha, he will not eat one morsel beyond one paratha. So each child has his or her own limit and we should actually stop interfering when the kids sit down to eat and observe how much naturally and comfortably they can eat by themselves. That is their limit.

Please do not forget we all were children once.

I was reading other articles on the subject where the general opinion is that eating habits undergo changes in most cases unless the individual has been brought up in a  very rigid atmosphere. I feel that the more choices we give to our children the better eaters they become ..That has been the case with my children and my son , with time has also overcome his allergy to a great extent now..

@ Usha. I totally agree that eating habits undergo changes. I have seen it with myself. I did not like sweets as a child and now I have got a sweet tooth and crave for it. I love bittergourds now though it was not my favorite in growing years

I remember my mother was of the opinion that all the children must eat every food item those get cooked on a daily basis. The items we did not like were served in small quantity but if any of the child had any health issue caused by a particular food was never forced to eat. I used to vomit after eating a particular fish and so neither my mother nor others in the family forced me to eat it. At present, I do eat that fish without any health issue.So, I must say that though my mother taught us to eat every food item, never ever compelled us to eat if we were allergic to it which was a right attitude. We all must follow this attitude.

I never liked meat or for that matter chicken during my childhood and continue to be the same . But over a period of time I have developed a great liking for sea food .. Basically we need to evolve and not stay rigid with our choices which makes us healthier and more accommodating 

In my childhood I didn't like warm milk. But now I liked warm milk too much.

We evolve and once our consciousness or intellect takes over after we grow, we consciously change our food habits to make us healthier and fit.

For children to develop healthy habits, parents have to pass it on. Children imitate us under our skin and would pick up healthy habits easily if they see it being followed in the family.

Children love to share their food with friends in school. They like preparations of other members. So parents can share the pool of healthy recipes to keep up with the variety and interests of children. WhatsApp groups of mothers make it easier for all to share healthy recipes. This point comes from my experience as a mother. I have learnt so many recipes from the moms on the group as my daughter tries the food in school and comes and asks me to make the same at home.

I have seen some people being extremely critical of others food habits and when it is done in font of children they too become judgmental and develop a closed mind towards food . They become judgmental about other food items that is not prepared at home without having any experience , not having tried it even once. I have something to share here.. once we were invited to have dinner with a Norwegian family and most of the food prepared by the hostess was new to us. She had of course taken care not to include both pork and beef because of religious sentiments . The Indians at the dinner party were making faces because there was no rice or roti and we're shocked about some of the dishes. There was raw fish pickle which I tried for the first time and found it delicious. But of course most of the others refused to try and the hostess was feeling sad ..She later told me that she wanted others to taste their food and had taken.a lot of trouble to prepare it herself..

usha manohar wrote:

I have seen some people being extremely critical of others food habits and when it is done in font of children they too become judgmental and develop a closed mind towards food . They become judgmental about other food items that is not prepared at home without having any experience , not having tried it even once. I have something to share here.. once we were invited to have dinner with a Norwegian family and most of the food prepared by the hostess was new to us. She had of course taken care not to include both pork and beef because of religious sentiments . The Indians at the dinner party were making faces because there was no rice or roti and we're shocked about some of the dishes. There was raw fish pickle which I tried for the first time and found it delicious. But of course most of the others refused to try and the hostess was feeling sad ..She later told me that she wanted others to taste their food and had taken.a lot of trouble to prepare it herself..

I too have come across many people who don't want to try anything new or make faces looking at them. When I visited a village in Rajasthan where food crops cannot be grown properly due to infertile land, one of the lady gave me some plant which they eat often as vegetables. She told me how they usually cook it. That evening two of my colleagues joined me for dinner and one of them said that I was taking a great risk eating plants which are totally new to us. She refused to even try as she doesn't have any idea about that plant. I replied that as the villagers have been traditionally eating those plants and nothing happened to them, I don't mind trying it. And when I tried it, it turned out all right.

@Usha, that is something which I too have experienced with a colleague with whom I was in England for a training course. Our project coordinator took both of us and our training team out for dinner at an Italian place. Since only two of were Indians, she took great care of us and our needs and was really trying to please us and took a lot of efforts to order something that we would really like. But since it was England, the food had no salt or spices but still tasted really great. I wanted to try the authentic experience so I really enjoyed the food and wine. But m colleague who liked spicy food, kept making faces and commenting how there was absolutely no salt or spice in anything. After sometime, the coordinator could not bear her faces any more and told her quite brusquely that if she just wanted salt in her meal, she could simply have asked politely for some. It was a very embarrassing moment for me.

Also, I think, Indians as a whole are quite avert to trying new cuisines otherwise we wouldn't see ads from travel agencies that said they could have authentic Indian meals in tourist places abroad.

anil wrote:

In my childhood I didn't like warm milk. But now I liked warm milk too much.

I too don't like Warm milk till now

anil wrote:

In my childhood I didn't like warm milk. But now I liked warm milk too much.

The one thing I would insist on when my children were young was drinking at least two or three glasses of milk. They all loved milk or milk shake and continue to drink milk regularly even now..

Indians are not only unwilling to try non-Indian dishes but they usually shy away from trying dishes of the different regions within India. It's a common idea that Bengali dishes, veg and non-veg items, are sweet in taste. This is absolutely rubbish. We do add sugar but that is to balance the taste. Some may put sugar a little more than required but it's not a general practice. Thus, it's always good to try especially the veg items while there can be reservation in having all types of non-veg items.

Shampa Sadhya wrote:

Indians are not only unwilling to try non-Indian dishes but they usually shy away from trying dishes of the different regions within India. It's a common idea that Bengali dishes, veg and non-veg items, are sweet in taste. This is absolutely rubbish. We do add sugar but that is to balance the taste. Some may put sugar a little more than required but it's not a general practice. Thus, it's always good to try especially the veg items while there can be reservation in having all types of non-veg items.

I too feel that we should try out the food from different regions. It help us to appreciate food better. And as far as Bengali are concerned, I have noticed that they are very good in cooking. I have learned many new dishes from my Bengali friends. One of my former room mates taught me to make curry even out of papad. Through her, I also became a fan of the pointed gourd (potol)

While I was working in Durgapur Steel plant in WB, I  used to eat in the houses of a Bengali friend, I had developed in immense liking on their Fish preparations like "Macher Jol".