Q: How do you get your children to eat? My 3 and 4-year-old girls are ridiculously picky when it comes to food, and I’m afraid they aren’t getting the right nutrients. What is your secret?
A: I feel your pain. My oldest son is an adventurous eater. He tried new things regularly, and his palate was always surprising us. I must admit, his daring nature when it came to food left me wholly unprepared for the picky eating habits of his little brothers. These two just wouldn’t eat. I tried every tactic; bribery, bartering, sneaking vegetables into things, to no avail. When my middle son turned 5, it was as if he just got the memo that food is delicious and started trying and enjoying, new and different foods. My youngest, who’s 3, is still a horrible eater and I was also worried he isn’t getting the right nutrients. My Pediatrician explained that the average 3-year-old could easily be filled up with three tablespoons of food in one sitting. Maybe you’re offering them too much in portion size to begin with? He also said to discuss having the kids try different foods with a “polite bite.” That would be the idea that tasting a little bit of what is offered to them is the polite thing to do. Personally, my 3-year-old son doesn’t seem to care about being polite at this point, but as he gets older this will be something that we will emphasize. We all want mealtime to be as smooth and tear free as possible. I try not to drive myself crazy with the fact that while my kids definitely don’t like certain foods, meals are a way for them to prove their independence by refusing. The most we can do as parents are to offer them healthy choices and cross our fingers that they eventually accept those decisions.
Q: When it comes to discipline my kids don’t take me seriously. I’m not a very stern person, so when I do yell at the kids, it usually ends with them laughing at me. What am I doing wrong?
A: I don’t know if you are doing anything “wrong” per say, but the tactics you are using obviously aren’t working. When it comes to disciple, I find the biggest mistakes parents make are not following through on the threats they make. That’s usually because the punishment for them is just as much a punishment for you. Let’s say you all go out to eat and a child starts to misbehave. If you threaten their bad behavior by saying, “If you don’t stop this we are going home.” you better be prepared to get to-go boxes and hit the road. Because everytime you make an idle threat and don’t follow through, it diminishes your effectiveness as a disciplinarian. If your child doesn’t trust you to do what you say and say what you mean, there is no point in attempting to correct the behavior. You need your kids to know that you are the adult and that you mean business.
Q. A close mom friend recently quit drinking alcohol. While I commend her for making an enormous change in her life, she's become quite boring and somber since she's sober. How should I handle this huge change in her personality?
A. All you can do at this point is be a supportive friend. I'm assuming your close friend quit drinking because she felt that her alcohol consumption was a problem, for her, while it may have never been an issue for your relationship with her. If many of the activities you participated in together involved drinking, that factor might be making her feel pretty awkward about your friendship as well right now. Addiction is often linked to feelings of worthlessness, and I'm relatively sure that pointing out how dull she's become since her sobriety is probably the wrong direction to take at this point. Unfortunately, large life changes like this usually become a person's main talking points as they are struggling with it. So, just as if your friend recently took up cross-fit, or veganism, or became an android phone user, it's probably going to dominate much of the conversations for a long while. Be supportive. And if her friendship is important enough to you, you'll figure out a way to make the camaraderie work.
Q. My daughter is in preschool and has become close friends with two little girls. She's always asking to have playdates with them outside of school, which I've facilitated. The problem? I don't get along with either of the moms of these little girls. What should I do?
A. Ugh. While I've been in your shoes on more than one occasion, the only thing you can do is the answer you don't want to hear the most. Suck it up. Unfortunately, you child is still too young to attend playdates at the home of another child unsupervised. At the preschool level, it's crucial for your daughter to learn to forge the world of social activities and finding and keeping friends is a huge step in the right direction to succeed in that world. You should consider yourself insanely lucky that you only dislike the parents and not the child your kid has befriended as well. It could always be worse. Your only job now is to be present enough for your daughter to develop independent friendships without your judgment and to be savvy enough to avoid interactions with the moms you dislike. Good luck.
Have a question for Amy? Send it to info@neafamily.com for consideration in an upcoming column.