Food and eating

My son is 11 years old and is more than 50 pounds over­weight. Should I force him to go on a diet?

You can take a horse to the water but you can’t make him drink. I very much doubt if anything can he done with the boy at home. No boy can feel happy eating a diet salad when he sees the rest of the family tucking away the bacon and eggs.

If a child does not see the necessity of something, it is very difficult to get him to change his ways. If your boy were adolescent and the girls laughed at his fatness, he would have a motive to slim; but a boy of 11 has no motive to get thin. But why so much worry? I have seen children who were fat at 10 and slim at 20.

Although malfunctioning of glands is extremely rare, his obesity may have little to do with his diet. Only a medi­cal man can Judge whether or not his glands are properly functioning. But if a doctor tells you the boy’s body is func­tioning normally, then leave him alone.

My boy of six is extremely picky about food. It seems the only things he likes to eat are hamburgers, steak, and ice cream. We can’t afford steak often, and my husband and I are just about sick and tired of eating hamburgers. What’s the solution?

If your boy is fussy about food, try to give him what he likes to eat, but don’t cater to him at the expense of forc­ing every member of the family to adapt their tastes to his.

Your boy wants to live on hamburgers? Well and good! But that shouldn’t mean that everyone else in the family must live on hamburgers. It is wrong to force a child to eat what he does not want to eat; it is equally wrong to force a family to eat what only one member of that family prefers.

At Summerhill, we have a boy who refuses to cat mutton, or roast beef, or sausages, or vegetables. All he wants is a plateful of potatoes and butter. We give him his spuds every day—because they’re easy to prepare. But if he de­manded chow men or duck a l’orange, we wouldn’t dream of complying. To judge from past experience, the day will soon come when that boy will want to eat what the other children are eating. But however that might be, it would be ludicrous if we were to say, “Jimmy likes only potatoes and butter, so all you other kids will now live on his diet.” To me it sounds equally ludicrous for you to say, ‘My son likes only hamburgers, so from now on my husband and I are going to feed on hamburgers, day in and day out.”

My practical advice is give the boy his own way with­in reason which certainly means that his diet must fall within your financial capabilities. Furthermore, unless your son is to be spoiled and made king of the roost, he should be made to adapt to the needs of the other people in your family. The matter should he handled on a compromise basis: Monday, hamburgers; Tuesday, fish; Wednesday, macaroni and cheese—something like that. If Junior won’t eat the non-hamburger meals, then he simply must do with­out. Don’t worry, he won’t star\e. Hell feed on bread and water; he’ll rummage in the ice-box or in the pantry; hell find something or other to allay his hunger, but he won’t starve.

I have a feeling that a food complex in a child has some element of protest within it. He may be using his special likes and dislikes to proclaim, “I’m the big shot in this joint. What I say goes. Pass the ice cream.” Johnny’s food fad should set you to try to discover just what is the boy’s hid­den motivation. What do his particular dislikes symbolize?

Дата добавления: 2015-11-16