Dear Mother Wit,

Dear Ruby,

Some children eat everything.  But many don’t.  Some don’t like meat, or seafood, or eggs.  Some won’t touch dairy.  Funny thing is, I’ve never met a child who didn’t like sweets!

But many children refuse to eat their vegetables.  I went through this with my kids, and I hear from parents all the time who become so frustrated that they want to spank their kids to get them to eat their vegetables.

These aren’t necessarily bad or mean parents.  After all, vegetables make all of us healthier, and it’s frustrating when your child won’t do what’s best for them.  Especially after you shopped for the vegetables and prepared them in a manner you think your child(ren) will enjoy or at least tolerate.

If you get to that point of frustration (and anger) because your child is refusing to eat their vegetables (or something else healthy), here are a few quick tips to keep your stress level down, and help find a solution:

1. Take a breath.  A deep breath.  A few more. That helps to lower the stress/anger/frustration.
2. Make sure your child doesn’t have an allergy or sensitivity to that particular food (yes, even vegetables can be hard for some children to tolerate).
3. Ask yourself whether your child is refusing to eat to drag you into a power struggle.  It is in a child’s nature to draw parents into power struggle—it’s how they learn and grow.  As the parent, the adult, YOU need tools to shift the situation into something that doesn’t end up with tears, regrets, and even more power struggles.
4. If your child is using this to pull you into power struggle, let go of the need to win.  Yes, you read that right! Sometimes our need to win drives us into losing situations.  I learned this the hard way!  Now this might not be easy, but children sense when we put a lot of energy and emotion into something and most times, they will pick that something to test us.  By neutralizing your attitude toward the vegetables (or whatever the issue is), you take back some of the “power” without the struggle.  For instance, you can say, “Well, I’d like you to eat those carrots because they’re good for you, and I love you so I want you to be healthy.  But if you’re not going to eat them, fine. Give them to your brother, your sister, or the dog.”
5. Should you bargain?  You know: “If you eat your carrots, you can have some peach cobbler for dessert.  But no carrots, no dessert.”  This is a tricky one.  You can try it.  Of course that sets up a bargaining situation where you might always have to have something to “give” in exchange for the child doing as you ask.  You don’t want this to be your permanent fallback maneuver.  But sometimes it can do in a pinch—especially if you’re at someone else’s house and want to avoid a scene.
6. What worked for me was to involve my children in the process.  I’d take them to the store and let them help me pick out the vegetables that THEY would eat.  The deal was that if they picked them out and put them in the cart and I paid for them and cooked them, they would agree to eat them.
7. I also found that sometimes kids prefer some vegetables raw.  My daughter loved raw green beans.  So I washed them, dried them, snapped them into pieces, discarded the ends and served them with sliced cucumbers, carrots, sometimes other vegetables, and a yogurt or ranch dip. Success!

It’s always a parenting challenge when a child refuses to do as you ask or tell them.  Remember that power struggle situation. PICK YOUR BATTLES! And when you take a stand on those things that are most important to you, you’ll move out of that “I’m the parent, therefore the authority and you must do everything I say,” into a mind-set that focuses on asking yourself, “What does my child need from me right now in this situation?”  That can help you see past the tension of the moment and keep your long-term parenting goals in mind.

And remember: the VERY best way to get your child to eat healthfully is to model that behavior consistently for them.  And explain why you’re doing it—connect the value of the food to something that matters to them.  “Carrots help you see better, which helps when you play ball.”

Do as you want them to do!

Until next time remember, DON’T HIT THE KIDS, HIT THE KEYBOARD.  Visit www.sparethekids.com for positive discipline tips.