Finish Your Ice-cream....

The day I said to DD1 "You can have more rice as soon as you finish your ice-cream." DH said "Huhn, don't you have that backwards?" I had to stop and think about it, but no, I'd actually told her to finish her dessert before she could have more dinner. And, I've said it several times since.

We have two rules regarding food in our home, no chocolate before breakfast and you have to at least "touch" your dinner in order to have dessert. Dessert is usually served in our home, be it simple like a chocolate candy, Hallowe'en candy, cookies or more extravagant, pie, cake, ice-cream, whatever. When I'm ready to serve dessert I serve it to everyone regardless of whether they've finished their plate. How much dessert they get is commiserate with how much food they've eaten. Only if they haven't taken so much as a bite of dinner will they not get dessert. If after eating dessert they ask for more dessert it's "finish your dinner", if they choose to finish it and still want dessert then I give them more. This alternates back and forth until they stop asking for food, or I run out of whatever I made.

Now, there have been a few cases where one of the children wants more of the dinner food and I've already served the dessert. If it's something perishable (like ice-cream) I usually say they have to finish their dessert before getting more dinner food.

Needless to say, this flies in the face of all prevailing theories regarding food. However, all of my children are the appropriate weight for their size. In fact, DD1 routinely receives hand-me-ups (clothes from younger children) that are too big for her. All 3 have the same problem with clothes - they grow out of them height wise before they grow into them in the waist. I have to sew "tucks" into the waist bands of almost all their pants so they can wear them before they become too short.

This is one of those ongoing experiments that appears to be working, we don't have fights over sugar, there's no such thing as a sugar rush in our house, and they don't pig out on sugar every chance they get. Chocolate bars, cakes, cookies are routinely abandoned in favour of fruit or nothing. I often find bits of chocolate bars on the table where a child put it because they were full. Given the option to choose their snack - yogurt, cheese and fruit top the list. That isn't to say that they don't have days where they choose the chocolate or candy, but it's a proper balance. And that balance is paying off in healthy, happy children who aren't determined to consume every drop of sugar in the house.

They all understand the balance between healthy and not healthy and that you eat your healthy before the not healthy, and you eat more healthy than not healthy. DD1 packs her own lunch, but I routinely spot check it. Keep in mind that she is 7 1/2. Her average lunch consists of yogurt, piece of fruit, some form of cheese (her favourite cheese is Fruliano) and either a piece of chocolate or cookie or bear paw. Whatever she doesn't eat at school she brings home and eats after school.

The Ministry of Education has implemented a law that schools can not serve sugary, fatty foods to students. Everything has to be whole wheat (ever had a whole wheat donut? blech) It is a complete and total ban on non-healthy foods in the school system. This isn't teaching children to eat properly; it is, however, increasing the sales of the local corner stores and creating black markets for junk food. (One enterprising student was selling pop out of his locker.) The MofE felt it was necessary to make this law because parents cannot be bothered to teach their children proper balance. Parents use the excuse that it's too hard, they don't have time, to cook proper meals. It's way easier to hop into a McD's but it isn't better and children don't learn to appreciate real food.

Some parents seem to think if they ban all junk food from the house that this teaches children not to consume the stuff. Follow those same students around and you will see they will find a way to get it; it becomes a driving force - getting that sugar fix becomes an addiction. Take the mystique out of it and it becomes blase, just another facet of life to take in stride.

Now that I've ranted I really should go check out the bumps, bangs and "OW's" emanating from the corner of the room.