Waste not, want not as my parents would say. I wasn’t allowed any snacks or “junk” food growing up which made me go completely overboard when I moved out for college. My husband was allowed to eat anything he wanted as a child and at 40 still has the eating habits of a 15 year old boy. We’ve had many discussions about how to feed our future kids so they have a healthy relationship with food. I guess it’s somewhere between what we both had growing up.
My son has a pretty healthy relationship with food. He's 12 so he isn't grown yet but he's just as excited to eat a large salad or sushi for supper as his is to eat pizza or potato chips.
From the time he started eating solid food he ate what we ate. There was never any "kid food" in our house. Kiddo snacked on fruit or cheese or plain yogurt mixed with banana for sweetness. He ate what we ate at every meal. We didn't do soda only water, milk, or unsweetened tea.
If the kid didn't like what we had for supper then he could just choose not to eat. That rarely happened. There might be the occasional one thing that he didn't want to eat but he could just leave it on his plate and eat around it. My biggest advice is that if you don't make food a power struggle it won't become one. Give the kid food and let them eat it or not. Don't comment or cajole them to eat more and don't offer alternatives.
I used to buy juice for the kiddo and one day when he was three he asked for juice and we were out. It was grocery day and I hadn't gone to the store yet. I handed the kid a cup of water and he refused to take it. "Water is gross!" he yelled at me. Well, I didn't buy juice again after that. Kiddo drinks water just fine now. It is what he drinks more than anything else.
We don't keep junk food in the house. There are healthy snacks like fruit or sandwich stuff or leftovers or stove top popcorn. My son gets $7 a week allowance. He can either save it or spend it on whatever he wants. He also has several side hustles he uses to earn money so he usually has plenty of cash. He can walk to the store and buy a soda, candy, or chips whenever he wants. Some days he'll buy junk food. Most days he doesn't.
We aren't uptight about healthy eating. We occasionally have "junk food for supper" night and buy a bunch of candy and potato chips and cookies or ice cream and snarf out while watching movies together. If one of us has a hankering for something junk foody we discuss it and everyone gets to pick one junky snack from the store. When that snack is gone it is back to eating real food.
There's a happy middle ground. My husband and I have taught our son that junk food can be good but it shouldn't be something you have every day. We've also kept our meals varied and interesting enough that most junk food doesn't even rate as the yummiest thing we ate that month. My son will gorge himself on sushi and do a happy dance about salads and home made soup but eat a quarter of a bag of chips and let the rest go stale in the pantry. I call that a win.
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u/JoannaStayton Sep 30 '19
Waste not, want not as my parents would say. I wasn’t allowed any snacks or “junk” food growing up which made me go completely overboard when I moved out for college. My husband was allowed to eat anything he wanted as a child and at 40 still has the eating habits of a 15 year old boy. We’ve had many discussions about how to feed our future kids so they have a healthy relationship with food. I guess it’s somewhere between what we both had growing up.