What to do for a child with a weight problem

I was talking this weekend to a dad who was concerned about his little 3 year old girl being too big for her age, And by big, we mean fat. Granted she's got some extra on her, as do many kids these days, but she's pretty and tall for her age too and she doesn't look like she's in danger yet.

Anyway, he was talking about taking away her plate and limiting how much she eats, and my response was, don't watch how much she eats, watch what she eats. She will not develop a complex if you just make sure the food she eats all the time is good healthy food.

I was all impressed with myself and my wisdom, or ability to coin a phrase anyway, so I'm passing it along.

The only thing I watch to see how much my children eat is sugar, and crackers near to a meal time. I give them small portions of those and let them have all the fruit, vegetables and whole grain foods they want, oh and beans. My kids are so skinny that the pants in their height fall off their little waists. My 3 year old still fits into a pair of jeans I bought her when she was a baby, they look like capris now. Only I know that they have a tag that reads 6 months on the inside. So, it works for my bottomless pit children anyway.

Edible Construction

We do this for Sukkot, the holiday of booth building. The kids get to build their own out of graham crackers and icing and candy. The green licorice is a nice substitute for leaves. You could adapt this for Christmas or whatever else you want.

My children can't believe I'm letting them handle all this sugar, but it's a holiday, and I am not a grinch.
The object of course is to figure out how to pile as much candy as you possibly can onto you booth, because you will get to eat it all. After dinner.


You will need,

Graham crackers

Candy (licorice tape, colored balls, whatever you want really)

Icing.

I don't usually bother with making royal icing with the egg whites. It is the strongest by far but this recipe works just fine, tastes better, and holds things together well enough to look at for a while before eating.

Ingredients

Icing sugar, lots

1/4 lb butter

water less than 1/2 a cup

paper plates

Cream together butter and sugar, add enough sugar so that the mixture is very dry. Slowly add a little bit of water until it reaches the consistency of a thick paste. If it's too thin, add more icing sugar. (This is very scientific.)

Then you can put it in ziplock bags and cut a little piece of the corner off to make and icing bag. Kids can squeeze their own icing out and use it to cement together the graham crackers into little boxes. For younger kids you can give them a small scoop of icing on their plate and they can dip the candies into it before gluing them to the sides top floor, whatever.

This is a lot of fun, you will want to jump in and make one yourself, and of course if you tell them that they can eat it after dinner for several days, they are less likely to gorge themselves all in one night. Mine don't ask for candy again for a looong time. They usually feel ill, which is fine with me, it may help them learn moderation.

Kellogg's commits to raising nutrition of kids food

I read this article with great interest the other day. Kellogg's the world's leading cereal producer has caved to public pressure and will be upgrading the nutrition standards of the cereals that it advertises to children under the age of 12. It will be revising the caloric content and salt and sugar content of it's cereals. While I applaud this development and agree that it's a good thing for lobbyists to push for a healthier food standard, I can't help wondering about a lot of issues the article raised for me.

The first thought of course was that they could meet those guidelines just by making the portion sizes smaller, which doesn't change anything but the label.

The other thing that it had me wondering however was why is it necessary to control advertising to children? Why is it the responsibility of the food producers to make kids food healthier instead of the responsibility of parents to make informed choices as consumers? Aren't parents the ones who purchase the breakfast cereal, and aren't they able to say no and explain to their children why they are making that choice?

Perhaps I don't understand because I don't let my kids watch commercial television most of the time. If they want Dora, I'll rent the DVD. They don't watch TV unless I'm there with them. Is Shrek really more of an influence for some children than their parents are? I doubt it but I want to hear your opinion about all of this.

The Sugar Sensitive Child

On Saturday the Boy had an incident. On Thursday morning we also had an incident, there was a brief one on Monday as well. Monday and Thursday’s incidents were occasioned by the fact the Boy hadn’t yet gotten himself breakfast even though it was 9am already and he rises between 7 and 7:30am. On Saturday it was because his great grandparents arrived with lunch and nasty packaged cookies and donuts. I let him have one of each after lunch because it was still Shabbat and so treats are technically allowed. Allow me to describe the scene that followed.

Half an hour after eating Boy comes in crying, not just regular crying, deep chest shaking sobs are erupting out of him, hiccups and belches and incoherent sentences accompany this crying. We find out what’s going on that’s upsetting him. (The bigger kids want him to stop jumping on the trampoline for a minute so that they can mark lines with duct tape for a game they have planned.) We send him back out with a solution to try. He returns a minute later sobbing as though the entire weight of the world is upon his tiny little shoulders. He proceeds to sob and hiccup and wail for a good half an hour. People, this is not fake crying, which he often likes to do, this is not his regular response to not getting his way or being thwarted, this is apocalyptic crying that just doesn’t stop. He will go on like this for hours.

We are experienced at dealing with this sort of thing now, so we let him cry, though still expecting him to comply with our directions, and without lecture or judgment we cut up some cheese and offer it to him. (Cheese has protein and fat and no sugar so it’s a good thing to throw at a brain that’s in severe chemical flux because of blood sugar, it helps to release one of the relaxing chemicals in the brain seretonin I think but don’t quote me, which is why a heavy meal of starch and cheese and meat will put you to sleep. Yogurt will be better, but it’s harder to coax a 5 year old to eat yogurt when he’s bawling his eyes out and you don’t want it spilled.)

Eventually he manages to gain control over himself to start munching on the cheese hiccupping and choking back sobs as he chews. Ten minutes or so go by. He is now quiet though still tormented looking. After another 15 minutes of sitting on the couch we ask him how he’s doing. He gives us a sunny smile and tells us he feels fine and with a quick, “Thanks mom” and a hug he runs off to play. The day is without further incidents as we make sure that dinner is early.

This ladies and gentlemen is why I keep my child’s sugar intake as low as I can. I have at least one sugar sensitive child and he has a fast metabolism so the results are easy to observe. My mother in law thinks I’m a little obsessive about it, though she respects my wishes in it. That is until Saturday, the meltdown happened at her house and she got to watch it and it’s resolution, and I think she gets it now.

I am sharing this because it may help some other parents out there who have children prone to inexplicable meltdowns and long bouts of sadness. In my child these go on indefinitely, unless I can get him to eat something that will help.

So if you have a child who is prone to this type of behaviour, who seems like Jekyll and Hyde, it may help to track their eating for a while, and notice the timing of such episodes as they are related to diet. Look for episodes that follow on the heels of recent sugar intakes, especially without meals or with meals that are low in protein and fiber, and long stretches of time without food. I’ve met a lot of children who have obvious, to me but I know where to look, sugar sensitivities. Their parents are often baffled, perplexed, confused and helpless in the face of these meltdowns. It won’t kill your child to give them less sugar and experiment with diet to see if that is one of the factors, in fact it’s good for them even if that isn’t the ultimate solution.

I hope this helps.