During the school holidays, I had loads of fun running Mad Food Science Family Events with my local community well-being partner, Coastline Credit Union. At one of the events, I had a mum tell me that her son had said "Mum, you must be happy. You were here with all the other Karen's today."๐
She also said I nailed it because her son actually listened and that it was great for him to hear it from someone else ๐ช. She wanted to know how to go about talking to him ongoing now.
So I am going to share my 5 top tips for empowering your kids to come along on this journey with you:
1) Let go... Focus on you being a stand for your own health. Role model making good choices for yourself and having a positive relationship with all kinds of food. Consistently and persistently provide a wide range of food choices you want your kids to eat. Remember, if you push, they will pull away - this applies to most parenting situations.
2) Don't tell - have conversations instead. If they ask if they can have something you'd prefer them not to have, ask I don't know, what's in it? Then help them read the ingredients and get them thinking about those ingredients. It's way more powerful for your kids to learn to consciously look at ingredients and think about if they want to put them in their body. Encourage them to tune in and listen to how their body feels when they eat food - all kinds of food, because even wholefoods can affect people in not great ways too.
3) Don't expect perfection. A trap many parents fall into is expecting their kids to make better choices all the time. When they make a not so great choice we get upset with them, but the reality is many adults make bad choices, sometimes daily, too. (I shared about this over on Facebook and Insta this week because I have been making some not so great choices for my own body lately).
4) Practice the division of responsibility. Your job is to choose what food to provide, where to provide it and when to provide it. Your children's job is to eat the amount of food they need from what you provide. From experience of helping parents with this, I know it is a tough one to get because many parents worry their children will starve, but when you get this, it's so freeing for everyone. What many also don't realise is that sometimes our best intentions of trying to get our kids to eat more or the food we want them to eat, can add pressure and stress at the dinner table. When you practice the division of responsibility, you can bring so much peace to the dinner table. It's one of the reasons why I provide expert training on this inside Kids Health Quest.
5) Remember food is a fun experiment. Take the pressure off yourself and your kids. Allow food to be a fun experiment. Sometimes they will like it, sometimes they won't, and that's ok. We all have food preferences and they grow and change over time, just like everything else about being a human.
I hope you find these tips helpful. If you want help to stand in your power of these 5 tips and loads of fun ways to empower your kids, jump on our Kids Health Quest Waitlist here. We have an awesome village of like minded parents (I guess kids may say other Karen's๐) who are your cheer squad too.