How we all wish children come with a manual and we have a ready reference resource to handle them and bring them up. But this does not happen and we are left to understand them and teach them everything. As parents, we all try and do our best to ensure they are always comfortable. However, while thinking of their good we often do them wrong and most of the times we do not understand this also. One mistake many parents make is to not teach the child to understand their body signals. It is very important for the human body to be in tune with their inner feelings and many of us as adults also are not able to do this. Let us teach Children to Understand Their Body Signals Of Hunger
You Are Hungry
When a baby is born, he understands the basic body signal of being hungry and they show it by crying. This link is broken by parents at a very young age of 2 to 3 years also. No parent does this intentionally but through our actions and intentions, we teach them to not understand the feelings of hunger and satiety. We want our children to be well fed as that is how they will grow. We force them to have those two extra bites, tell them to finish what is on their plate, bribe them to finish their vegetables by offering a dessert if they do so, and so on and so forth. I am sure this sounds very familiar to most of us.
The intentions of every parent when they say any of this are absolutely understandable. We want them to understand to eat dinner or lunch when it is served, eat more greens or ensure they are full and there are no tantrums later when they are hungry. Also, we as parents never know how hungry the child is so we decide it for them. What we need to understand here as parents ,is that when we force them to eat more, we are teaching them to ignore the body’s signals of being full or hungry. And this is what leads to disordered eating in life.
Those two extra bites because they will earn their dessert or to make the parents happy is what will lead to overeating. When we are deciding their portion size, we can be telling them to eat more than they want to, and thus, making them overeat. For all those like me who struggle to lose weight, portion control is a term we have heard. Every time I go to a dietician, they tell me to control portions. We do not teach this to our kids and then they suffer from obesity and other diet-related issues later in life.
Children can be under eaters or over eaters and pressure to eat is bad in both cases. The under eaters learn to disrespect the body’s signals of being hungry and over eaters disregard the feeling of being full. As parents, we need to make children recognize and understand these cues the body gives. There might be cases where the child will not enough when you want them to, but when they will know the body is asking for food, they will eat.
Things To Do
There are some things which can be done to make the child understand the signals the body gives:
- Explain the concepts of fullness and hunger, and over eating and under eating and how the body feels
- Do not give them snacks when they ask for it. Create a schedule which shows them the time to eat. Let them decide how much to eat in that schedule. Little or more should be their call and not yours.
- Do not force them to eat but encourage them to eat.
As a mother who is struggling with weight issues, I feel the best gift I can give to my daughter is to teach her to manage how much she can eat. I know while doing this she will make mistakes and there will be days where I will be panicking and giving in her to demands. Eating is not as simple as it seems and we as adults often are on a ‘see food’ diet. Kids need to learn how much they want to eat at the time they should. Teach them to understand, respect and trust their instincts when it comes to food. Open the doors for them to a healthy eating lifestyle. I am not judging any mother because I know we all are trying to do our best, but I am sure this is one of the best gifts we can give our children. Remember, “It is easy to build strong children than to repair broken men.”
