I'm sure you only clicked through so that you can reply and assure me that I'm not a terrible parent. Thanks.
Well I don't really think I'm a bad parent (again thanks for reading and still feel free to send your assurances). I do think I employ at least one bad parenting technique however.
Let me explain.
The other day I was talking with my client Larry (Larry now I'll know if you really read all of these). We were talking about habits and techniques he can employ to help him lose some weight. Some of the habits that we talked about were things like: eating slower, recognizing when you're 80% full, and putting your fork down between bites amongst other things.
Ok now back to my parenting skills. As we were talking about this, I realized these are all the same things I/we admonish Graham for when he's eating.
While I wouldn't describe Graham as an adventurous eater, he eats most of the stuff a normal almost-five-year old eats. So he's definitely not picky either. The problem (which shouldn't be a problem) is left to his own devices his meals would take over an hour.
He likes to talk and tell stories and do all sorts of other stuff that we would consider distractions. Then after a while he'll say he's full after only eating half his dinner.
Now if a client told me this is how their dinner went, I would salute them. When Graham does this we try to get him to eat more and usually everyone involved ends up frustrated.
If you haven't caught on this is the bad parenting technique I'm referring to: the forcing him to eat in a "timely" manner and more than he seemingly wants to.
I'm going to assume we (Alli & I) do this because it was how we were raised. I have distinct memories of being told "you can't leave the table until your plate is clean".
So it seems that we (Alli & I and lots of other parents) teach kids bad habits (eat quickly, eat past satisfaction). Then people like me (fitness professionals) wonder why their clients can't seem to practice the good habits (eating slow, recognizing when you're full).
It's time for me to rethink how we handle mealtime in the Brown household.
Graham showing off a giant blueberry.
