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<blockquote data-quote="Marguerite" data-source="post: 266312" data-attributes="member: 1991"><p>Trinity's food rules are also our food rules. Not so much now, but I keep a fridge full of leftovers or pre-prepared meal portions and anyonewho is hungry can always rustle up something healthy AND tasty. But habits - I have to watch out for difficult child 3 who will almost instinctively open the noodles instead of eating a meal I've got there ready for him.</p><p></p><p>For difficult child 3, preparing his noodles seems to be part of a relaxation ritual, a way of taking a break from study. It's not even that he prefers noodles to what I already have cooked for him - he's just into a habit and he forgot.</p><p></p><p>I have to remind difficult child 3 to eat, or if he happens to be taking a break and suddenly realises he's hungry, he will graze and eat a vast amount. So I do my best to make sure what he DOES eat, is healthy.</p><p></p><p>By letting the kids graze when they're ready to, we found that they were eating at a better time for them. Sometimes if I made them wait until their father was home or I was ready, they would be either too sleepy to eat well, or too hungry and really irritable.</p><p></p><p>I really do think you need to let difficult child 1 have some choices about what she eats, and some control over it. You could try giving each of them a quota of rubbish foods but I suspect if you do that you will find what we did - someone (maybe more than one) will be sneaking rubbish snacks from each other and nobody will own up.</p><p></p><p>This is a control issue - in the past, the kids were feeling very vulnerable when it comes to food and at some level are always doing their utmost to never, ever be in that position again. So the more you try to control their access to food, the more they will be doing their bit to make sure that they will always have the over-riding control.</p><p></p><p>You can either lock up the snack foods, or simply don't have it at all. If the special foods you have for the son with braces, is OK for him to eat, then it should also be OK for difficult child 1 to eat too. She mightn't physically need the extra TLC but it seems that emotionally, she does. And sometimes when it's more freely available, the novelty is gone and she may be more likely to comply.</p><p></p><p>An alternative suggestion with the ramen noodles - she should learn to eat them the way the Japanese do, by adding extra ingredients to make them a more balanced, healthier meal. Unless she has a weight problem, I wouldbe letting her eat more of these things as long as she is eating her proper meals too.</p><p></p><p>Something we do - I keep frozen steaks, frozen chicken fillets and other frozen raw meat available. With a very sharp knife, you cut paper-thin slices from these meats while frozen, as much as you want, then put the fillet back in the freezer. Put the meat slices over the noodles in a heat-proof bowl. Put in thin slices of vegetables, such as thinly sliced carrot, Asian greens, maybe some frozen vegetables (small pieces). Sprinkle over SOME of the flavour sachet (shouldn't need all of it) then pour over boiling water, and cover. After five minutes, turn over the noodle block and cover again. In another couple of minutes it should be thoroughly cooked through. The meat - it cooks almost instantly as the boiling water is poured over.</p><p></p><p>This makes a really solid and much healthier meal. You can customise it to the extra foods you prefer, too. For example if she prefers corn niblets to peas, that's what she can use. Or if she prefers to use frozen cooked shrimp instead of beef or chicken - same story.</p><p></p><p>Another really important rule that you may be able to train her to, since it will be giving her control - a house rule we have, is:</p><p></p><p>When you open a new packet of something, you put it back on the shopping list. </p><p></p><p>Failure to do this can result in running out of certain foods. For example, I use tinned tomatoes in a number of recipes. If I fail to put them on the list every time I open a tin, the day can come when I am halfway through a recipe, I reach for the tinned tomatoes and find I haven't got any.</p><p></p><p>The same rule goes for anything. I have learned to be a bit flexible with how kids eat. As long as the quota gets eaten over the day, they can graze or they can scoff the lot in one sitting. I'd prefer to avoid the once-a-day binge, of course. But kids can get tired more on somedays than others, for different reasons. Or they get hungry. Teen hormones aggravate the hunger problem too.</p><p></p><p>I used to find that the kids would get home from school and be ravenous. INstead of letting thme have the classic milk and cookies, I'd shove a meal at them. If they're so hungry, they can eat some cold cooked sausages, or maybe some chicken satay (or nuggets), or fish fingers, with some salad or vegetable sticks. Or sometimes I'd roast a tray of vegetables and simply microwave them quickly for the kids to have with their snags & satay. It could be what I had planned to give them for dinner - that's OK, if they're still hungry later on that night, THEN they can have milk and cookies, if I've run out of sausages & satay & roast vegetables. However, quite often a late afternoon ravenous attack on the fridge would be followed by the kids getting an early night, too tired to eat a meal later on. So at least I had ensured they got their dinner, at some stage.</p><p></p><p>One last point - if you limit or restrict food to too great an extent, you can create an unhealthy obsession with food. If you then lock up or greatly restrict anything remotely unhealthy, then the food sneaking will continue but off premises. She will sneak food from friends' places or even resort to shoplifting it. You don't want tat.</p><p></p><p>For whatever reason, we went through this with easy child. She would spend every spare cent of pocket money or any other money she made, buying junk food on the way home from school. She would arrive home having gorged on chips (fries) and gravy, and not have any room for a healthy meal. She would obsess about food and especially junk food, she had to have her share. If she was away at a friend's place overnight and we had say, roast chicken for dinner, she would demand her share of the dinner we had, when she got home. Beside the point that she might have enjoyed a lovely meal at the friend's place (it might even have been roast chicken!). We had to save a portion of our meal for her as well. As a result, she would then double up on meals. This was an emotional problem, but it became a physical one. We were never able to effectively deal with this and she now has a serious weight problem.</p><p></p><p>There may be an underlying physical factor to easy child's weight problem and craving for fat-laden carbs. I've been told by a GP friend of mine that she has the same problem with her daughter, it seems to be related to a history of pre-natal 'starvation' when the placenta began to stop functioning before birth. The result was a baby born starving. In easy child's case, she was tiny and had no fat layer; but she doubled her birth weight by 6 weeks and became a pudgy baby. My friend - her daughter is the same. The mother's reading says there is a connection.</p><p></p><p>it would be interesting to ifnd out the medical history of your girls, to see if there was any similar problem before birth. However, their early history with their mother, and repeated food deprivations early on, could be enough of a factor.</p><p></p><p>Marg</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Marguerite, post: 266312, member: 1991"] Trinity's food rules are also our food rules. Not so much now, but I keep a fridge full of leftovers or pre-prepared meal portions and anyonewho is hungry can always rustle up something healthy AND tasty. But habits - I have to watch out for difficult child 3 who will almost instinctively open the noodles instead of eating a meal I've got there ready for him. For difficult child 3, preparing his noodles seems to be part of a relaxation ritual, a way of taking a break from study. It's not even that he prefers noodles to what I already have cooked for him - he's just into a habit and he forgot. I have to remind difficult child 3 to eat, or if he happens to be taking a break and suddenly realises he's hungry, he will graze and eat a vast amount. So I do my best to make sure what he DOES eat, is healthy. By letting the kids graze when they're ready to, we found that they were eating at a better time for them. Sometimes if I made them wait until their father was home or I was ready, they would be either too sleepy to eat well, or too hungry and really irritable. I really do think you need to let difficult child 1 have some choices about what she eats, and some control over it. You could try giving each of them a quota of rubbish foods but I suspect if you do that you will find what we did - someone (maybe more than one) will be sneaking rubbish snacks from each other and nobody will own up. This is a control issue - in the past, the kids were feeling very vulnerable when it comes to food and at some level are always doing their utmost to never, ever be in that position again. So the more you try to control their access to food, the more they will be doing their bit to make sure that they will always have the over-riding control. You can either lock up the snack foods, or simply don't have it at all. If the special foods you have for the son with braces, is OK for him to eat, then it should also be OK for difficult child 1 to eat too. She mightn't physically need the extra TLC but it seems that emotionally, she does. And sometimes when it's more freely available, the novelty is gone and she may be more likely to comply. An alternative suggestion with the ramen noodles - she should learn to eat them the way the Japanese do, by adding extra ingredients to make them a more balanced, healthier meal. Unless she has a weight problem, I wouldbe letting her eat more of these things as long as she is eating her proper meals too. Something we do - I keep frozen steaks, frozen chicken fillets and other frozen raw meat available. With a very sharp knife, you cut paper-thin slices from these meats while frozen, as much as you want, then put the fillet back in the freezer. Put the meat slices over the noodles in a heat-proof bowl. Put in thin slices of vegetables, such as thinly sliced carrot, Asian greens, maybe some frozen vegetables (small pieces). Sprinkle over SOME of the flavour sachet (shouldn't need all of it) then pour over boiling water, and cover. After five minutes, turn over the noodle block and cover again. In another couple of minutes it should be thoroughly cooked through. The meat - it cooks almost instantly as the boiling water is poured over. This makes a really solid and much healthier meal. You can customise it to the extra foods you prefer, too. For example if she prefers corn niblets to peas, that's what she can use. Or if she prefers to use frozen cooked shrimp instead of beef or chicken - same story. Another really important rule that you may be able to train her to, since it will be giving her control - a house rule we have, is: When you open a new packet of something, you put it back on the shopping list. Failure to do this can result in running out of certain foods. For example, I use tinned tomatoes in a number of recipes. If I fail to put them on the list every time I open a tin, the day can come when I am halfway through a recipe, I reach for the tinned tomatoes and find I haven't got any. The same rule goes for anything. I have learned to be a bit flexible with how kids eat. As long as the quota gets eaten over the day, they can graze or they can scoff the lot in one sitting. I'd prefer to avoid the once-a-day binge, of course. But kids can get tired more on somedays than others, for different reasons. Or they get hungry. Teen hormones aggravate the hunger problem too. I used to find that the kids would get home from school and be ravenous. INstead of letting thme have the classic milk and cookies, I'd shove a meal at them. If they're so hungry, they can eat some cold cooked sausages, or maybe some chicken satay (or nuggets), or fish fingers, with some salad or vegetable sticks. Or sometimes I'd roast a tray of vegetables and simply microwave them quickly for the kids to have with their snags & satay. It could be what I had planned to give them for dinner - that's OK, if they're still hungry later on that night, THEN they can have milk and cookies, if I've run out of sausages & satay & roast vegetables. However, quite often a late afternoon ravenous attack on the fridge would be followed by the kids getting an early night, too tired to eat a meal later on. So at least I had ensured they got their dinner, at some stage. One last point - if you limit or restrict food to too great an extent, you can create an unhealthy obsession with food. If you then lock up or greatly restrict anything remotely unhealthy, then the food sneaking will continue but off premises. She will sneak food from friends' places or even resort to shoplifting it. You don't want tat. For whatever reason, we went through this with easy child. She would spend every spare cent of pocket money or any other money she made, buying junk food on the way home from school. She would arrive home having gorged on chips (fries) and gravy, and not have any room for a healthy meal. She would obsess about food and especially junk food, she had to have her share. If she was away at a friend's place overnight and we had say, roast chicken for dinner, she would demand her share of the dinner we had, when she got home. Beside the point that she might have enjoyed a lovely meal at the friend's place (it might even have been roast chicken!). We had to save a portion of our meal for her as well. As a result, she would then double up on meals. This was an emotional problem, but it became a physical one. We were never able to effectively deal with this and she now has a serious weight problem. There may be an underlying physical factor to easy child's weight problem and craving for fat-laden carbs. I've been told by a GP friend of mine that she has the same problem with her daughter, it seems to be related to a history of pre-natal 'starvation' when the placenta began to stop functioning before birth. The result was a baby born starving. In easy child's case, she was tiny and had no fat layer; but she doubled her birth weight by 6 weeks and became a pudgy baby. My friend - her daughter is the same. The mother's reading says there is a connection. it would be interesting to ifnd out the medical history of your girls, to see if there was any similar problem before birth. However, their early history with their mother, and repeated food deprivations early on, could be enough of a factor. Marg [/QUOTE]
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