Bringing the Family Back to the Table
Teaching Chef, author and Greenwich mom Courtnay Arpano loves healthy food — and so does her child. she offers advice on getting your kids to crave Brussels sprouts and Broccoli just as much as they do a banana split.
Five o’clock rolls around and what’s happening in your house? Screaming kids? Nothing in the fridge for dinner? Calling for takeout for the fourth time in five days? Cooking two meals — one of the mac-and-cheese variety for your children and then something else, presumably healthier and more interesting, for the adults? In the hectic environment we call home, it can
be overwhelming to pull it together at day’s end, but there is hope. Use these proven steps to help get your family’s mealtimes and nutrition back on track.
Make a Plan and Stick to It
The first step to avoiding the five o’clock rush is deciding not to wait until the end of the day to figure out what’s going on the table. Organization and commitment are key when it comes to preparing a meal your family is going to be excited to eat. Start by finding a cookbook, website or cooking class for easy, nutritious meals that suit your skill level and taste and serve your entire family. In other words, no more separate meals for kids and parents. A local favorite is The Family Kitchen by Debra Ponzek (see page 54 for some of Ponzek’s favorite recipes to make with your children). Build a solid repertoire of five or six simple meals. This will take a lot of the anxiety out of “What’s for dinner?”
On Sundays, sit down with your calendar and make a meal plan for the week. This might sound a little June Cleaverish, but it works. Entice the kids and get them excited about the week’s meals by having them pick an item or two for the week.
Once the plan is in place, make a grocery list that includes the first few days of perishables and all of your non-perishables. Do one big shop per week and fill in with quick market runs as necessary. Try to find time on Sunday afternoons or Monday mornings to do your marketing. If you can, shop when you have time afterward to do some advanced prep for the week — wash and cut up vegetables for steaming, marinate a pork tenderloin, prep a chicken to roast — anything you can do to make the five o’clock rush easier and less stressful. Soups are great, too: Use your spare time to make a big batch to have on hand for nutritious lunches and quick snacks. (Try the soups at Whole Foods, Balducci’s and Aux Délices. They’re a healthful and easy option to pick up in a pinch.) You’ll be set to cook and have some of the meal prepped and ready to go. In the beginning, this may seem foreign and stressful, but give it a month. You’ll never look back.
Eat With Your Kids
Once dinnertime rolls around, serve your meals family style: Place each dish on a separate plate in the center of the table and let your children choose what goes on their plates. The dish selections will be made up of your weekly meal plan items: roast chicken, steamed broccoli, brown rice and fresh strawberries, for instance. Don’t fret, this is not Thanksgiving dinner; even paper plates work. The idea is to neutralize control. You choose the selections (with the exception of a few kids’ choices) and the children decide from your selections what goes on their individual plates. The child who is used to having food set in front of him and being told, “Eat your dinner or no dessert” will thrive in the novelty of having some say-so in what he eats for dinner. For many kids, mealtime power struggles have led to negative associations with the table and food. The idea is that, over time, this new approach will help create more positive and balanced attitudes toward the table, which translates into better eating, because children are no longer anxious about dinnertime (of course making parents more relaxed, as well).
Encourage New Foods
In my cooking classes, students often say that their children would never eat grilled salmon or steamed spinach for dinner. But when I respond, asking if they’ve ever offered these choices to their children, the answer is inevitably “No.” This is typical in a house where there’s a distinction between what’s served and eaten at adult and kids’ meals. It’s important to remember that children are taught to eat just as they are taught to read, write and play tennis: They start with a clean slate and build from there. Find a few meals per week that are designated family meals (weekend lunches, Sunday nights and one or two weeknights). On the off days, try to have at least one parent eat with the kids, even if that means foregoing a later adult-only dinner. Sometimes I eat a little with my child and a little with my husband. Other times, I eat with my child and have a salad or glass of wine with my husband. The only tastes that a child is born with are a propensity towards sweet and a rejection of bitter. In a few short years, a child goes from a liquid diet to a broad spectrum of flavors, tastes and textures. When a child’s diet is made up of “kids’ food,” he or she doesn’t have the opportunity to accept or reject a more healthful diet. But when families eat together on a regular basis, children are exposed to a broader range of foods; they see their parents eating in a healthful (and oftentimes, more adventurous) way; and they want to eat what Mommy and Daddy are eating, especially when the pressure is off. Children need to see adults set a good example of eating healthy foods to become good eaters themselves.
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Tips for Success
+ Manage your expectations. It is going to take a solid month for you to start seeing consistent results. Hang in there. This really does work!
+ Insist that anyone who feeds your child on a regular basis (nannies, babysitters and other family members) understand and embrace the new program. You must have consistency for this to work.
+ Adopt the “one bite” rule. If treats and sweets are an issue in your house, allow your child one bite of a cookie, a piece of cake or ice cream at any time. But be sure to allow only one bite, as this won’t work if it gets out of control. Most of the time the child is more interested in whether or not you will give him the treat than the treat itself. Here again, you are neutralizing control. One bite of ice cream a couple of times a day is just not a big deal,
and the “one bite” rule eliminates a power struggle.
+ Have a fall-back meal. If your child will not eat anything you put on the table in a given meal, offer one fall-back option and make it the same every time. For instance, choose something that your child likes but is not his or her favorite food (a bowl of cereal, a grilled cheese sandwich). He or she can have that instead of dinner, but only that.
+ Gauge your children’s eating over a several-day period. Even good eaters have days when they are not hungry
or only want Cheerios. That’s okay. They’re learning to
balance their diets, and you have to trust them.