My little picky eater

Try it and you may, I say!
This one’s obvious, but to start simple: Read “Green Eggs and Ham” to your children, and then establish a rule that, short of food allergies or other special diets, each child must try the food they are served. And since prejudiced first bites rarely render an accurate flavor, the child should chew and swallow a small bite for each year of their age. If you’re lucky, by the time they’re to bite 4 or 5, they’ll find they like the food after all.

Mary on her second bite. She ended up liking this one.

Eat In More Often
The more you go out to eat, the more your kids will think they should be able to eat whatever they want, whenever they want it. I realize some schedules make eating-in really difficult. But eating in does have its benefits, and this is one of many.

Avert Texture Aversions
My son, like his father, complains more about texture than anything. Cooked and canned fruits, coconut’s flakiness, chunky spaghetti sauce or salsa, and cooked greens were all taboo. Oddly they seem OK with some textures; just not these. My solution? If they want babyfood, so be it. For example, blend up your veggies in a soup before adding the chunks of veggies they WILL eat. A submersion blender works perfectly for this. Or throw the spinach in the blender with cream of chicken soup and Parmesan for a great green pasta sauce that’s full of nutrients too. And if you put it on Rotini, it sortof looks like caterpillars. Which is a horrible thing for some people, but think from a kids perspective and it’s fun! Speaking of which:

Mary was so enamored with the carrot flower, she ate it.

What they don’t know won’t hurt them
The blender is of course an excellent tool for spiking the food with nutrition kids might avoid otherwise. You’d be surprised the veggies you can sneak into a dish (soup especially) if it’s more or less invisible. Or spike your muffins with canned pumpkin for vitamin A.

Ethan enjoying the fruits of his labors

Make Fun of the Menu
Letting the older children help with the planning can be empowering and educational if you let them plan a meal that fits within the dietary and budget boundaries you set. Kids get a sense of control from being picky. I mean, think about all the things they actually have some control over — and it’s really not much. So if you let them help plan the menu and cook the meals, you redirect that need for control, and they get that little bit of autonomy they crave. And they’ll have fun, too, as they get to use their creativity and grow their technical skills as well.

Give them a little guidance as needed, but let them do as much as possible with this process on their own. They’ll really enjoy the activity and be more likely to support each other’s meal choices. One rule with this one: they DO have to actually eat whatever they plan. So do you, so try not to pass judgment. The dinner might not be your favorite, but hey, maybe you’ll like it too after so many bites

Some things are just too gross.

If you’ve got fickle kid you may feel tempted to laminate the list. Instead, simply make a rule as to how often list items can change, and how many days before any changes take effect so they can’t refuse every meal you cook.

No Substitutions
If you give a child a peanut butter sandwich or cook them their own separate meal every time they complain, you’re teaching them that they can easily get whatever they want by whining, and also that your home is a restaurant. Just don’t do it. The child will survive. You don’t have to make a big emotional deal out of enforcing this rule either. You could say, for example, “Oh, well this is what we’re having for dinner. Let’s just wrap it up and put it in the fridge in case you get hungry.”

Eating & Emotions
Whatever happens at the dinner table, try not to make a big bad emotional blowout over food. Family meals can be great sources of bonding, but the effect can be quite the opposite when you lose control over your own thoughts, feelings, and words. Guilting your kids into eating is a bad idea. You also don’t want to give into whining or giving them the food they want as some sort of emotional reward. Need I explain why?

When you run into problems with picky eating, you’ll get best results with being firm AND compassionate. If they come in crying at 8pm, still refusing to eat their leftovers but complaining of a hungry stomach, sympathize with them. Maybe tell them about a time you were hungry or had to eat something you didn’t like – not a story of superiority, mind you, but a story of bonding. Assure them that they’ll be able to get through this one way or another, and that if nothing else, a few bites of their dinner might tide them over till morning.

But my Kid will Starve!
If you suspect your child isn’t eating due to a physical or emotional problem, don’t force feed them: take them to a doctor. We are all wired to survive. People will eat all sorts of things if they’re truly starving, and if you’re using the ideas I’ve listed here, your kid will still have all kinds of opportunities to eat the things they like. Yes they may occasionally go hungry for a meal, and that’s no fun for anyone, but they will make it, and they’ll be likely to make a more responsible choice at the next meal.

And that’s it for my list… What’s worked for you? Do these ideas help? Feel free to dish up some feedback — I eat it up

Today I had a few very bad ideas. I’ll try not to go into much detail on why they were bad this time… I’ll draw the dots and let you connect them as you’d like. But hopefully should you ever find yourself in such a situation, you’ll make better choices than I did.

I’d intended to enjoy the summery weather we had today by walking to church, but as usual, we were running late. Five minutes after we were supposed to be there, Mary was still standing shoeless in front of the bathroom mirror, slobbering into the sink and declaring, “See? I’m too sick to go!” I examined the sink and ascertained it was just spit; clearly she just wanted to stay home with her dad and goof around.

If it wasn’t a mistake to figure she was bluffing, the least I could have done is tried to sit near a waste basket after we rushed in 15 minutes late.

My second mistake of the day and what I learned from it: If your child suddenly begins to show signs that she really IS too sick for church, particularly in a carpeted chapel, do not (May I repeat? do not!) try to carry her on a mad dash through the aisle and down the hall to the bathroom. Particularly if the only way you thought to pick her up was around her middle.

Hindsight being 20/20, I would advise you grab that handy garbage can you thought to sit by earlier, or at the very least, don’t move till she’s stable.

As I dashed into the hallway, I realized I was not being smart. I put Mary down, instructed her to Wait Here, and ran to get paper towels to clean up the mess. Almost a good idea, but not quite. A neighbor who WAS being smart quickly found a garbage can and put it in front of my child. Brilliant.

By the time I’d hurried back from the bathroom with the wad of paper towels I’d dispensed, other smarter people had already gone to the cleaning closet for towels that weren’t stuck in a dispenser, not to mention spray bottles of disinfectant. They were moments away from bagging up the entire mess and taking it to the dumpster. We were even offered a ride home.

In tonight’s prayers I have alot to be thankful for: that Mary’s much better, for one. But also for terrific neighbors and friends who took care of my other child for the rest of the meeting, and more who expressed their sympathy and well wishes. I’m particularly thankful for those who cleaned up what surely must have felt like an extra mile of berber.

And I’ll ask one thing: that none of them get sick.

Supplies for a Math Box ‘O Fun
- A box — I used one from a soundcard
- Foam craft sheets (I bought a pack of 48 and I have more than half left over)
- Permanent Markers
- Scissors
- A ruler for measuring and drawing grids
- Empty plastic Easter eggs (for a favorite game the kids made up)
- Cheerios, Fruit Loops, M&Ms, or any other small countable object that’s age appropriate for your kid.
- IF your kids are past the mouth-exploration stage and are somewhat patient, perler beads (the plastic ones you put on a peg board and fuse with an iron) make a great learning tool.
- Baggies (again if they’re age appropriate) or small containers to hold the games
- I’ve also bought math flash cards as the kids get a kick out of these. They get lost / ruined fast though
- Giant Dice (You can make your own with paper polyhedra here)

I had the kids help me make these games whenever I could, and took several days in between each game with several short implementations before ‘letting them’ help me come up with the next activity. They really got excited about it that way.

- Talk about more, less, and equal-to. Put down a few piles of something small and good to eat. Crackers, skittles, halved organic grapes if it suits you. Which pile does the kid want and why? Which has more, which has less? Can they make the groups equal? At first let them ‘just do it’ then ask them how they knew…. My kids’ favorite response, “Cause I took away your money!” made little sense to me, but they got big laughs out of it. They couldn’t really say why what they did made the piles equal, but they thought about it anyway and eventually with a little nudge were able to explain it.

- Cut up a few of the foam sheets to use as ‘cards’ — I wrote numerals on some, operators on others, and evaluators on others still. Keep them in one container and use them with whatever game they happen to be playing. In the more or less game, you can help them count the items in each group and assign a number to them. If you want to, you can even say, “Ah, well if you have five skittles and I have seven, let’s take away one of mine (put down 7-1) and give it to you (5+1) .. now we both have six! (=6)” If they don’t get it yet that’s okay. They’ll still get a kick out of the game and will pick up that idea sooner than you think.

Number cards made of foam so they don

- A whole foam sheet with a grid drawn on it serves well to list the numbers 1-100. They start to notice how the numbers line up, and it makes a great tool for counting items. You can make one of these grids for each of you if you’d like for your more or less game.

- Sequences: Mary loved discovering that 1+1=2, 1+2=3, 1+3=4, etc. As you can see here, I also let her be extremely creative in her dress and hair styles.

An eclectically dressed four-year-old playing with addition cards and m&ms -- not sure how my camera was so whacked out on this one

- Eventually help them discover that they can group the objects into 10s for easier counting. Once I felt like they had that idea down, I sat down with them and used another whole sheet of foam labeled it with columns for ones, tens, hundreds, and thousands. We only used the ones and tens for the most part but it helped get the idea down.

- We also made toys out of perler beads by fusing them into sticks of tens, squares of hundreds, and then taking ten hundreds to show a cube of a thousand. The kids had a blast making these into patterns for each 100 set too.

perler bead blocks

- Yet another whole foam sheet with a grid makes a nice learning tool for times tables. Put six objects across for example, and three down, and let them discover how the numbers magically add up to 18 (which happens to be the very number they put the last item on! – trust me they’ll find this amazing!)

- Estimating: My kids LOVE guessing games. One game Mary made up involved putting a few of the counting objects in an empty plastic Easter egg and having me or Ethan guess how many objects were inside it by shaking it, etc. Whoever got closest, won the loot. Or for guessing right on, she’d put out three numbers (using the aforementioned cards) and we’d have to guess which number was correct.

- Another fun guessing game: Have them pick numbers and roll dice to see whose number comes up. So they grew up in Vegas, what can I say.

- Dividing: Give them a group of items (number it with the cards) and a group of people (or stuffed animals) to share them between. Let them figure out how to divide the items up fairly.

- Cookie fractions: Trace circles on your tan foam sheets and make them look like cookies. You can half some of these (write 1/2 and .5 and 1 divided by 2 on the backs). Cut others into thirds, fourths, fifths (make a Y shape and then divide the two larger sides into two to get pretty close fifths), etc. Play game about dividing them up fairly.

- The Dollar Challenge: Visit a penny candy store (or a vendor of penny novelties if you don’t want to rot their teeth – but I’m a bad mom that way) and let them spend up to one dollar. If they go under, their loss. They can’t go over because they won’t have enough to pay for it. (I give them the six cents extra for taxes since I’m not expecting them to calculate that just yet)

Anyway, the point of all these is to keep it fun and let them be CREATIVE. It’s a bit like investigations math, but with a little one-on-one encouragement and gentle direction. And they eat it up.

Also be sure to check out the National Library of
Virtual Math Manipulatives and Cyber Chase Online for some super games they can play on their own.

I’ve seen how domineering and cruel some men can be, even in America, even in the nicest towns, justifying their actions and attitude by their gender alone. I can’t imagine what it’d be like to be a woman in a country that honors the female gender less. I’ve personally experienced gender-bias and harassment in the work place, and nearly everywhere else at one time or another. Sadly, I have seen women allow themselves to be treated this way. I have fought against it, I appreciate what has been done to fight it, and I encourage every individual and society as a whole to continue and even strengthen their efforts against this long-standing plague.

I have also noticed the popular thought that “All Men Are Idiots” where men are constantly equated with Homer Simpson — Homer himself has become less a jerk and more an idiot over the past several years to accommodate this trend. You’d be less than observant if you hadn’t noticed that media that portrays males as dolts is generally accepted, where anything that so much as hints at females having different qualities (even former Maya and Miguel theme-song) causes an outrage. I’ve been in situations where a less-qualified woman was given preference over a more-qualified man, just to “make things fair”. And has anyone met a Stay-At-Home-Dad who hasn’t been completely debased by his peers and society as a whole?

Until the vocal leaders of the feminist movement care more about fairness, freedom, quality of life, and a better world than they do about power and revenge, they will continue to spin their tires, burning rubber, causing far too much stink, and weakening their stand in the process. And as much as I abhor the term, this woman must be the reason Feminists have come to be called Feminazis. Check out this article, a commentary by Albert Mohler. I haven’t read the rest of his site. Glancing over it, I can’t say I’d agree with him on very many things; just the fact that he does talk radio jumps out and bites me, as life has conditioned me to associate talk radio with contention and manipulative advertisement. No offense to my friends and family who love it; besides that’s an argument for another day. An article on ABC News confirms a few of her quotes.

“I am saying an educated, competent adult’s place is in the office.” ~Linda Hirshman

Now if she were to read my resume I’m sure she’d say I don’t qualify as ‘educated’ but I should hope she’d admit I am competent, even though I totally disagree with her. I think she would.

If an educated, competent adult’s place is in the office, who is left to raise our children? By the way, if you visited my site and saw this article half-written, here’s why: I’d stepped away from my computer for a moment. My child, and I don’t know which one, but the oldest is four, tried to take over the computer while I was away, but was considerate AND competent enough to save my work first. Granted, he or she did not save it to the drafts folder like I would have, but the article was nonetheless saved. And so for a short time you saw a half-written article posted on my front page before I got this back to drafts.

If my children were being raised by an uneducated, incompetent adult, how would they know to do such a thing? My children are absolutely BRILLIANT. They are as creative as they are analytical. Look at the rising generation and ask yourself how different the world might be if we left child rearing to the most competent and caring individuals, instead of leaving them in day cares with the people Linda wouldn’t consider competent, educated, or office worthy.

“One of the things I’ve done working on my book is to read a lot of the diaries online. And their description of their lives does not sound particularly interesting or fulfilling for a complicated person, for a complicated educated person. It’s physical, but it’s repetitious.” ~Linda Hirshman

Changing diapers is repetitious, yes. In fact, I’m sure any parent would agree, if we could afford to hire someone just to take care of the ‘complicated’ diapers we would. Fortunately there’s so much more to parenting than diapering.

• Before you ever start trying to teach your child to read, read to them out loud a lot, whether it’s children’s books or whatever book you happen to be reading. Just like you’d talk to your child before trying to teach them how to talk.
• Just as you enunciate clearly and loudly to teach your child a new word, words they read should be clearly written with BIG letters and should also be spoken clearly.
• Start with words that will be relevant to your child (Momma, Daddy, other family names, animals, body parts, etc), reviewing old words and learning a few new words each day.
• Don’t start with overly complicated words, but you don’t necessarily have to avoid complicated words for a long time either.
• Make a BIG DEAL about their accomplishments
• ‘Games’ are great as long as the child enjoys them, but don’t bore them with ‘tests’ or by trying to show them off to friends. Keep it fun for them. In fact, try to stop playing the game BEFORE they’re ready to quit, and they’ll look forward to playing again.
• Don’t ‘dumb-down’ words for your child, but don’t be so critical of mistakes that the experience is unpleasant for them. For example, you wouldn’t teach your baby to say ‘wah-wah’ instead of water, nor would you yell at them for saying ‘wah-wah.’ Just point them in the right direction, gently.
• Your child does not have to have the alphabet ‘down’ before starting reading, any more than you’d expect them to be able to recite it before their first word.

For more information, I _highly_ recommend reading How To Teach Your Baby To Read (The Gentle Revolution)
by Glenn Doman and The Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential. My parents used this method 30 years ago. It was effective then and still is effective today
Read more about the Gentle Revolution here.

Another AWESOME resource is starfall.com. My kids absolutely adore that website, and they’re now both super computer savvy to boot.

If you’re LDS, you know that reading the Book of Mormon daily brings huge blessings to you and your family, but did you know your children can be blessed intellectually as well? Buy a large-print book from the distribution center (hard covers hold up much better) and simply have your child sit in your lap and point with them to each word as you read it. I don’t force my kids (4 and 3) to read with me the entire time or even sit still the entire time. I read with a normal speed and inflection and stop to answer whatever questions they have. I’ve found as long as the experience is pleasant for them, they want to do it often.

Once they’re interested in reading a few words, such as “And it came to pass”, you might start teaching them a the most common words. Here are some Book of Mormon reading cards with the 160 most frequently used words (each of them being used well over 150 times and some of them thousands of times). Just print these pages on card stock, cut the stack down the center, then cut each stack into 2.2″ tall strips. Have fun!

Oh and I almost forgot. My sister-in-law MaryBeth dutifully pointed out how instrumental the Game Cube has been in our childrens’ early reading adventures. Aren would get frustrated waiting for someone to come tell him what the screens said, so when they did come and tell him, he’d pay close attention, and often make them repeat it once more. He is an awesome reader now. Ethan’s been less motivated that way lately. He’s like his dad & just skips all the dialogue to get on with the game. Sometimes I make his game play contingent on stopping to read the screens, but then we’re faced with a negative incentive (read it or I take the game away) which is unfortunately less effective. But as for the short screens you can’t really skip past, even Mary (who plays less) at age 2 could tell you what each one said, even when written on plain paper. Hooray for Nintendo!