Growing Foods

There is a popular book in the mommy circles about feeding your child called "Feeding with Love and Good Sense" by Ellen Satter.  The premise is basically that it is the job of the parent to provide healthy meals with plenty of options and it is up to the child to eat whatever they want from what is offered.  There is no bribery in "Good Sense", no 'no thank bite', no 'eat your veggies so you can have dessert'.   In theory, I love this book and in practice, I have used a lot of the advice with good results in feeding my kids.  I try really hard not to get upset with the rejection of everything green or to worry too much about things like scurvy.  But sometimes I catch myself pulling an act that is definitely not Feeding-with-love-and-good-sense approved.  Example A would be the recent donut bribe chart that Ella and I created.

It all started over breakfast one morning when Ella told me that she wanted to go out for donuts.  Without even thinking much about it (or about how Ellen Satter would shake her head in disappointment at me), I told Ella that if she ate ten fruit and vegetable "growing foods" in the next five days, we would go out for donuts.

Ella was thrilled with this proposition and even more thrilled to make a chart to document each growing food that she ate.  Over the course of the next few days, she sometimes drew (or more often asked one of us to draw) each of her growing foods, and by the end of the week she had filled in the last box.  You can imagine that donuts were procured very quickly after that.

Was this a successful operation?  I have no idea.  Maybe she ate a few more vegetables than she would have without the bribe but maybe not.  Maybe now she has been ruined into believing that eating vegetables is the chore she must endure to get the reward of a massive sugar hit.  Maybe (probably) I'm overthinking the whole thing and should just shut up and eat my donut.  And, yes, I ate my growing foods, too.