Looking for ways to get children to eat vegetables? You’ve come to the right place…


ways to get children to eat vegetables

“I’m not eating that,” says Belle, practically spitting as she speaks. She is pointing with her fork at some broccoli, as though we have heaped actual excrement onto her plate alongside the fish fingers.

“It’s fine!” I say, with forced good humour. “Just eat it with something else and you won’t even taste it.”

She looks at me as though I’m possibly the stupidest creature that’s ever been allowed to roam the earth, let alone be in charge of meal planning. “It’s disgusting,” she says, with a look of genuine repulsion.

This is how I have spent almost every meal time for at least the last 12 years – coming up with new ways to get children to eat vegetables has become the bane of my life and to be quite honest I am just about done. I am teetering on the brink of not giving a toss. “It’s only your health and well being,” I want to say, “have Poptarts for every meal for all I care.” View Post

Follow:

I was in a toilet this morning and overheard a mum with her son as she stood at the sink.

“Please stand nicely behind me,” she said, “I don’t want you to fall and crack your head open, that would really ruin the holiday.”

Hmm. I’m all for wanting kids to behave themselves and not charge around in public toilets, splashing water about and generally being a nuisance, but this seemed a little extreme.

When we were children we were forever being reminded that the merest slip on a climbing frame would leave us with broken necks, that a misjudged forward roll would result in a broken neck, that we should eat our biscuits carefully for fear of choking and breaking our necks…

OK, so perhaps not that last one, but you get the point.

There is a lot of evidence though that shows that kids are very susceptible to suggestion, so you really do need to be careful about how you phrase things. Imagine your child crossing a cream carpet with a glass full of Ribena – it’s always a cream carpet when there is Ribena around. Instinct, obviously, is to clutch at your chest and scream ‘Noooo! Don’t spill it! Don’t spill it!’

All this does though, apart from startle the poor child and immediately make them slosh the dreaded blackcurrant juice across the shag pile, is to place the image in their mind of them spilling said juice.  You may as well say ‘Darling, please do feel free to get some actual blackcurrants and trample them into the carpet won’t you?’

Ribena

A slight digression here, but I searched Flickr for ‘Ribena’ and found this. Seriously, what on earth?? Is this child colouring their hair with Ribena? I shudder to think of the potential pillow stainage here. Also – what’s with the scissors at her neck? This is just asking for trouble.

What you actually need to do is reframe the warning in a positive way – ‘hold that glass nicely with two hands!’ or ‘walk carefully with your drink!’ It’s a subtle difference, but apparently an important one.

I’m not very good at this.

It comes much more naturally to me to screech something along the lines of ‘spill that Ribena and I’ll break your neck!’

Not quite my mother’s warning, but just as heartfelt.

How positive is your parenting?

Follow:

As a parent, do you ever wonder what happened to your own sense of identity? Do you think sometimes about who you might be if you didn’t have children? I don’t mean imagining yourself childless on some yacht somewhere, perfect, unstretched skin bronzing slowly, I’m thinking about more basic stuff – likes and dislikes.

I do quite often think about the things I do and the places I go and wonder:

  1. Am I doing this because I actually want to?
  2. Am I doing it because I know that the person I’m with wants to do it and I want to make them happy (or I’m scared of Belle kicking off)?
  3. Am I doing this because I’ve spent my entire adult life doing things that I think the children will want to do and have actually come to love having lunch in McDonalds and watching Dance Moms?

I just don’t know.

Big Mac

It’s not just children either; coming out of a long term relationship throws things up in the air a bit too, and you are faced with that same question of who you actually are and how much of your life has been shaped over the years by yourself and how much by the other person.

I do worry sometimes about Belle leaving home. She’s only 12 I know but it will come round quickly and she spends more and more time with other people, not needing me for entertainment. When I’m left by myself, what will I do? Where will my structure come from? How will I actually choose to spend my days? I have never in my entire life had even so much as a whole week with nobody to think about but myself and I’m not sure how I would fill it.

Would I discover that secretly I loved eating raw foods, jogging and ‘interesting’ documentaries about history or would I just stay in bed until ten every day, order a pizza and stick on Legally Blond?

How have yours interests changed since having children? How do you maintain a sense of self?

Follow:

Most of the time when I make the effort to read the news it just makes me sad. Bad stuff is happening all over the place isn’t it? It’s really bloody depressing.

Sometimes though Boyfriend will read me out a story that just makes me laugh. The story in the news today about the teacher in Williton sellotaping up the mouths of their pupils because they were being noisy is one of those things that you can’t help but think could have happened to you, if only you had made one different decision somewhere in your life and become a teacher.

I know it’s wrong, of course teachers shouldn’t be allowed to go nuts with the tape willy nilly, but it’s not like she stabbed them all with safety scissors or anything is it?

Sshh tape on mouth

However much we love them, children are frustrating, especially in large groups. I remember doing work experience when I was about 15 with a reception class. I was helping a group with some cutting and sticking and they were terrible at it. Sure they were only four, but come on, make an effort to cut in a straight line can’t you? This simple task drove me absolutely nuts and I can easily see how if I had to do it all day I would end up gluing their adorable, chubby fingers to the desks.

Let’s face it, haven’t we all at one point wished we could sellotape up our children’s mouths, just for a little bit?

I know I have.

Follow:

Before Christmas I had dinner with a group of bloggers and some of the team from Voucher Codes. We were talking about children and family finances as Voucher Codes were doing some research to put together a white paper. It was an interesting discussion, but what I thought would be more interesting than just me telling you about it would be to get Bee to read the report and give her opinion from a grown up child perspective. I told her she could be as honest as she liked, I wouldn’t stop her pocket money.

Over to Bee…

Recently Voucher Codes put together a white paper on the relationship between children and family finances. The paper combines data, expert opinion and the informed judgements of parents to form a view of how children feel about family finances. After a survey of 1000 parents and 1000 5-16 year olds, some statistics came to light on the subject.

“So what if kids worry about money? It’s nothing to do with them.”  View Post

Follow:

There are lots of things that I find frustrating about being a parent; the long hours, terrible pay, complete lack of positive feedback or gratitude to name a few. There is one thing though that drives me absolutely mad. The kind of mad that I can actually feel in my shoulders and neck – a fury that fizzles in the back of my head and makes me want to hit something or someone.

(I don’t obviously, I just let the resentment simmer internally.)

The thing that makes me mad is my children’s complete inability to find anything, even when presented with very clear instructions.

“Where are the matches?” Belle asks me this morning. View Post

Follow:

There is a lot of fuss made nowadays about internet safety and appropriate content online, but exactly how appropriate is it for us all to hear about the latest goings on in Syria, or the get updates on a rape trial, when we’re trying to enjoy a bowl of rice crispies or get on with a spot of homework?

According to a recent survey, (conducted by NetVoucherCodes.co.uk), over two thirds of parents actively prevent their children from watching the news. Violent images of conflicts or acts of terrorism were the most common reason parents gave for switching off the TV, closely followed by coverage of topics such as serious crime. A majority of mums and dads also admitted that their fear of being asked difficult questions by their children was a factor in not letting them watch the news. Around half of the parents surveyed felt that 11-12 was about the right age for introducing children to the news. View Post

Follow:

When I was a child, stick insects were the thing to have. I can remember someone bringing their stick insects in to school once and everyone in our class thinking they were just about the coolest thing they had ever seen. They didn’t seem to do anything, they just sat there, looking sort of sticky.

As a parent, I can see the appeal in a stick insect as a pet. They seem pretty low maintenance, and even if anything happened to it you could probably persuade a young child otherwise – ‘there it is,’ you could say, pointing at a twig, ‘it’s fine!’

That’s my kind of pet. View Post

Follow:

I’ve been having a bit of a wobble recently about Belle leaving primary school, it being the end of an era, me practically being old enough for Saga car insurance etc etc, but last night I had one of those moments that reminded me why saying goodbye to primary school isn’t perhaps such a bad thing.

At 10.30pm last night I was presented with a selection of notes. One required me to send in £12.34 (?) for a school trip on the penultimate day of term (!). One was an invitation to a party tonight that required me to bring drinks and provide a selection of ‘whacky wigs and hilarious hats’. View Post

Follow:

When Belle was about two years old she planted an apple pip. I wasn’t entirely sure it would grow but I knew that planting seeds with your children was one of those wholesome things that parents are supposed to do, and it killed about twenty minutes, so we gave it a go.

We rescued two pips from Belle’s apple, filled a little pot with soil and Belle pushed each pip down into the damp earth with her podgy little finger. She watered them from her small plastic can and waited expectantly. I tried to explain that they can often take more than a day to grow into trees but I’m not sure how much of a concept of time you really have as a two year old.

To be honest, I was half expecting nothing to happen. It’s not that I imagine apples just come from a factory or anything – I know the theory – I just wasn’t sure you could literally take a pip from an apple you were eating, stuff it in a pot and expect it to turn into anything. View Post

Follow:

It won’t surprise you to hear that for me, the answer is ‘not much’.

This isn’t because I am spending all my cash on the latest fashions for myself, it’s just that spending on clothes generally just isn’t something that really appeals to me. Perhaps if I worked in an office I would feel a bit more motivated, but why would I dress up in a fancy skirt just to sit at home on my own? That would be a bit weird. View Post

Follow:

September is going to be a big month for us. Not only is Belle leaving primary school this summer and moving up to big school, but Bee, my precious first-born, turns into a grown-up and heads off to university in London.

As if by way of a reminder, Belle bought this home from school this week. My last ever copy. It is a truly terrible publication, full of poorly designed ads, yet I can’t help but feel oddly fond of it all of a sudden:

Primary Times

They are actually growing up and it is leaving me feeling a teeny bit sad. View Post

Follow: