This week on the podcast I’m trying something new: a round table discussion on a single topic. Questions around food are very common as people are deschooling and contemplating releasing control over their children’s food choices and Sylvia Woodman, Jo Isaac, and Meredith Novak join me to talk all things food. I hope you find our conversation helpful!
Children need to consume vitamins, supplements and healthy food to grow properly, however, a coq10 examination will recommended if they have muscle pain.
Also, for the first time, I recorded video of our call as well, which you can find on my YouTube channel.
Questions for the Group
You’ve all been on the podcast before and I’ll share links to those episodes in the show notes, but can you give everyone a quick intro to you and your family?
I’d love to hear about your journeys around food and control. What did life around food look like for your family when you first began unschooling? And what does it like now?
Let’s talk about food fears. The one that comes up most often, I think, is the question of food and health. For example, sugar. When we first contemplate releasing control over our children’s food choices, we so often envision that all they’ll want to eat is sweet, sugary things. And on top of that, when we do start out, often our children are drawn to those choices, precisely because they have been so tightly controlled before. What thoughts and suggestions would you share with someone smack in the middle of this deschooling phase and getting worried?
What about when a person has strong principles around food? For example, they choose to eat vegetarian. I’d love to chat about ways parents can live their principles without controlling their children’s choices. And why is that so important?
Another question I see pretty regularly is around the question of food choices within a food budget. Can you share your approach?
Links to things mentioned in the show
YouTube: watch the video of this call
Meredith’s episode: What Learning Looks Like
Sylvia’s episode: Unschooling Stories
Jo’s episode: Redefining Success
Episode Transcript
I have a question for Meredith (or atleast I think it was Meredith that mentioned it), she said her kid could subsist on milk for days. Did she have a hard time letting go of control over that? And what age was her child? I have twin 2 1/2 year olds and I go through phases myself of “just let them drink milk” and then there are times where I am like “you have to eat food first”. Yesterday I feel was my first “battle” over food and it probably was because we had just gone to the doctor the day before and the doctor wants them to drink less milk and have 5 servings of fruits and veggies each day. Even though they are underweight they are developing perfectly fine. I feel like sometimes I just get all caught up in how little they are consuming. I could easily just let them drink to their hearts content. So maybe someone has advice for me. I know my girls are not school age and as you know we all unschool from day one…I hope to continue this awesome approach once they hit that magical age where I am ‘supposed’ to send them to school. I love reading your podcasts. Thank you Pam.
Oh, gosh, wendi, vitamins kept me sane – because it wasn’t just days, one summer it was about three months of milk and the occasional cookie. No kidding. And, you know, I come from the fringe of the hippie fringe, so I Never thought I’d resort to supplements 😉 But it was really important to me not to turn food into a battleground so I focused on “talking myself down” with alternatives. That and just looking at my kid – and Mo was super robust, so there was clearly nothing to worry about in that regard. I think it’s scarier with kids who are naturally inclined to be “waiflike” or small, but you can still look at things like: do they have lots of energy? Are they curious about the world? Do they sparkle? Do they smell okay – little kids mostly don’t have much smell, so if they have a really noticeable odor (and it’s not just peanut butter in their hair!) then that’s something to check on… but it’s also not something you fix with carrots and broccoli!
The whole push behind wanting kids to eat veggies is to be sure they’re getting enough essential vitamins. So if there’s any other way to get the same thing then go for it – and supplements will do that, but so will things like breakfast cereal if your kids will go for that. It’s not like adding veggies is going to up a kid’s weight, either, if that’s a concern – if anything, you want more sweets and fats and proteins to add calories and building materials. And milk is pretty good for that!
Something else that’s worth thinking about is that some kids have incredibly tiny appetites – so small that it’s easy to think “they didn’t eat anything.” I mean, when Mo was little, a handful of popcorn was literally a full meal! If she ate a grape with that, it was “woo hoo! fruits and veggies accomplished!” But doctors aren’t looking at your unique kid, they’re looking at averages, so they won’t even count that grape as “one serving”.
If you want to try to add more things, you could try adding things to milk – but with Mo, that usually meant she ate even Less in the solid food department because she was filling up on a “smoothie” that was… three blueberries blended into a cup of milk. Or you could try adding variety like pudding or yogurt – stick with things similar to milk, and just change up the flavor and texture and see if they like that.
Hi Ladies, Following on from this podcast i have a bit of a dilemma on my hands! I have two children, age 5 and 3 and we plan to unschool. My eldest son has had some health issues which have been rectified by a wholesome organic diet and herbs. He had bad eczema, reflux and digestive issues, which have been completely resolved and i am so thankful i now have a happy energetic child full of life! He is now at an age where he is more curious about the things in the supermarket that we don’t buy. I have explained the importance of good nutrition to him but at the end of the day he is a kid and wants to experience the same junk food as everyone else. I try to ‘lighten’ up with the food thing however i am worried his health will go downhill again. Any words of wisdom greatly appreciated. Thanking you in advance.
Hi Caroline 🙂 Letting go the illusion of control around food IS scary – my son also had eczema as a baby and toddler, he has asthma, and he developed allergies around the age of 6 to shellfish (all genetic, running in my husbands family).
Firstly, as we all touched on in the podcast – start by saying ‘yes’ more. Little increments of yes. If your son sees something in the supermarket and asks for it – say yes 🙂 Not with a lecture on food and nutrition, not with the expectation something terrible will happen, just ‘yes’ and let him enjoy it in peace.
Also, be wary of the temptation of blame all.the.things on food. It may be (as it was for my son) that his eczema and other issues have resolved due to him just getting older, and really nothing to do with diet at all.
But maybe some of it WAS diet related – but by tightly controlling all of his diet, neither you nor he will be able to narrow down the probable one of two foods that might have caused it – instead villifying a whole range of foods and uneccesarily setting him up with an adversarial relationship with food in general.
What is ‘good nutrition’ for one body, isn’t for another. I think in the podcast we also touched upon the idea that what one person considers a ‘healthy’ diet, another does not (vegan vs paleo, etc!).
I’d also really urge you to stop using the term ‘junk food’. Food is food is food. Categorizing one food as ‘better’ than another only leads to strife in the long run.
And back to where I started – controlling a child’s food really IS an illusion. Once your son is a teen, he’ll be able to access ALL the foods you’ve potentially kept from him and probably by then won’t care if there are any consequences in the form of health issues – the draw of the forbidden will trump anything else.
Better to say yes more now, help him explore with your support (but not too many lectures on nutition, and definitely no ‘told you so’s’ ;), so he can really find the foods that work for his body (and find the one’s that don’t – in his own way).
I know Meredith and Sylvia will also come and comment too 🙂
Jo
I think the hardest thing when our kids want to explore in a direction that we’re not comfortable with – that maybe even could be dangerous – is that we can’t tell them what to learn. Not “shouldn’t” but really really “can’t” – they’re going to get from the experience what they get… and we’re part of that experience. If the experience of us, the parents, is didactic, or feels shaming or dismissive, then that’s part of the learning experience too; part of the baggage they’re collecting as they grow. That’s why so many of us have all sorts of baggage around food: our experience of someone who loved and wanted the best for us ended up tangled up our childs-eye perception of how those things were expressed. Love and good intentions don’t change that perception.
As much as you can, try to step back from what you want him to learn, wish he would learn, and see him as someone who’s driven by curiosity and enthusiasm and the need to explore. Kids don’t Want our hard won knowledge, most of the time – they want their own journey, to know the world in their own way. They don’t really want to be hurt, but they’ll often risk it to some degree for the joy of learning. Support that joy! Find ways to offer options that light him up! Be ready to help him problem solve solutions for less-than-wonderful outcomes – because there will always be some of those. He won’t always make the most perfect choices… and neither will you. That’s part of learning, too.
It can also help to be open to the fact that health issues change over time – and development is Weird! Kids can be sensitive to something at 3 but not at 5, or 7. I used to get hives all over my body from citrus, when I was a kid… I’m not sure when that went away, but it was by the time I was 10. Morgan was super sensitive to all sorts of things, topically, I mean – we couldn’t use any kind of detergent on her clothes, needed to pre-wash the heck out of new clothes, needed to be careful of cleaning product residues, had to have special hand soap for years. But now those things aren’t issues any more. Bodies change, and their needs change. So what’s good for your kid now in terms of food may very well not be what’s good for them in a few years. And during those years, your kids are going to be growing mentally as well, and that’s going to change things, too.
There’s not a “right” answer here! There generally isn’t with unschooling, that’s why we all have so many opinions 😉 But if you can keep in mind that You don’t necessarily have the “right answer” for your kid, either, that can make it easier to be open to experimenting, exploring new things, finding ways to be joyful and expansive around learning, even when it gets a little fraught sometimes. Your child wants to be healthy and happy – but part of that calculus will Always include how he feels about his options. Feeling embattled and constrained doesn’t feel healthy and happy no matter what the body is doing.
Thank you for this Meredith