“Fod Rules for Toddlers May Lead to Healthy Eating Habits,” is all over the news media. A study was done at the University of Buffalo on about 9,000 children.
According to Robert Preidt at MSNBC.com:
Children have healthier diets when their parents place restrictions on what they can eat and train them to control their impulses, a new study suggests.
The University at Buffalo researchers analyzed data from almost 9,000 American children whose self-regulation was assessed at age 2. The children’s diets and parental food rules were then checked at age 4.
“Parents can make a difference here by training young children to self-regulate, and also by setting food rules in the home,” study senior author Xiaozhong Wen, an assistant professor in the department of pediatrics in the School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at the University at Buffalo, said in a university news release.
“We found that the combination of parental rules and young children’s ability to self-regulate their behaviors works best in teaching young children to eat healthy,” Wen said.
The study was presented in Boston recently at Obesity Week, the annual meeting of weight-loss surgeons and other obesity specialists.
“In adults and adolescents, self-regulation, emotional eating and obesity have been well-studied, but there is very little information about the role that self-regulation plays in young childhood obesity,” Wen said.
“We found that children who were able to self-regulate at 2 years old had healthy eating habits by the time they were 4 years old, so long as their parents also set rules about the right types of foods to eat. We found that self-regulation by itself, without parental food rules, made little difference in children’s later eating habits,” Wen concluded.
Study co-author Neha Sharma, a recent graduate from the university’s department of psychology, added, “It is amazing to see that a parental rule about which types of food a child can and cannot eat could have such a great impact on child eating habits.”
Sharma suggested in the news release that “without these boundaries set by caregivers, the benefits of high self-regulation on weight gain and childhood obesity could be diminished. This illustrates just how important parental involvement is in influencing child eating habits.”
What this Grandma knows after long (we never say old) years is that there is a great difference in parenting a first born child and those children that come later. The report and study does not seem to distinguish among the 9,000 children as to whether they were first born or second born. I would bet that most of those whose parents put rules and boundaries in place and exposed their toddlers to healthier foods and a variety of foods were children of a first born.
The oldest child in the family is an appendage. The oldest child is taken everywhere, exposed to everything. Our older daughter is a foodie. She has been eating exotic food since she was a toddler. Granted, at that point in this Grandma’s life I was taking gourmet cooking lessons on a weekly basis and experimented by cooking and eating the foods with the then only child. Our first born grandson is a foodie. His favorite food is escargot at age eleven.
No one tells parents that having two children is more than double having one. Juggling two children’s needs, coupled with now being an experienced parent who knows the child won’t break, we are different parents after the first child. We do not have the time or energy to focus all our attention on subsequent born toddlers. We know to be most concerned about their safety. They want attention and we usually give them what they want. Our youngest child did not taste a tomato until she was twenty five years old. When she was a toddler, her diet consisted of yogurt and McDonald’s hamburgers and french fries. The hamburgers had no condiments. I would go to McDonald’s and buy a dozen bare hamburgers to freeze and then microwave. Unfortunately for this younger child, my brand new, one of the first on the market, microwave oven made it easy for me to give her instant gratification of a horrible diet. It was a period of time of parental survival juggling long work hours, career, and two small children.
As a grandma, I watch history repeat itself. And, I wonder further. Did the study examine whether the parents of the toddlers studied were first or second born. I see a difference in the parenting styles and boundaries of our daughter who is our first born and our daughter who is last born.
The researchers seem to assume parents have the capability to effect change in boundaries
and rules. I question their assumption. Rules for toddlers may lead to good eating habits but some parents may not be a position by virtue of placement in family or life circumstances to do so. Parents who work twelve hours a day just to put food on the table are exhausted and interested in just getting their children to finish eating. . .anything. What do we do about that?
It would be interesting if the researchers went through their files of the 9,000 children and did extensive analysis of whether the children and the parents were first born. It would be interesting if the researchers went through their files of the 9,000 children and did extensive analysis of the parents, in addition to the toddlers.
But, what long years have taught me most is that it really does not matter how we parent. Every parent can relax. The children will ultimately survive us.
Joy,
Mema
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