Author Archive

Back-to-School Meals: Goodbye Lunchables, Hello Delicious!

Sep 24th, 10 / 4 Comments
back-to-school-meals-goodbye-lunchables-hello-delicious

by Momanista

By now, you and your child are just getting settled into the routines of fall, kicked off by being back in school. As I struggle to get my groove on with this, the negotiation between healthy, tasty and consumable-in-three-minutes—my son’s requirement out of the school lunch—has become a comedy routine in my kitchen.

I clock up the protein in the morning recess snack and lunch box, which my son’s doctor urges: it stabilizes blood sugar every two hours, sustaining attention span throughout the day. Then my son takes half the food out. Even still, it comes home only half eaten.

The excuses always boil down to time. My son explains it matter-of-factly, as if all parents should understand this reality:  “I don’t want to waste anything but it takes too long to chew healthy stuff.  I mean, almonds? It can’t be done in three minutes. It cuts into my play time. Kids hafta play, Mom. So here’s what you pack me: pizza,  carrot sticks and fruit.”

Oh, I appear to be raising a lawyer.  I suppose I can’t complain much as his demand list included a fruit and a vegetable, and God knows they need exercise, given P.E. has been drastically cut in schools.

Thus, my only alternative becomes playing “beat the clock” with the evolving school lunch. Rejected so far was a measly baggy of ¼ cup of cashews, sunflower seeds, and string cheese; also, my brilliant invention of an orange-frozen mango vanilla protein powder shake that takes 20 seconds to whip up in the blender and about 20 seconds to down. This would leave another 120 seconds for Sun Chips and his fruit d’jour. Boys and boosting attention? It is ON. Read to the end for the ingredients.  Still, I have to bribe him with reward points like I’m the United Airlines mileage program in order to get him to drink it, and only at breakfast.

But this is where the Farmer’s Market comes in. As we compromise to avoid food as a conflict, his having a range of inviting fresh food from which to choose by taste-test has truly made him a healthy eater from way back.

When he was in preschool, he had lunches the preschool teachers eyed for themselves. One noontime, I got a call that our son forgot his lunch. “All he has is a Lunchable. We figured it HAD to be somebody else’s. He always eats so healthy.” Only for peer group reasons, because every other kid had them daily, we compromised, letting him take a Lunchable on Fridays. The deal was to camouflage a lack of candy and sugar drink by stuffing into the package carrots, all-fruit juice and his farmer’s market choice of fruit.

Now that we’re thrust into the trifecta season of excess food and junk–Halloween, Hanukkah, Christmas—I’m watching the five farmers markets around me for some back up. The yummier the free samples, the easier it is to replace junk with sweet but good stuff.

We are sure that taking our son as a toddler to the weekly farmers markets played a significant role in his healthy eating and love of almost any fruit. He is willing to try almost any variety. Most kids like apples, but sour pomegranates? Rhubarb? He will eat anything purple.

By age 3 he was dining a full-course meal at the market, from appetizer nuts to apple turnovers and Fujis at Ha’s apples, to almond butter on whole wheat bread triangles at the bakery booth. By 4, he was haggling on price, paying for things he chose, and counting the change. He would even come home and act as a waiter, cutting up fruit and serving samples.

It has many teachable moments. Your child connects with real flavor, a sensory adventure with some control over his own consumption, the economics of food, even socialization with interacting in the market setting that dates back to ancient times. We have shared that history and lore (for some reason, though, he thinks the dried fruit CAME from days of yore).

The Farmer’s Market will save you a good amount weekly for most produce, or at least give you another week of shelf life over traditional grocery store fare. Click here for a list of L.A. area farmers markets.

Also enlightening was this story about neighboring communities with economic and health disparity. One has farmers markets, the other is in poorer health.  Link: http://www.healthycal.org/eating-across-a-social-divide.html

And as promised, here is my shake recipe:

SHAKE
2 scoops of Whey Protein Powder, Vanilla or Chocolate (I bought at Trader Joe’s)
4 oz. orange juice
8 to 10 bite-size pieces of fresh frozen mango but any fruit will do
A splash of milk

Blend until frothy, about 20 seconds

If you replace the juice with milk you gain more protein. Only the juice seems to recall my son’s beloved Jamba Juice smoothies.

I’d love to hear some healthy recipes you got over the plate, so please share.

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Health and Nutrition

Back to (Pre) School

Sep 9th, 10 / 2 Comments
back-to-pre-school

by Momanista

I often think of our first preschool, as the summer winds down. It was September when I had one of those first parent episodes where I trusted my instincts and it did not end disastrously,  much to my surprise.

“Your son seems to prefer playing alone,” the preschool teacher remarked, after one month with my toddler. Inferred: This may be a bad sign.

Given that my 3-year-old was quite sociable at home — some might say chatty — I should have asked more questions, worried less.  But the teacher had taught kindergarten, which gave her credibility.  And so I fretted over the next few weeks, scrutinizing every playground encounter.  Is he mixing? Wait, he threw down that kid’s shovel. Why is he alone under the slide with the dump truck?

My Greek chorus of friends would counter with the usual refrain: So what?

As weeks wore on, a question I’d shoved from my mind boomeranged back, and back. Who gives up public education benefits for low daycare wages?

Her answer was that she got tired of bureaucracy, which took her away from the students. Sounded good.

Six weeks in, I delivered my son’s forgotten lunch mid-morning. He laughed and ran around the yard with six others. Later that week, the teacher again mentioned that my son was playing alone, building blocks in class solo, again with the tone of “I’m just letting you know….”

So I asked my kid, and other kids, how does your day go? What games does Mrs. So-and-So play at recess?

Turned out, the teacher smoked, and didn’t play with the kids at all. Rather than outdoor time with the kids, she went “on break,” as my son put it. She thus had no idea that he was playing fine in the yard. It turned out, she’d said the same to other parents. It turned out, the class was a bit cluttered and playing alone with the blocks preserved precious breathing room for a few kids like mine.

People are human and have their days, and this family-owned center had a terrific playground built by parents, and windows galore. Still, the vibe was off, and I missed that due to its service to my need: It had an opening when we needed one.  Daily at pickup, 10 ‘til 6, the secretary was sporting her handbag and standing at the door, meeting me with silent, pursed lips. You again.

By the time I’d spent 40 minutes to reach the daycare, I was frazzled and met with reproach. My friends and I would wonder: Who works only until 5 anymore? These centers don’t fit our schedules.

On a whim one lunch hour, I walked across the street from my Long Beach office to the World Trade Center, and entered a chain daycare called Childtime. A coworker had described the place two years earlier as windowless, when her son was a newborn. But it was five minutes away.

Come to find out, Childtime was floor-to-ceiling windows — the varying naptimes for snoozing infants necessitated shading just one room. The play yard was so enormous that there was a track for big trikes. More importantly, every teacher seemed happy to be there. Huge. The director was Celeste Perez, whose family is a San Pedro fixture. Teachers were bilingual. Parents hailed from a diverse range of jobs: waitresses, FBI agents, government clerks, engineers, lawyers.

My son visited. He ran open-armed into the yard of trikes. We moved him there two weeks later.

The notion had seemed so scary, but the place defied the rap on childcare chains.  We felt we’d joined a family. We remain friends with those classmates today.

All this is to say: Trust your gut. As a parent, you know more than you think you know. If something seems not right over the course of a few days, or multiple times a month, your Mom radar — Mamadar? — is telling you something your brain doesn’t yet want to see.

Go with it.

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Parenting, Preschool

Lost and Found

Jul 22nd, 10 / 4 Comments
lost-and-found

by Momanista

I was watching “Modern Family” the other night and even a rerun of that TV show cracks me up. It was the episode where the gay couple leaves their baby in a hotel elevator.

I was laughing at their freak out, but any parent I know, Mom or Dad, has had this happen at least once, or so they tell me. It tends to etch in your memory–the time you lost your child.

The first time I remember was at my son’s 2nd birthday party. We had a palm-to-palm hand-off system, and my husband had him. While packing up, he assumed I’d taken him. A football field away, our toddler wandered toward a busy street. Our teen nephews ran like track stars, screaming, and this so startled our boy that he stopped…at the curb. My husband had to drive alone for an hour to recover.

Maybe it’s more accurate to say that we lost track of our child, and momentarily. But the terror is no less deep.

You’d think we’d be scared straight.

Let’s see, there was the time I lost him at Target in the baby department. He was way too old to test drive those saucers that save your sanity, and his tennies prevented him from getting back out of the leg holes. Occupado. Yes!

I even let him scoot to the next aisle, where I could still hear him as I browsed.

The silence strikes you. It’s way too quiet….

And bolt I did. Next aisle, the next aisle, jogging now, hollering his name, louder, frantic head swivels. Then I found the empty walker, my son’s sneakers tossed to the side. Oh my God, someone pulled him out. He couldn’t think this up.

Not 30 seconds later, I charged toward a red-vested associate.

“My child is gone,” I said in muted hysteria.

Him: “Well now if you go over to customer-“

Me:  “No. You need to get on that radio now. Tell them to head to the door.”

Him: “But it will be—“

Me: “A kid just vanished, which would make it bad publicity for the store. I’ll meet them at the door.”

Now listen to this, because I did something right here. The associate radios, the call comes back in an instant, and the P.A. announces “Code —-“to the whole store. The staff knows the code. The doors seal shut, and nobody gets out with a child until the missing one’s found.

I somehow knew from news that you squander precious minutes wandering a vast square footage; it takes only seconds to pull a small child out of the store and drive away.  Only now that the doors were secured could we search aisle by aisle.

I kept telling myself that the vast majority of abductions are by someone known to the child. But who listens to themselves at a time like this? We’ve heard the warnings. Keep your child in sight. And I didn’t.

Three long minutes later, a clerk spotted my three-year-old against an upholstered display, kicking back, clueless. “Hi Mom!” he said, pleased with his new hideaway. It was quite close to the abandoned saucer. But store managers said I’d done the right thing.

Most people would learn from that ordeal. Then you go to an amusement park in peak season. Standing in a 20-minute line at Knott’s Berry Farm for a mother-son dinner, I finally get to order. As I wait for the food, I look down to find my 4-year-old no longer climbing the western handrails.

Nightfall amid the fake rocks of Ghost Town. I repeated my Target move and walked straight to a cowgirl with a nametag. She radioed then walked me to a nearby lost and found office, where my kid had been taken. I was furious yet proud, because as soon as he knew he was lost, my boy went to a uniformed security guard.

Now before you call authorities, consider the balance we parents strive for, the one that sometimes tips out of our favor. You want to give your child freedom to explore, discover, experience and yes, even fall down and get hurt. They learn cause and effect and physics (you climb out onto a weak branch that is lighter than you are, and you will crash down).

In these experiences and mistakes made, small predicaments solved, they are alive and learning. You hope they will be enchanted. Try to test and figure things out. This takes letting them take risks.

But it’s never easy, is it?

MissingKids.com suggests these steps:

  1. Obtain a detailed description of the child including clothing.
  2. Go to the nearest in-house telephone and page “Code Adam,” describing the child’s physical features and clothing. Designated employees are to immediately stop working and look for the child. Designated employees monitor front entrances to ensure the child does not leave the premises.
  3. If the child is not found within 10 minutes, call law enforcement.

Personally, I’d insist parking lot personnel start hunting and I’d call the police sooner.

For an English-Spanish parent guide for what to do in such situations:

http://www.missingkids.com/missingkids/servlet/PageServlet?LanguageCountry=en_US&PageId=244

For more on what to do if your child goes missing at home or elsewhere, as outlined in the Code Adam, named in honor of 6-year-old Adam Walsh:  http://www.missingkids.com/missingkids/servlet/PageServlet?LanguageCountry=en_US&PageId=244

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Parenting, Safety

The Fish that Got Away

Jul 16th, 10 / 1 Comment
the-fish-that-got-away

by Momanista

It was midnight on Cabrillo Beach, way out at the tip of San Pedro, so I was surprised by how many preschoolers were still up, frolicking in the waves.

We had been on the sand for hours, me and my friend Trish, bundled in our $10 nylon tote chairs, waiting for the grunion.

I was a first-timer, she the seasoned grunion monger. Two nights earlier, we’d gone to Seal Beach with our families for a 9:40 p.m. potential arrival time. The grunion were no-shows. Since they were not expected until 10:15 p.m. at the earliest this weeknight, we left the offspring at home. (Just to assure you, showing up minus kids was nowhere near as weird as going childless to Chuck E. Cheese).

As a native Californian, this grunion pilgrimage had eluded me. I don’t care to catch and kill these one-of-a-kind creatures, the only fish in the world to flop out of water to spawn. I hear they taste like sardines and at a skinny five inches, are a bother for a meal.

Yet something about the grunion lore, which I learned while researching a travel story, suddenly intrigued me.

These shimmering fish are found nowhere but the California coast, from Santa Barbara south the Mexican border, only for four consecutive days, twice a month, from March to August. And only with a new or full moon are the tides high enough to ferry the fish ashore.

By the hundreds, the females use their tails to burrow out a hole into which they wriggle vertically until the sand comes halfway up their bodies. Then, they release their eggs just about when a half-dozen males curve around them, releasing a foamy milt. This milt rolls down her body to fertilize the orange eggs. The males catch a wave first, followed a few moments later by females riding the tide back to the sea.

Too bad I don’t smoke.

This all sounded almost romantic for something I might previously have used to bait a hook.

And here we now were, poised at the front row for this mating life cycle. I now realized I would not be crashing this reproductive party, but I did want to watch. How often in the animal kingdom can you and your kids witness life being created?

It is the trifecta of teachable moments: a bit of hands-on science, entertainment and the novel bliss of being allowed to stay up late, even night swim in the ocean.

In the end, Trish and I talked about all that stuff you talk about when forced to sit still and not ‘’do’’ something. We met at the preschool but only at Cabrillo did I learn she had once taken trampoline in college. That says something about a person.

We didn’t care that much when high-beam lanterns and shrieking kids around us were certain to result in a grunion no-show. A few flopped ashore, but the rest of the bunch remained behind the breakers, eventually swimming off to a quieter stretch of sand. Elsewhere on the beach, families delighted in their arrival, and in two weeks, their eggs will hatch in safe captivity of the aquarium.

It is a wonderful, smaller aquarium to visit, and the grunion program later in July only cots $1 for kids and seniors, $5 for adults. http://www.cabrillomarineaquarium.org/education/programs-individual-family/meet-the-grunion.asp

The grunion may show at any south-facing beach through summer’s end, mostly free or for the cost of parking. For the schedule and locations, visit http://www.dfg.ca.gov/marine/grunionschedule.asp#runs

For some excellent fish tales, go to www.grunion.org

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Just for Fun

Swimming Lessons

Jul 1st, 10 / 9 Comments
swimming-lessons

by Momanista

The perfume of my childhood summers evokes such happy, lazy days, filled with the aroma of barbecued burgers, smoky bonfires, lighter fluid, Hawaiian Tropic suntan oil and chlorine.

Even today, the smells of swimming pools make me nostalgic for carefree youth in which we, not our parents, were expected to fill the time. We called it boredom. I see now it was a gift.

For how many hours we kids spent swimming, I can’t remember either parent in the water with us.

I wish my son had quite that freedom. But I was determined to give him a better introduction to swimming than mine.  Family lore has it that one of my first dips in the inflatable wading pool involved actual snakes. My big brother, then probably nine, had caught them, in the nearby creek but forgot to alert our Mom of their new habitat.

Children being resilient, I was soon enough spending hours at Marco Polo and cannon-balling off the high dive. I wished for my infant boy to love the water like I did.

There was also a dark aspect. When I was little, my beloved younger cousin Deana, like a baby sister to me, had been bumped by her St. Bernard into the family’s backyard pool. Her grandmother had run inside for a thimble, and the phone rang. Five minutes later, toddler Deana was gone. Her legacy is that every child in my family took lessons early, many before they walked.

And so was the case with my baby.

We luck out in having an affordable city pool down the street. It is indoors, which isn’t my favorite, but in cold and scorching weather it is a blessing. And nobody has to be smothered in sun block.

Before he was walking, I toted my infant down to the pool. He was remarkably secure about floating on his back. He was also the only baby in the water. The pool was swarming with children—loud, screaming, shoving, jumping off the deck to throw waves of water into my baby’s face.

He just blinked and giggled. I was calm, he was calm. He didn’t seem to know fear, and was open to the splashing world.

A few years later, not so much.

The whole Mommy and Me class ended with a sigh. It was tolerated. Same pool. Same parents. But a sign of the water temp was the teachers wearing wetsuits.

Then came group lessons which, to me, were tedious at toddler age and taught playing more than swimming. That’s fine if it suits you, or you feel unprepared in the water, or enjoy racing home from work to be splashed in the face for a half hour by strangers.

Otherwise, you can do the whole floating, splashing and kicking thing on your own.

Given our family history, I went for the one-on-one. At a neighborhood swim school where the water was balmy warm, they knew what they were doing. It was about $15 per 15-minute lesson. But I had the peace of mind of seeing my son, still in swim diapers and jeans, bumped into the water but able to swim to the pool side.

A decent amount of my friends shuddered at the teachers dunking the tikes, could not take watching them scream furiously, or frightened, and give that look that says, have you forsaken me? The school’s view, which I shared, was that you can’t swim well with a dry face.

There were weeks of panic and dread. Bribery by Hot Wheels was committed by someone close to the case. It was enough reward to gut through initial fear for a 15-minute lesson.

“Look!”  I said, a bit too chirpy, pointing to a giant clock. “Five minutes are already gone!”

My husband would say, it’s not worth this. Let’s take a break and revisit this. But I witnessed three-month-olds pollywog around, and I knew the tragedy of seeing a toddler survive without brain activity for years. It would not befall us.

To me, there was no better way to show that we can overcome fear. With swimming, you do one stroke after another, you do it or you sink. So you do it.

As a Mom, I learned unexpectedly about faith. My child would get past momentary panic and gain confidence in having done so. He would learn what he could do. He would be braver each time. And so would I.

Any time we faced some daunting task that seemed beyond our reach, we could remember swim lessons, and say, if you can learn to stay afloat, you can do anything.

###

If you are looking for public pools in your area, check out our Top 10 Summer Splashes blog entry by Elise

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Parenting, Safety

Hanging On Your Every (Bad) Word by Momanista

Jun 24th, 10 / 3 Comments
hanging-on-your-every-bad-word-by-momanista

by Momanista

There is a first time for everybody and mine came in the carpool lane of the San Diego Freeway.

“Bleeping BLEEP!” I yelled at the tail-gating trucker who risked killing me and my 2-year-old strapped in back.

A couple heartbeats later, a song issued forth from the child safety seat. “Bleeping BLEEP! Bleeping BLEEP!” There was humming. Hand claps.

Had anyone else been in the car, I’m sure it would be on YouTube, like the tooting baby videos.

“No, no, NO,” I sang back nervously, hoping he’d pick up the new lyric.  No chance. The chanting incident persisted just long enough to cause a few friends to fall over laughing.

But there would be another.

In front of our local deli, my car was  trapped by the largest SUV on the market, which was also illegally parked. There was no driver, no way out and we needed to be at work and preschool. After a 50-point back-forth attempt to escape, I finally resorted to tapping the truck’s front bumper twice, hoping for just two inches to escape.

An enraged woman sprung from nowhere, fist up, shrieking through the window. I responded on adrenalin–textbook for what NOT to do.

Her: “Didn’t you see you were hitting my truck, B?!”

Me:  “Didn’t you see my kid in the back, B?”

I instantly gassed it but was shook. How brilliant to scold her for swearing…by swearing.  Some role model. My son, far from scared, cheered like I’d defeated Darth. He still retells this story to friends.

What is it with driving and swearing?

“I remember when my daughter was two, and my husband was in Japan on a movie,” said my friend Susan, whose MARRIED TO A sound engineer. “I was kind of stressed, and this woman cuts me off, and I blurt out, (the f.b. combo)! So two weeks later, my husband comes home and he’s driving to the store and he has to slam on his brakes for somebody. And he has no idea why when our daughter yells” (blanking blank!)”

I could go on with these anecdotes, and most of them occur in cars. I won’t claim I’ve stopped swearing, but I definitely watch myself when not alone.

As your kids get a bit older, the condemnation starts.

“You just broke one of the 10 Commandments,” said the son of my friend, Robyn, who confessed her sin and vowed to seek forgiveness at church that Sunday. In the good old days when he was three, she’d heard that you can bury a curse word in a stream of rhymes: luck, duck, stuck, muck, yuck….

Speaking for myself, I can’t take the lectures from someone that much shorter than me.

But the jig is up by grade school. The other day, a first-grade boy said my dress was ‘’sexy.” I looked around speechless. Another Mom on the playground mouthed, “South Park,” shaking her head.

What you permit your kids to watch on TV is a cross-over issue with your family’s policy on swearing. I tend to see friends who allowed their kids to watch “The Simpsons” at 4 and 5 having a lenient view of cursing in the house.

Their take is that swearing permeates popular culture, and teaching them to know when to use it is part of learning overall manners and respect for others.

“I think they see our hypocrisy if we tell them no-no on swearing but watch shows with everyone using the F-word,” argued Susan.

Still, I hated it when I saw cards from neighbor kids that read, “Happy freakin’ Valentine’s Day.” They’d been sold as fundraisers at the local elementary school.

On one of my favorite blogs, www.Motherlode.com, one poster cited the findings of a 2007 British study:  “Swearing was [seen] as a social phenomenon to reflect solidarity and enhance group cohesiveness or as a psychological phenomenon to release stress.”

I think that is true. Coming clean with your children about that, as they get older, gives you credibility. It is also a relief to children to hear their parents make mistakes. (I actually think this is my son’s FAVORITE kind of story, what Mom messed up today). Be it swearing or losing your cool, sharing your blunders can effectively show that nobody’s perfect; the goal is to learn from the mistakes.

Kids can feel an alarming degree of pressure to be perfect. Sometimes I forget that.

Yet there has to be a limit. In the same Motherlode blog post, it was revealed that preschoolers at the local daycare were seeing swearing of a stunning kind. Toddlers not even walking were known to drop their Sippy cups and yell, “What the….”

That’s just wrong.

But in our house, our take is that swear words are just words, but the ones you choose reflect something about you. Saying ‘Oh my God,’ for instance, offends some of our relatives. The obviously bad language might cost you friends and play dates if a parent hears you swearing.

I also confessed to my son that I swear up a storm when I’m alone in my car, and that I don’t really care what he says privately, because cursing, for me, is a release. But it all comes down to manners, which means making others feel comfortable.

An extreme form of this: a friend of my haircutter gives her kids five minutes a day in a room to yell and scream anything they want.

It’s like late-night cable TV in there, and you might find yourself thinking, “What the what?”

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Parenting

Bedtime Blues

Jun 10th, 10 / 6 Comments
bedtime-blues

by Momanista

If your home is anything like mine, bedtime has often been fraught with whining, tears, impatience, exasperation and many advice books to solve the riddle of getting my kid enough sleep.

From about 18 months old, my son stopped taking naps. On a good day, I’d be lucky if he quietly read long enough for me to get in some work or a shower. We heard, and tried, all the tricks—morning playground workout to tire him out by midday; big lunch, then dimmed lights soft music, gentle stories….tiptoing out like any noise could trip an alarm….ahhhhhhhhh, silence.

”Not sleeping, Mommy! NOT sleeping.”

Bedtime is only slightly better but hey, they DO eventually run out of battery. Lately, I’ve been revisiting the effort to create what experts call good sleep habits and it has forced me to improve my own.

More than 70 million Americans—and one in four children–suffer sleep disruption, according to national statistics.

Childlren with apnea, anxiety, autism or narcolepsy need special treatment and possibly medication, said Dr. Gary Feldman, medical director of Miller’s Pediatric Sleep Center Long Beach. Most young children can be helped with a simple shift to a stable sleep routine..

  1. Go to sleep at the same time each night.
  2. Keep the routine. A short bedtime ritual–bathroom, reading, soft music, lights out—is fine. The body likes routine despite the stalls. Resist the ‘one more thing” lines that drag on.
  3. Avoid intense activities at night and turn off screen time at least an hour prior to bed. More details including tips and sleep requirements per age are at: http://www.sleepforkids.org/html/sheet.html

Persistent Sleep Trouble

Some of us just have more anxiety or trouble with transitioning to bedtime. We found these insights effective from Long Beach hypnotherapist Marcia Grace, LCSW

  1. Low blood sugar can wake us up in a panic, and eight hours is a long time to go without food.  A little fat stays in the system longer.  Try 1/2 turkey hot dog before bed.
  2. Eliminate exposure to negatives at least 30 minutes before bed.  We are most open to suggestion during those last 30 minutes of the day, so keep it positive (whenever possible).
  3. Put worries on paper. Ask, “Anything else?”  Then, put the paper in a drawer, and close it.  (Put it in a drawer in another room, if that works better.)  Worries get worked on overnight.  When we dream, we get rid of things we no longer need, that are no longer serving us.  Sometimes we find out we didn’t even have anything to worry about.  (Take out the old paper each day and throw it away.)
  4. Use story-telling, with these themes:

–Everything always seems to come so easily and it always seems to go so well.

–Everything works to the positive.

–The child used to have that problem but it’s not a problem anymore.

–Everything just keeps getting easier and easier for the child.

–Sometimes he might think things are going to be hard, but it turns out to be much easier than he thought it would be.  He just keeps at it.

5.  Use a manner of talking that sounds almost like you are talking to yourself–slowly and thoughtfully.

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Parenting

Food Stand-offs Be Gone

Jun 3rd, 10 / 10 Comments
food-stand-offs-be-gone

by Momanista

One of my favorite childhood stories was the one about the demonic toddler who refused to eat anything but jars of split pea soup and apple sauce. For three months straight, every meal, every day, was green and beige. Her Mom tried carrots, eggs, oatmeal, pudding, some revolting looking beef mush. But the 18-month-old dug in her heels and pounded the high chair tray, shaking her head defiantly, steel jawed.

The parents worried: wouldn’t she starve? What if her brain failed to develop?

Her Dad thought he’d lay down the law, he’d get this done, and threatened to sit across the high chair from his willful daughter with a spoon of something else, as long as it took.

It took two hours. He gave up. I won.

And the pediatrician’s verdict backed me up: the peas provided protein, the apples plenty of carbohydrate, so leave me to it. The moral of the story is, if its healthy, let your little ones choose, and don’t turn eating into a power struggle. There’s too much great food in the world for anyone to have to eat what they don’t like. (The other point: kids love to hear about your bad girl moments.)

So by the time my son was three, he still refused milk, chocolate milk, strawberry soy milk, even smoothies. But he loved yogurt. I read where you are supposed to introduce a food 50 times before the child might agree to eat it. Who’s got that kind of time?  He tried it at a friend’s house on cereal, but it was a fluke. Same with eggs.

Since my son’s favorite toddler word was “No,” I started trying to at least entertain myself by renaming foods to see if it made a difference. I started Mommy Marketing the meals.

A couple of my early winners were breakfast foods. The following have survived the years and are fairly simple for busy mornings.

COOKIE CEREAL (OH YEAH, WITH OATMEAL)

1 packet any brand instant oatmeal, preferably microwaveable

1 packet of Splenda

6 mini cookies, animal cracker-type

(I use what’s around, often Trader Joe’s mini oatmeal raisin, alphabet or low-fat cat cookies)

2/3 cup non-fat milk

Prepare a packet of instant microwaveable oatmeal, using non-fat milk to sneak in protein and calcium. When it’s done, stir in one packet of sweetener such as Splenda. Before serving, add a few mini-cookies. The kids can look forward to counting how many cookies they’ll find, or for preschoolers, reading words or making words out of the alphabet cookies. My child gets to the breakfast table faster with this.  The cookies soften in the heat, and munch up to liven up the oatmeal.

The milk alone adds protein and plenty of calcium for growing kids.

‘’CHURRO’’ TOAST

2 slices of frozen, low-fat French toast from Trader Joe’s

½ T. whipped vegetable oil butter

Equal parts cinnamon and Splenda

In a toaster or toaster oven, cook the French toast a tad more well done than usual French toast. When done, spread enough spread to cover but not make soggy the center of the toast.  Over all but the crust, sprinkle the cinnamon mixture, and then slice into thirds ala ‘’churros.” This brand has no preservatives or artificial colors, is low in Trans fats (the bad ones) although isn’t loaded with fiber.

If you’re the type who can spend a couple hours  on the weekend baking for the week, try these. But shhhhh! don’t mention they’re  healthy.  I found this recipe in a 10/1/03 L.A. Times S.O.S. column and their name means “good day” in Portuguese. I use whole wheat flour to add protein and fiber, and replace ¾ cup of the sugar with Splenda.

BOM DIAS

2 cups flour

1½ cups sugar

1½ teaspoons baking soda

2 teaspoons cinnamon

½ teaspoon salt

2 cups grated carrots (pre-grated work well, or about 3 medium-s

1 cup coarsely chopped walnuts (pecans and hazelnuts are delish)

1 cup shredded coconut

1 cup Granny Smith apples, with peel on (about 2 small)

3 eggs

1 cup vegetable oil

2 teaspoons vanilla

  1. In a large bow, mix together the flour, sugar, baking soda, cinnamon and salt. Add the carrots, walnuts, coconut and apple and mix together until moist.
  2. In a small bowl, beat together the eggs, oil and vanilla.
  3. Add the egg mixture to the large bowl and stir until just combined.
  4. Bake in muffin tins with paper liners in a 300-degree oven until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, about 25 to 30 minutes.
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Health and Nutrition