Nanci Kuykendall

...>since I grew up in a family where junk food was a
>reward, and 'fun food' was tightly controlled.
>Breakfast was ALWAYS Total cereal on weekdays, we
>were only allowed to eat Roman Meal bread,
>and had to eat all our vegies (even things that made
>us gag) and dessert was only for those who ate all
>their dinner. Until my sis and I reached our teens
>and put on weight (from Dorito and Pizza at the
>school snack bar) when dessert cancelled for us.

...>I guess my point in all this rambling is that
>controlling your kids' diet leads to all kinds of
>fall-out, much of it multi-generational.
>Sylvia

Ewwwwww Sylvia. Sounds definately scarring. Around
here the kids eat whatever they want for breakfast:
leftover birthday cake, cereal, oatmeal, pickles,
fried eggs and honey cornbread are a sample of recent
choices. It's the one meal a day when I will play
short order cook. Since we're unschoolers, every day
is a "weekday" (a day in the week) right?

The bulk of the day we graze, and I generally make
more food for myself than I can eat when I make a
lunch, as the kids "forget" to eat until they smell my
food cooking and then come howling into the kitchen
like ravenous wolves. Dinner we encourage them to eat
with us and be social, but it's not "required" that
they do so. If they run off with their food to watch
a movie, it's nice to have a quiet dinner with my
hubby once in a while! We don't have any such thing
as "dessert." Sweets are for when you feel like it,
not some pre-specified time, nor as a reward for
eating things you don't like. Nobody around here eats
things they don't like.

There are, unfortunately, some villianous foods in my
older son's mind, as eating them will probably kill
him. But others of us eat those thigs and are careful
to clean up afterwards. We don't have a lot of "junk
food" in the house, or food with no nutritional value.
Even the potato chips we have in the house are yummy
and full of nutritional value (yeah! Terra Chips!)
They do have a treat jar, which they fill with
whatever they want each time we go shopping and eat at
whatever pace they want. It's usually never empty.
The cookie jar is the same way, which they have free
access to.

I have a son who has a tendancy to be sugar addicted,
and has impulse control problems. So it's not like I
have stepford kids and this is just a cakewalk (food
pun intended) with my particular kids, to have them
not eating sweets all day. If Thomas gets hungry he
will ALWAYS go for the sugary stuff first. What I try
to do is head him off. I will cook up some of his
favorite things (he loves hot foods) and offer them to
him when I think he might be hungry, and that prevents
him from wating to go for the sugar. If I make
something and put it in from of him, he will usually
eat it. If I am not in time and he is wanting to
gorge on the cookie jar or something, then I just make
the food anyway and offer it to him as well, and he
usually eats it and cuts short his sugar binge. I
also talk to him about how he feels when he eats
certain things and he forms opinions about which ways
he doesn't like to feel.

Nanci K.