Tips Help Parents Relax Food Policies

• Divide responsibilities: Parents should take responsibility for what, when and where children are offered food, but allow each child to take responsibility for how much or whether they eat.

• Focus mealtime energies on providing healthy foods and creating happy, positive, family-oriented eating experiences for your family -- not on restricting less nutritious ones.

• Make the tasty, easy choice at snack time healthy ones. Stock the kitchen with whole-wheat crackers, nut butters, raisins, string cheese and marinara sauce, frozen grape "bunches," bananas, and orange segments.

• Strike a balance. At fast-food restaurants, allow your children to pick a favorite food. But instead of super-sizing, balance it with a healthy food like low-fat milk or salad.

• Lead by example. Studies show that children's eating habits tend to mirror that of their parents.

• Resign from the clean-plate club. Eating habits should never become a source of struggle or conflict in families.

Additional Resources:

Check out this great book from the American Academy of Pediatrics:

Guide to Your Child's Nutrition: Making Peace at the Table and Building Healthy Eating Habits for Life. (see http://www.aap.org/pubserv/nutriweb.htm)

Books by Ellyn Satter (Also see http://www.ellynsatter.com/)

Child of Mine: Feeding With Love and Good Sense A nutrition and feeding reference book for parents of children up to age five years of age

How To Get Your Kid To Eat... But Not Too Much Discusses the impact of child development and parent-child relationships on feeding dynamics from infancy to adolescence

Secrets of Feeding a Healthy Family