Spaetzle cooking fun and new food tips
photo from jamesbeard.org and recipe for dill spaetzle Last night red cabbage and maple-dijon glazed pork were on my meal plan, but what to cook with it? I’d made potatoes already twice this week, and didn’t want noodles… Spaetzle! I’d had home made only once about 20 years ago, thought it looked complex, heck there are even special gadgets to make them! I looked up the recipe in Joy of Cooking, glanced at a few online resources and thought it looked like fun. This...
Read MoreScaring Parents to Motivate Healthy Feeding? (With a Note About Accurate Measurements)
Does this look like the chart of a child who is “failing to thrive?” Worry, worry, worry! All good parents are doing it! “She’ll need a feeding tube if you can’t get her to eat more.” “She has pre-prediabetes…” The parents I talk to, and emails I read are increasingly suffused with fear and anxiety. A very few cases are true emergencies, with children dropping weight or refusing anything by mouth, but many terrified and tearful...
Read MoreCut Kids Some Slack: Musings on Food Fears and “Helpful” Others
Scared of dogs When M was little she had a dog phobia. I’m talking screaming, climbing on me, uncontrollable fear of even a toy poodle. I can’t count how many people tried to talk her out of her fear, usually with a dog thrust into her personal space, and often against my explicit requests for them to stop. Take the German Shepherd owner whose dog was off-leash, jumping on me while M clawed at my hair shrieking, and the owner kept smiling, “Oh, she won’t hurt you!...
Read MoreIsn’t it ironic? Nutrition rules spoil eating…
“I guess we’ll just have to fill up on S’moreos.” Scene: summer camp, Kindergarten through 2nd grade Cookout lunch where kids bring ingredients for grilled tortilla pizza. What happened as reported by a 7 year-old: “Brittney, the counselor-in-training, kept trying to make us all eat our celery, there were carrots too. No one liked the celery. It was really stringy, but we had to eat three pieces. We tried to give them all to one kid who liked it, some kids...
Read MoreQuestionable things ‘experts’ say #7: “The way you eat is unacceptable.”
I cringed when a client told me that their new pediatrician admonished her five-year-old son (with severe food anxieties and selective eating who would likely qualify for a feeding disorder diagnosis) with this: “The way you eat is unacceptable.” I cringe often, when I hear some of the things that my colleagues in medicine say to young children, even if they think it is for their own good. (My guess is that this doc has no experience or education around feeding problems, all...
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Recent Comments
katja on Healing a Child’s Food “Obsession” (Part 1): Max’s Story
Thank you so much for chiming in and sharing how hard the process can be. So many parents give up...Anonymous on Healing a Child’s Food “Obsession” (Part 1): Max’s Story
Hi everyone. I am so happy that Max's story was so helpful to so many parents; it was largely...katja on Healing a Child’s Food “Obsession” (Part 1): Max’s Story
Oh Rachel, hang in there. There are many, many parents in the same boat, alas. I would encourage you to...Rachel on Healing a Child’s Food “Obsession” (Part 1): Max’s Story
I cried with relief reading this, thank you so much for being vocal about this as my son is exactly...katja on Trying to Get Kids to Eat Less Backfires: Part 4 Food ‘Obsession’
Send a friend request to Bonnie Appetites on facebook, then you will get an invite to the group. We do...