The waffle cone
How do you make your kids follow clean eating?
It’s such a daunting task!
I am frequently asked this question by many moms whom I interact with.
6 years into clean eating and I still remember my earlier days with my kids, where I used to dictate their food choices! Yes, they do use to listen and follow my instructions, not sure whether out of respect or fear, but poor kids they had no other go ?
Are they consuming junk at the birthday parties? How many chocolates are they eating in school? Am I depriving them of small pleasures of eating an ice-cream or chocolate? All these thoughts used to keep me occupied most of my time with them.
But then more I started understanding my children, understanding my role as a parent, the freer I became.
Changing my belief from I am responsible for my children’s food, growth, learning to I am a facilitator in their journey made all the difference. My children are not my property! They are independent beings and I respect their choices, be it food or any other thing.
But then how can they learn about clean eating? Giving Gyan is the last thing I want to resort to as its mostly ineffective.
I expose them to different foods that I know are right and correct for them.
When at home they get to eat what I cook, and now it’s such a pleasure watching my daughter prepare delicious food in the kitchen! I make sure I give her total freedom to do whatever she wants to do; she has chosen to make food mostly with the clean ingredients till this point of time (which makes me secretly happy ?)
As for my son, he is in exploration mode, and totally enjoying all types of food whenever he gets an opportunity! He doesn’t mind eating clean food at home but what he craves for are variety and tasty food! He is keeping me on my toes for sure?
Day in and day out they see me prepare, teach, eat clean food. By this time, they know my clean eating talks byheart ? but apart from this there are no more instructions to anybody at my home, like eat this, don’t eat that, it’s not good for your health.
Some days they pick up from a mall what looks like total garbage in my eyes, but they would have read the labels and had reached the conclusion that amongst all the available items this is the tastiest and best available food to satisfy their cravings! ?
Some days they come up with this brilliant idea of being raw till eve so that they can feast on the party food in the night!
Occasionally Ira declares she is going on a fruit fast as a result of hogging on her favorite food at a birthday party previous night.
They are learning and experimenting on their own, whenever they feel ready. I am there only if they ask for my help. It’s so much fun watching them build their own relationship with food. The way they love shopping for their favorite fruits and veggies from farmers market to the way they sit down and set up the weekly menu ?
The latest is, Ira has decided to be a vegan strictly till March End and she wanted to eat her nice-cream in a cone! But now she is unsure about the ingredients in the store-bought cone. So, she decided to bake one!
It’s a simple 5 mins recipe, which I have uploaded here!
So, mothers, chillax! We just need to keep working passionately, following the rules what we feel are the best for ourselves and our children will absorb whatever they want to and whenever they wish to like.
Feel free to write to me what do you think about this.