Eating a balanced, healthy diet is a challenge at any age but especially hard when you are two! Who wants to eat carrots when your parents let you taste chicken nuggets for the first time. Food plays such an important role in our children’s lives and has gone beyond simple nourishment to being used as a reward or for control. To help our young families navigate the difficulties with teaching our children to eat properly, the JCC and JFCS teamed up for the first in a series of free parenting seminars.
On Sunday January 18, the JCC provided free babysitting so that parents could learn from Nancy C. Kuppersmtih, RD, MS, CDE, MLDE, Nutritionist for the Department of Family and Geriatric Medicine at the University of Louisville and Lauren Kehr, LCSW Therapist for JFCS. Ms. Kuppersmith and Ms. Kehr led a stimulating discussion on intuitive eating, learning to eat when your body needs to eat rather than when you are told to eat (or bored). Their message was to trust our children whose bodies will teach them when they’ve had enough to eat. We also learned that each meal is not important but rather the focus should be on the entirety of what our children are eating and learning how to balance over a period of time.
Feed back has been incredible. One young parent has already seen success and emailed, “my husband and I learned a substantial amount. It was also nice to be able to talk one on one after the class regarding our son’s eating habits. Since the class, my husband and I have changed our son’s eating habits and meal time seems to go a lot smoother. They aren’t near as stressful anymore and its nice to not put so much pressure on our son. “
The JCC and JFCS are eager to continue this parenting forum series and future topics include discipline and toilet training. For more information please contact Jennifer Tuvlin at jtuvlin@jewishlouisville.org.
