Get Your Fill, But Get It Good
Taking your infant to the doctor can be a nerve-wracking experience. Not only do you have to sit there and not throttle the person sticking sharp metal objects into your helpless child, there’s generally something the doctor finds that you – yes, YOU – could be doing better.
This visit, it was feeding. Apparently, Alex is on the low end of the weight scale for her height. She’s healthy, but the doc would like to see her put on a little weight. Now, anyone who has seen our child can tell you that she is no waif. She’s got properly plump baby arms and legs and round, plump cheeks (yes, on both ends, thank you very much). At first I was a bit perturbed. What the heck did this doctor want, a Michelin baby? I thought Alex was fine. But the doctor is the expert and when I looked at the growth charts myself, I could see she had a point. Where had we gone wrong? I am still breast feeding as often as I can, though she occasionally gets formula bottles when I can’t feed her myself. We recently started her on solids with much success. As Dave so eloquently put it one day, “I’ve been shoveling orange stuff into her all day!� He was referring to Alex’s fondness for the yellow and orange end of the baby food spectrum – carrots, squash, peaches, etc.
This was, apparently, where we slipped up. A little too much solid stuff and not enough breast milk and formula. Apparently, the two solid food meals per day were filling her tummy so that she wasn’t hungry enough for the amount of breast milk/formula that a baby her size needs. Baby fruits and veggies are relatively light on calories whereas breast milk and formula are not. Admittedly, Dave and I may have been a little too excited about Alex starting solids that we overdid it. Now we know. Ease up on the colorful food pastes and crank up the liquid stuff – for now anyway.
Around the same time that we were revising Alex’s menu, I discovered that feeding children properly is a very hot topic these days. Earlier this year, the East Penn school district (near Allentown, PA) caused a national stir when it sent letters home to the parents of overweight students warning them about the dangers of obesity-related health problems. The national media soon got wind of the letters. The stir spurred an avalanche of articles in parenting and news magazines about an “epidemic of obesity� among American children.
In statistical terms, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that 13% of American children ages 6 to 11, and 14% of children 12 to 19, are overweight or obese. The CDC says it has been ringing the alarm about childhood obesity for years but that it was the so-called “fatty letters� from East Penn that finally brought the matter to the national forefront. In the meantime, everyone’s laying blame. Some blame the fast food company for marketing fatty meals to kids. Some blame schools for cutting back on physical education programs and serving unhealthy foods in cafeterias. Predictably, there are some blaming the Internet, TV, and computer games for being more interesting than the great outdoors.
It’s obvious that there a number of factors at work here, and as much as I would like to blame McDonald’s for all the world’s ills, I cannot. Really, the bottom line is, education. Beyond calories and fat, most Americans really don’t know a lot about nutrition. Many know they should eat better but don’t take the time to learn how. Given that adult obesity rates are upwards of 55%, is it any wonder that kids aren’t making sound nutritional choices? Kids follow the nutritional examples of the adults around them. I have firsthand knowledge that babies aren’t born hating carrots but if all I eat for the next five years is cheese fries, which do you think Alex is going to prefer?
But just as adults who put themselves on strict diets doom themselves to almost certain failure, forcing kids to subsist on soymilk and spinach isn’t realistic. Eating healthfully isn’t an all-or-nothing endeavor, nor should it always be about calories and losing or gaining weight. It’s about achieving balance – and that’s hard for an adult to understand, let alone kids. Our society’s motto is, if a little is good, more is better. If you’re looking for solid information on good nutrition, here are some sources on the Net:
- Nutrition.gov – government information on nutrition
- Prevention.com – the popular magazine’s site about health and nutrition
- Delicious Decisions.org – healthy meal planning from the American Heart Association
- 2000 CDC Growth Charts: United States – pediatric growth charts form the National Center for Health Statistics,
- 5 A Day for Better Health – advice on incorporating more fruits and vegetables into your diet from the National Cancer Institute
Even though my daughter’s weight issue came from the other end of the scale, I can sympathize with the East Penn parents who received those letters. I felt tremendous guilt that someone else had to point out I wasn’t making all the right choices for my child’s health. But I made a commitment to myself and to Alex to fix my mistake. We followed the doc’s advice about solids. I also picked up a book nutrition for children. In Child of Mine: Feeding with Love and Good Sense, Ellyn Satter offers the following advice:
“The parent is responsible for what, when, where. The child is responsible for how much and whether. If you are doing your job and your child’s job, you are doing too much.â€?
As I write this, Alex is telling me, in her own special way, that she is hungry. If nothing else, the kid’s got a great sense of timing.
