I babysit for some people who have always been worried about their oldest son not eating enough.  When he was little, he mainly ate fruit, and they were always trying to get him to eat more protein, such as tofu and sliced lunch meat.  To try to entice him to eat more protein, they told him that it would help him to grow taller.

Of course, he didn’t care — he was only 3 years old, so he wasn’t really thinking about getting more of a height increase!  He was actually small for his age, but he was well proportioned and healthy, so it didn’t seem like his growth and development was really suffering that much for it.

When I was in college taking child development and parenting classes, one of the things we always talked about is that you shouldn’t actually force kids to eat.  For one thing, it can create aversions by making them eat things they don’t like before they are really ready.  Another problem, though, is one that is starting to come to light with all of the problems with obesity in our society today: By teaching kids to clean their plates, you may be teaching them to continue eating after they are actually full.

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