Calm Mealtimes Improve Children’s Eating Habits
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BananaStock/Thinkstock(MINNEAPOLIS) — Keeping it calm at dinnertime can help kids keep off unwanted weight.
Jerica Berge, a psychologist at the University of Minnesota, says that when parents make meals pleasant experiences and use them to get to know their children better, the young ones will react and subsequently, eat healthier.
Berge and her team conducted their study by having 120 families use iPads to make video recordings of their mealtimes.
Right off the bat, the researchers noted that meals where the youngsters were overweight often tended to be chaotic affairs that were generally several minutes shorter than meals involving normal-weight kids.
Families with overweight children also ate more often outside the kitchen and when that happened, they consumed more food.
Berge says that when parents offered encouragement to their children at meals, rather than lecture them, it had a more positive influence on the youngsters’ eating habits.
Furthermore, in the homes of normal-weight kids, both parents were more often present at family meals than those where the kids had weight issues.
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