How much children want to eat is really determined by the appetite center of the brain?

Is your family still forcing children to eat?

At the dinner table, a 4-year-old boy fiddled with the rice and the only piece of pork in the bowl with chopsticks.

"Mom, I don't want to eat pork, it's not delicious!" "Don't eat delicious. Pork is rich in nutrition. " "I just don't want to eat ..." "Stop it! Let you eat, don't be embarrassed! " The mother was obviously angered and shouted and threw it to the child.

The little boy stopped talking, just frowned, "glued" the rice with chopsticks and sent a few grains to his mouth.

Mother sighed, softened her attitude and said, "I'll buy you an ice cream after you finish this bowl of rice."

"good!" The little boy was very interested, but after a few bites, the speed slowed down again. "Mom, I want to shit ..."

"Go, go, never eat!" The mother's popularity was ignited again, reaching out and dumping the rice in the child's rice bowl into the trash can.

The child sat there, never daring to carry it to the toilet again, but began to eat.

This is a scene where I witnessed the mother and son at the next table in a restaurant one day.

Are your children often forced to eat?

"I don't want to push, but my child won't eat a bite", "My child is thin and worried about her malnutrition", "Don't push when eating, just say" hungry "after eating, and find all kinds of snacks to eat", "Old people at home like to push, but children never like to eat", … What do you mean?

There are 1000 reasons why Xiong Haizi doesn't like eating, but our suggestion is-don't push it, it will bring "sequelae" of forced eating!

Understanding "Brain Appetite Center"

Do you remember when a baby was lying in a crib sucking his fingers for a while and screaming with his mouth open for a while, he was hungry. The baby cried and told his parents, "I want to drink milk." Behind it is the brain appetite center (also called feeding center), which directly determines what children want to eat and how much they eat. Each child's brain appetite center determines the feeding amount is different.

Nancy Krebs, an American child nutritionist, once warned parents that most children know how much they need to eat. From a biological point of view, the ultimate goal of human beings is to transmit genes, so their physiological mechanism is to ingest nutrients that are in line with the growth of the body and let life continue. Pay attention to "nutrients suitable for your own physical growth", not the more the better.

Therefore, excluding diseases or taking drugs, when a child has poor appetite and anorexia, it is actually the child's physical mechanism at work-for example, a certain food is too nutritious and other nutrients are insufficient, and the body needs rich nutrition instead of a single nutrition; Or the overall food intake is too much, and the stomach needs to repair itself.

In addition, many parents worry that their children are too thin and think that they must not have enough to eat. In fact, thin children do not mean unhealthy. As long as the child's weight is stable rather than declining continuously, parents need not worry. Because an important factor of being thin or fat is physical fitness.

Is it harmful for children to force them to eat for a long time? Three "Sequela" of Strong Rice

I remember an educator Dewey famously said that education is not forcing children to absorb external things, but parents need to let their children's "innate" ability grow. The "innate" ability is actually "active consciousness". In short, it is "I want to eat" in eating, not "I want to eat".

If a child is forced to eat at an early age, it will bring three "sequelae" of forced eating:

1, eat passively

I remember a cold joke: a child goes to school by bike every day, and his mother will help him pump up his bike before going to bed every night. Until one day, his mother left. As a result, his bicycle was flat and difficult to ride. He thought it was broken, threw it to a beggar by the roadside and bought a new one. Unexpectedly, the bicycle broke down again in a few days ... This is a sad story that "mother never told him that the bicycle needed pumping, and the child didn't know that the bicycle needed pumping".

Of course, "eating" is a basic human need. Parents don't need to tell their children to eat every day. Children eat when they are hungry. However, if parents force their children to eat for a long time, children will have a lot of psychological dependence: for example, if parents don't feed or force them, children won't eat; If the food is not delicious, boycott it; Parents have no conditions to exchange. If they don't buy toys, they won't eat. ...

Because "compulsion" will make children misunderstand-"It is the responsibility of parents whether I eat or not" and "If I don't eat, parents will naturally find a way". In this way, parents are more nervous about their children's meals.