Teach your children how to cook

Curtis Stone, Jamie Oliver and many others out there are stating that too many children today are growing up unable to cook. They get to their teens then adulthood without ever having learned the most basic dishes. These same people usually turn to junk food and take away or frozen dinners which only compels our obesity crisis. They're also more likely to raise children who can't cook and the cycle continues.

I've seen this for myself.  With the introduction of ready made foods many friends I grew up with had parents who were heating up meals but not actually preparing or cooking meals. Those friends grew up unable to cook and now have children who are also not embracing cooking.  That is generations of people losing one of our most basic survival skills: cooking!!!!

Recently there was a meme floating around on social media, meant to be a funny joke that said: "Men cooking... Because the last generation of mothers didn't teach their daughters jack."

That joke puts all the onus on mothers failing and suggests that men cooking is a bad thing. The truth is a great many males and females haven't learned to cook even the most basic foods.

Fussy eater

I think most parents have at least one fussy eater during their time. Either their own children or another child they're looking after. For me it's my youngest. The list of foods they won't eat is long and their reaction to being served foods they refuse to eat is tiresome and annoying.

They burst into tears each and every time they're is given something they don't like. They'll be given mashed potato, sausages and beans and be in tears because they don't like mashed potato and beans. They'll be given a jam sandwich and burst into tears because they don't like jam. They'll burst into tears because they don't like bananas, or carrots, or Brussels sprouts (ok, I understand that one), or peas, or corn, or lettuce, or tomato...

The list of dislikes is endless, if not growing, while the choice of likes mostly revolves around foods that don't hold much nutritional value - such as foods made with processed wheat and sweets. I don't really understand the outbursts either because it's not as though they work. They don't get another meal in it's place. They don't get to eat the bits they like and leave the bits they don't; that results in being sent to bed or not getting anything else to eat until the other food is eaten. Yet they continue to cry and cry and cry each time they're served something they don't like.

I'm getting to breaking point with this child because my other children understand how food works in our house. It is a privilege to be getting food because many people go without wholesome foods daily.

Seriously there are people going hungry as we speak, homeless people with no means of getting a decent meal, poverty stricken countries with no means of feeding their people, and overweight people making really bad food choices and killing themselves and their children slowly.

Ditch the dummy

I had a little girl come and stay with me. She was 3 at the time and still very much addicted to her dummy, sucking on it during the day, all day actually. Up the street when shopping, at the playground, kinder etc.

Her parents couldn't get her to stop using her dummy but then they had difficulty doing a great many things for their little girl and no one to help them with their ordeals. And also suffering from a little bit of parental laziness. 

They had talked to me about their dilemma in getting their daughter to ditch the dummy and I had given advice which they promptly put in the too hard basket. They mentioned hoping I'd have some luck getting her ditch the dummy when they dropped her off for the weekend.

Soon after this little girl came to stay with me we lost the dummy. She spent a good part of the day trying to find it, trying to remember when she saw it last. I helped her look as well, pretending I didn't know where it was.

I thought she'd be upset, crying her eyes out, but she just got on with her time with us. We played inside, went for walks, went to the park, cooked and ate and generally had a good time.

By the time her parents came back to pick her up she had all but forgotten about the dummy. I talked to the mum about how we lost the dummy and how the little girl was fine without it. Thinking I'd done her a nice favour. The mum had said she wanted the dummy gone but didn't know how to do it.

A couple of days later I find out she had her dummy again, wouldn't give it up and the parents couldn't get her to stop using it again.

Sometimes parents create battles for themselves with their children. Sometimes they create battles where there need not be any. They think giving in to every whim makes their lives easier or their child happier. They think taking the lazy, I can't be bothered, way out makes their battle less troublesome. That is far from the truth.

Control crying, is it bad?

Many people debate control crying. A lot of people talk about both sides of the story leaving you wondering is it really that bad/good?

There are also a great many mothers out there not getting a good night's sleep even though their child is over 12 months and should now be sleeping through the night.

I was one such mother.

When my partner and I had our first child they had no idea what they were doing. They'd never been a parent before and didn't know what to expect and how to deal with a crying baby. Every time the baby cried they went running to it to pick it up and comfort it, or pressure me into doing so. Certain the baby was in some type of distress.