We’ve recently started a tradition in our family of a once a month silly dinner night. It got started because the kids were so tired of being told to mind their table manners, so we declared one night a month to be  freer (not completely free) than usual from the usual table manners rules.

It has now migrated into a silly dinner night.

It’s lots of fun and doesn’t have to cost anything more than a regular dinner. We choose a theme for each one. Last night was breakfast for dinner. Next month it will be dessert first.

It’s not easy to get some kids to eat right.

Come to think of it, it’s not easy to get some parents to eat right. We’re the ones who start it a lot of the time, aren’t we?

When you’re at home with the kids all day there’s a lot of pressure to feed them right. You just don’t have the excuse of having been at work outside the house all day for why you’re too tired to cook. Plus you’re there to see what they eat for every meal.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t always make it easy to teach good eating habits. Some kids are pretty resistant to the idea right from the start.

Start Them Off Right

Once you’re past the baby food stage, resist the urge to get a lot of prepackaged foods. It’s more work for you, but if you can cook most foods from scratch or something close to scratch you will have much better control over what your kids eat.

You’ll also be teaching them to appreciate more flavors, as most prepared and prepackaged foods are relatively bland, designed to appeal to the widest possible range of palates. They may also contain artificial colors and various types of sugar, such as high fructose corn syrup, that you are best off trying to minimize in your children’s diets.

Get the Kids Involved in Food Preparation

Most young children love helping in the kitchen. It’s something they can do with you, or at least watch what you do. Make sure you let them help as appropriate.

Kids can tear lettuce for salads, throw chopped vegetables into the bowl, help you measure ingredients and watch you do the actual cooking from a few feet away.

If you have the time, space and inclination, a garden is also a great way to get children interesting in healthy foods. Kids are more likely to enjoy vegetables that they have helped to grow, not to mention the great taste of produce fresh from your own garden.

Make Healthy Fun

Not all healthy food is boring. A common favorite is the fruit smoothie. You throw a variety of fruits, some juice and ice, maybe some honey for sweetener, into a blender and start mixing. Tastes great, very healthy.

You can make it more healthy by adding some vegetables into the mix. Carrot goes well in many cases, as do some leafy greens such as spinach. Just make sure there’s enough fruit to appeal to the kids.

I like to use frozen fruit in my smoothies, as it cuts out the need for ice.

The great thing about smoothies is that you can experiment with them. Berries of all sorts go very well as a general rule, and can easily be bought frozen for much cheaper than they are fresh much of the year. Bananas work very well. And if you want some dairy in there, yogurt adds a wonderful flavor.

What If They Just Don’t Like Healthy Foods?

Not all kids make their parents’ lives so easy, naturally. Some will express distaste for every healthy food you try to offer them.

Some say to disguise the vegetables. Books such as Deceptively Delicious and other titles provide recipes so that you can work vegetables into a wide variety of foods.

That’s not my own favorite method. You aren’t teaching your kids to appreciate vegetables and other healthy foods for their own sakes when you do that. However, if you need to work them in and nothing else is working, it’s a reasonable enough measure to take until you can get something better going.

Even when you’re trying to save money, there’s often that one person in the family who just isn’t quite cooperating with the plan. The one who still really wants those extras.

Maybe it’s Mom, maybe it’s Dad, maybe it’s one or all of the kids. But that person sure makes going grocery shopping difficult. How do you avoid buying all the extra stuff they want?

Well, kids are easier to cope with than when it’s the other parent. You either learn to say “no” or you go shopping without them as much as possible. Neither one is easy at times, and as your kids grow you will have to figure out what works best for each age, but you do what you can.

Such as have them buy the extras they think they can’t live without with their own money.

But it’s much more difficult when it’s one of the parents who isn’t hearing the other say “we need to spend less money and don’t really need that.” It gets to feeling as though you’re nagging or that they just aren’t paying any attention to you.

And of course an adult can easily just go back to the store on his or her own and buy the things you said no to before. It can take much more effort to break through the stubbornness.

Shopping alone is often much cheaper than bringing anyone else along. Just make sure it’s the person most willing to limit impulse buys. And bring a list.

A list can help even when you do bring the family along. Warn everyone who’s coming along that only items on the list will be bought. Go through the grocery store ads so you know what deals you don’t want to miss, and at least tentatively plan the kinds of meals you’d like to have for the week. The more you know about what you’re actually going to eat, the less excess you will buy.

Talk over the issues too, and be clear about exactly what is happening to your budget due to overspending at the grocery store. Making the problem clear may not be enough to immediately stop the problem, but it does mean you can brainstorm some acceptable solutions.

Take a look at your eating habits too. Can you give up convenience foods? What about sodas? Candy?

These items tend to add up fast, and many aren’t too good for you to begin with. Work up a way to work these out of your diets if possible, or at least agree on limits. I’ve always found that if they’re in the house, they get eaten, but if they aren’t, I won’t get desperate enough to go to the store just for them.

Changing your grocery shopping habits probably won’t solve all your money problems – many families have other places that could be cut equally or even more effectively, but it’s an area many are willing to target. Talk it out, work it out and see what happens.

All parents have some sort of food battle with kids. It’s just how these things work.

Not last night’s dinner,
but it sure looks good!

For example, last night I told my daughter we were having fish for dinner. She’s eaten it well in the past, so no worries, right?

Except she has suddenly decided she doesn’t like fish. Before it’s done cooking and even before she’s seen it.

I really should have said ‘chicken’. Odds are good she would have eaten it then.

So I played around with her a little. I had a topping on the fish, and she readily admitted that she loved the topping. It was a mix of bread crumbs, chopped cashews, honey and mustard. Really wonderful, and she admitted that she loved the topping.

So I told her about the nuts. Hey, the main part of the dinner was spoiled anyhow.

Immediately she announced that well… there was something in there she didn’t like and that was the nuts.

Cashews are the only nuts she likes when she admits to liking nuts. I know she was trying to play with my mind as much as I did with her when I mentioned the nuts. Besides, she kept nibbling it, if a bit slower.

Feeding kids is a funny thing. A favorite food one day is loathed another. And somehow it seems like just about all of them will eat any meat labeled ‘chicken’.

No matter what it really is.