Feeding of Children
115
own present comfort, but for their future good. And to this end she
will teach her children the important lesson of controlling the appetite,
and of self-denial, that they should eat, drink, and dress in reference to
health.
The Ministry of Healing, 383-385
The importance of training children to right dietetic habits can
hardly be over-estimated. The little ones need to learn that they eat
to live, not live to eat. The training should begin with the infant in
its mother’s arms. The child should be given food only at regular
intervals, and less frequently as it grows older. It should not be given
sweets, or the food of older persons, which it is unable to digest. Care
and regularity in the feeding of infants will not only promote health,
and thus tend to make them quiet and sweet-tempered, but will lay the
foundation of habits that will be a blessing to them in after years.
As children emerge from babyhood, great care should still be taken
in educating their tastes and appetite. Often they are permitted to eat
what they choose and when they choose, without reference to health.
The pains and money so often lavished upon unwholesome dainties
lead the young to think that the highest object in life, and that which
yields the greatest amount of happiness, is to be able to indulge the
appetite. The result of this training is gluttony, then comes sickness,
which is usually followed by dosing with poisonous drugs.
Parents should train the appetites of their children, and should not
permit the use of unwholesome foods. But in the effort to regulate the
diet, we should be careful not to err in requiring children to eat that
which is distasteful, or to eat more than is needed. Children have rights,
they have preferences, and when these preferences are reasonable, they
should be respected.
Regularity in eating should be carefully observed. Nothing should
be eaten between meals, no confectionery, nuts, fruits, or food of any
kind. Irregularities in eating destroy the healthful tone of the digestive
organs, to the detriment of health and cheerfulness. And when the
children come to the table, they do not relish wholesome food; their
appetites crave that which is hurtful for them.
Mothers who gratify the desires of their children at the expense
of health and happy tempers, are sowing seeds of evil that will spring