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One mom convinces her children that ice cubes are the optimal dessert and uses them as bargaining chips in an ongoing punishment/reward system. Another sticks birthday candles in healthful meals every day and sings "Happy Birthday" to her twin toddlers to get them to eat nutritious foods they'd otherwise shun. "Pretty much every minute of every day is spent convincing my boys to do something—whether it's agreeing to let me change their diapers without a fuss, to drinking their milk, to wearing their hats outside," she says. "It's mentally and physically exhausting, so I've had to come up with an encyclopedia of tricks to get them to cooperate."
It's not so unusual: Many parents fib to their kids to some extent using the "for their own good," rationale, whether it's sneaking vegetables into their food or pretending the family dog went away to live on a farm. So what are a few white lies if it prevents a tantrum or makes your child feel better? According to several Children's Hospital Boston experts, it's a slippery slope, and one that should stop when it comes to matters of children's health.
The trick of sneaking healthful food into kid-friendly fare has raised red flags among many nutrition experts, especially after last year's controversial book by Jessica Seinfeld, which describes ways to hide veggie purees and other nutritious foods in kid-friendly dishes. According to Children's nutrition physician Chris Duggan, MD, MPH, disguising healthy food can do more harm than good. "It sets up a false dichotomy between nutritious foods and those that are fun to eat," he says. "That's not sending children the right nutrition message."
Boston mother Emily Franklin, author of Too Many Cooks: 4 Kids, 1 Mother, 165 New Foods, has spent years trying to teach her children about healthy eating without resorting to trickery. "It's one thing to tell your kids the tooth fairy leaves them a dollar under their pillow, but I'd never mush up broccoli and hide it in a brownie," she says. "All that teaches them is that they like brownies. Teaching good habits from the beginning is important. This way, they'll be able to make better choices for themselves as they grow older."
Another parental trick that's recently come under fire is giving kids fake medications to help them feel better. Conversation on the topic got louder this summer with the release of a new chewable placebo pill. Sold as a dietary supplement (since it can't legally be sold as medicine), the sugary tablet is marketed as a way for parents to make their children think they're giving them real medication—thereby making the child feel taken care of—while sparing them unnecessary medication. Michael Shannon, MD, MPH, a pharmacologist and toxicologist at Children's, can see why parents would be tempted to use placebos, and even knows pediatricians who encourage parents to do so, but is adamantly opposed to them. "My opinion is that this is a really, really terrible idea, mainly because it revolves around deceit," he says. "Sometimes, we have to say or do things to our children that aren't completely candid and forthright, but we really need to keep that to an absolute minimum."
It's also a trust issue, according to John Knight, MD, director of Children's Center for Adolescent Substance Abuse Research. "Kids will get older and discover what you've been giving them wasn't really medicine," he says. "How would I feel if someone were doing that to me? I think that children or teens would feel the same way—betrayed." Knight also points out that socializing kids to the use of medication when it's unnecessary is likely a bad idea, given our medication-happy society. "Parents would be better off doing the opposite and explaining to the child why she doesn't need medication."
Beyond the betrayal issue is the concern that sending children the wrong medication message can lead to life-long behavior changes. Shannon suspects that a child regularly given fake medicine can become desensitized to the power of real medication. "If a child believes that a solution to every ill, whether it's physical or emotional, is found in a pill, I'm convinced this is going to lead to an adult with a tendency to abuse medications later in life," he says.
So what's a parent to do if she'd rather treat than trick? When it comes to getting picky eaters to eat healthful food, Duggan says that consistently offering children fruits, vegetables and other good foods starting when they're 6 months old and continuing through toddlerhood is an important step. "It takes some time, practice and even refusal for a child to figure out a new food," he says.
As for placebos, Shannon suggests finding techniques to let a child know she can change her own condition without unnecessary medication. "It's easier said than done, but every parent has that skill anyway—getting kids to overcome fears," he says. "It's a matter of refining that skill and using the power of suggestion." So if a child has a cold, parents shouldn't reach for something ineffective like a placebo. "Instead, they can say to the child, 'You're not going to feel well for a certain amount of time, but I bet if we do something you really, really enjoy, you'll forget how badly you feel and you'll actually get better quicker.' Then, miraculously, the child will wake up the next day and feel great—without any tricking or deceit."
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