Baby feeding cartoon

Natalia: “You should never feed while watching TV. The risks of problems with the digestive tract in the future, the habit of eating only while watching TV is terribly bad. And the further, the worse. My brother was forced to eat like that, then my mother did not turn on the TV set for him - it reached exhaustion. He did not eat for a week in protest. It came to vomiting from a super small amount of food. It’s better to wean before it’s too late.”

The opinion of experts (overwhelmingly they are in complete solidarity: eating under cartoons should be banned):

Olga Nikiforova, psychologist: “You can't make a cult out of food. He doesn’t want to eat - let him not eat, drink juice, kefir or eat three spoons and that’s it. That's enough for the kids. A person needs very little food, especially children. So they use mealtime to lengthen contact with us or entertain themselves. It is necessary to separate the TV from eating: “flies separately, cutlets separately.”

Olga Golubinskaya, neurologist, psychotherapist: “It is important to eat properly and competently. "Be with food while eating." We do not want to have a passive, sedentary child in the future, but who eats a lot and often in front of the screen. The bad habit of automatic eating “watching TV” is excluded by caring parents. Neither TV nor computer will ever replace your love and time spent next to you."

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In this camp of conflicting people, they usually know about all of the above, but for various reasons they continue to turn on cartoons to the child during meals. Let's see why it happens:

• Cartoons act as an effective distraction for the smallest and capricious ones, who are still being fed by their mother: while a bright action is unfolding on the screen, the child obediently opens his mouth, chews and swallows.
• Some older children can't even be seated at the table without cartoons, let alone make them eat! Cartoons as a guarantee that the child will sit still and at least eat something.
• The switched on TV is a native and familiar background even for parents. Under it, cooking and cleaning are more convenient, and eating is more interesting, and there is simply no other time to watch movies and TV shows. The child, of course, adopts this approach.
• While the child is eating and watching, you can organize laundry, wash the floor, feed the rest of the family, and do other things.
• If a child has nutritional problems, they solve the problem with the food itself (what the child eats, how much and under what sauce), and do not look for the guilty somewhere else. Cartoons are positioned only as a nice addition.
• Lack of trepidation before the horror stories of overseas scientists. Indeed, many adults and children who do not turn off the TV while eating do not suffer from either obesity or digestive problems. Everything is individual and relative. By the way, in those most popular studies (where children watching cartoons ate three times more than those who simply ate), the guys were fed pizza (!). These are the obesity problems of Americans who are looking for something to blame for their poor food culture in general.
• Operate according to the "do not limit until the child himself is tired" method. This principle works well for children accustomed to such upbringing. If some object is forbidden, it will become more desirable, something that is allowed and ordinary. Look around and realize that it is more convenient to eat first, and then pay attention to the cartoon.

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Comments of supporters of chewing in front of the TV:

Masha (daughters 4 and 2): “In our family, it is generally not customary to sit at the table without a TV. Therefore, I see no reason to wean from such a habit, if all the same, my husband and I and grandparents eat "with cartoons").

Arina (son 4 years old): “We always feed on cartoons! We are all satisfied with everything. Honestly, I don't see any problem here! I myself eat in front of a computer or TV. It’s not interesting to eat and stupidly look at the wall. I don’t understand why they make some kind of giant problem out of cartoons! And ours, thanks to cartoons, began to call colors in English.

Grandmother's sayings that "eat - look at the plate" and "while I'm eating, I'm deaf and dumb" are really justified and fair. Eating and looking somewhere outside the plate is definitely harmful. However, as in many other aspects of raising children, achieving an absolute ideal is both difficult and unnecessary. One way or another, we make indulgences in child mode (and your junior student at 9already sleeping in the evening?), and in nutrition, and in general, we don’t want to turn the magical and very quickly flying childhood time into a continuous series of rules and prohibitions. So how to find the "golden mean" and what to do if cartoons during meals have already become a tradition?

It's up to you, of course. And strictly individually:

• Visible problems with excess weight in children who do not stop working with their jaws while watching cartoons? Worth thinking about. And at the same time, do not build food "into a cult", the child may well limit himself to a smaller amount of food eaten, if it is required to wean from a negatively affecting habit.
• Does the child, on the other hand, eat poorly? Perhaps the problem is in the food itself, and not cartoons. Try to feed differently, arrange and present food more interesting (sometimes a handful of grated cheese or a spoonful of condensed milk can make a dish much more attractive), and the best thing is to involve the child in the cooking process. Created together with mom is eaten more readily.
• Does your child like to "hover" over a plate while watching a cartoon? Here it makes sense to postpone the meeting with your favorite characters for the afternoon. At the same time, get a good motivator for the child to eat quickly. The main thing is to make sure that there is no other extreme and that the plate is not cleaned in seconds.
• Do you want to achieve the separation of "flies" from "cutlets" in principle? First, check if your kitchen TV is working right now. The very presence of this device, and even, by tradition, almost always turned on, in the kitchen is already a reason to wake up and not shift the harm from your own habits to the child. Try to separate the food area and the relaxation area in the apartment. Or just turn off the TV.
• Is silence pressing on your ears after the usual “background” disappears? You can find another. Radio, music, even educational audio programs - in addition to the TV itself, the choice is great. By the way, it is really harmful for children to watch ads, because everything they see and hear is stored in their heads. Or do you want your child to know exactly which brand of soap will make his skin really silky at the age of three?

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because he is not busy with food, so he misses this important moment). It is treated very simply: give the child exactly the portion that is due to him. No additives, cookies or other snacks.