Does your child LOVE junk food?

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A post shared by Dr Debmita Dutta - Parenting Expert (@debmitadutta)

Does your child LOVE junk food?

Does your child keep asking for junk food?

Does your child refuse to eat healthy food?

Do you worry that your child’s love for junk food is starting to look like JUNK FOOD ADDICTION?

Then this is what you need to do to reduce your child’s love for junk food

1. Don’t give junk food as a REWARD.

Never tell your child – 
“I will give you a chocolate if you do…….”
“I will take you for pizza if you get …..marks” 
Junk food is addicting because it triggers off the reward pathway of the brain and makes your child feel good. This feeling makes your child eat more and more junk food.
When you give junk food as a reward – you make this worse.
Your child now begins to equate junk food with (a) Rewards (b) Your love (c) Your approval
This increases their addiction. 

2. Don’t give junk food to END A TANTRUM.

When your child throws a tantrum – they need your love to calm down. When you give them a chocolate during the tantrum – they begin to think that junk food is love.
This makes them love junk food.

3. Don’t give junk food when your child REFUSES TO EAT HEALTHY FOOD

When children refuse to eat – they often do it to feel powerful.
In a world where they are so small that they have no power and no right to make any decision – they show their power by refusing to eat.
When we give them junk food at this point so that they eat “something” they begin to associate junk food with power and victory.
This makes them love junk food.

Don’t make these mistakes.

Type FOOD and make these changes now.

Share this so that others who give your child chocolates, biscuits, chips and other junk food as gifts and rewards to show their love – see this and stop.

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#parenting #junkfood #kidsnutrition