Moms, it's all your fault. (Oh, but you knew that already!)
"What now?" you ask. Your personality. It's influencing the way your kids eat.
Results of a study
in Norway suggest that mothers with more negative thoughts and feelings
are more likely to give their kids unhealthy food. This is the first
study to look at children's diets and mothers' psychological and
socioeconomic variables.
Ugh. (Hey, kid, wanna Cheeto?)
From Science Daily:
These maternal personality traits fall under a collective name of high
negative affectivity (negative emotions). These people often have a
lower stress threshold, giving up quicker when faced with obstacles –
e.g. in a disagreement – and often experience lack of control of the
child.
Bad news, shiny happy people. Just because you're high on life, doesn't mean your kids are eating all their fruits and vegetables. Okay. So quit making the sad sacks feel worse. ('Nother Snickers bar, sweetie?)
Oh, and you with that control-freaky smugness? You're pretty bad, too.
"I think that mothers compensate for this either by trying to force
healthy food into their child or hold the sweet-bag strings extra
tightly," Ystrøm [one of the reasearchers] continues. "Paradoxically, they try to balance poor
control by actually using more control. With force and restrictions
they increase desire which quickly results in resistance in the form of
tantrums which these mothers are also bad at resisting. Also, earlier
studies have shown that controlling behaviour among parents is linked
with a more sugar-rich diet among children."
Photo: usmagazine.com
