Hints on Child-training

by H. Clay Trumbull

What a grown person likes to eat or drink depends largely on what that person was trained to eat or drink while a child. And a child can be trained to like almost any sort of food or drink, either good or bad. No small responsibility, therefore, for both the health and the enjoyment of a child, devolves on him who has in hand the training of a child’s appetite.

That a child inherits tastes in the matter of food and drink cannot be questioned; but this fact does not forbid the training of a child’s tastes away from its inborn tendencies; it merely adds an element to be considered in the training process. A child born in the tropics soon learns to like the luscious fruits which are given to him freely; while a child born in the arctic regions learns with the same rapidity to like the grosser diet of fish and oil which is his chief supply of food. In one region the people live mainly on roots and berries; in another, they devour raw flesh or drink fresh blood; in yet another, they eat dried locusts or grasshoppers; in yet another, it is milk or honey which is their chief means of sustaining life. In every region the children are easily trained to enjoy the eating of that which they have to eat; and if a child is taken at an early age from one region to another, he quickly adapts himself to his new conditions, and learns to like that which is given to him as his means of satisfying hunger. All of which goes to show that the natural appetite of a child does not demand one kind of food above another, to that extent which forbids the training of a child to enjoy that which he can have and which he ought to use.

As a rule, very little attention is given to the training of a child’s appetite. The child is supplied with that food which is easiest obtained, and which the child is readiest to take. If the parents give little thought to their children’s welfare, they simply allow their children to share with them at the common table, without considering whether or not the food is that which is best suited to the children’s needs. If the parents are tender-hearted, and lovingly indulgent toward their children, they are quite likely to show favor by giving to them those things which please a child’s palate, or which are favorites with the parents themselves.

Finding that a child likes sugar, a parent is tempted to give a bit of sugar to a child who is not ready to take anything else at its meal-time; even though that bit of sugar may destroy the child’s appetite for the hour, or disturb the child’s stomach for all day. Again, seeing that the child is glad to try any article of food which his parent enjoys, the parent, perhaps, proffers from his own plate that which he deems a delicacy; although it may be of all things the least suited to the child’s state of health, or condition of being. And so it is that the child is trained in wrong ways of eating, at the very time when he most needs training in the right way.

A child is quite likely to have his freaks and fancies of appetite, which a kind parent is tempted to indulge instead of checking. One child would eat only the softer part of bread, while rejecting its crust. One would eat meat without vegetables; another would refuse one kind of meat, or of vegetables, while eating all others freely; and so on. The more these peculiarities are indulged, the stronger becomes their hold on the child. The more they are checked and restrained, the weaker their power becomes. Yet most parents seem to count such peculiarities as beyond their control, and therefore to be accepted as inevitable; instead of realizing their personal responsibility for the continuance or the removal of them.

“Your boy ought to eat less meat and more farinaceous food,” says a physician to a mother, whose boy is in the doctor’s hands. “Let him have oatmeal and milk for breakfast; and see to it that he eats meat only once a day, and sparingly at that.” “Johnny is a great hand for meat,” is the answer; “and he can’t take oatmeal.” And in that answer the mother shows that all the blame in the case rests on herself, and not on her Johnny. Johnny ought to have been trained to eat what is good for him, instead of indulging his personal whims in the eating line.

When a mother says, “My boy won’t eat potatoes,” or “He won’t eat tomatoes,” or “He will eat no meat but beef,” she simply confesses to her culpable failure of duty in the training of her boy’s appetite. If she were to say that she did not approve of one of those things, or of the other, and therefore she would not give it to him, that would be one thing; but when she says that he will not take it even though she thinks it best for him, that is quite another thing; and there is where the blame comes in.

Of course, it is to be understood that there are articles of food in familiar use which, here and there, a child cannot eat with safety. On the seashore, for example, the clam, which is eaten freely by most persons, seems to be as poison to certain individuals. It is not that these persons do not like the clam; but it is that their systems recoil from it, and that its eating is sure to bring on a serious illness. A like state of things exists with regard to fresh strawberries in the country. They are a delicious fruit in the estimation of most persons. They are as a mild form of poison to certain individuals. But these cases are abnormal ones. They have no practical bearing on the prevailing rule, that a child can be trained to like whatever he ought to eat, and to refrain from the eating of whatever is not best for him. And herein is the principle of wise training in the realm of a child’s appetite.

A prominent American educator put this principle into practice in his own family, consisting of four boys and four girls. He was a man of limited means, and he felt the necessity of training his children to eat such food as he deemed proper for them, and as good as he could afford to supply. His choice of food for his family table was wisely made, to begin with; and then he showed wisdom in his mode of pressing it upon his children.