Here kiddo kiddo,
some chocolate cake with veggies hidden.
Have you noticed that there is a new trend in children’s products? It’s called “trick your kid to do stuff you otherwise can’t get them to do”.
First of all, I’m no saint here. I admit I have bought the candy bar at the grocery store check out just to make my kid to stop screaming, or said we are going to mall to visit Disney Store and forgotten to mention I need new clothes too. Every mom “tricks” her kids sometimes, that’s just the fact. But there is a big difference doing it sometimes than doing it every day.
That’s why I don’t understand this thought line at all that it’s OK for moms to trick their kids to eat healthy food, drink water or do sports on a daily basis.
Shouldn’t we teach those things since day one, so they become the normal thing to do? Shouldn’t we teach “eat your veggies, they are good for you”?
Shouldn’t we avoid the “my kid just wants a juice box/french fries/candy” syndrome by not letting them drink a juice box a day? Or shouldn’t we give them home cooked veggies since they are babies so they get used to them and to love them?
I’m sure most moms and kids know that Fruit Roll Ups are not fruit, but candy, or eating French Fries doesn’t really count as eating healthy vedgetables. Making unhealthy stuff to sound healthy is so old school – everybody knows the facts by now.
Now it’s trendy to make good stuff to sound like junk, so kids will like it.
It still is not telling the truth.
See? It’s your juice box, just healthier, muhahaa, muhahaa..
I’m sure that by now you have heard of these two some sort of a marketing miracle products – Aqua2Go – water in a juice box- and Jessica Seinfeld’s Deceptively Delicious book – hiding veggies into foods so kids don’t know they are eating them.
Oh yeah Jessica!
Help me to trick my dinner and pimp up my kids’ plates.
While I understand the idea – tricking kids to drink water instead of juice just by putting the water in a juice box or eating veggies simply by pureeing it and mixing into cakes, muffins or chicken nuggets – I don’t get the point.
Obviously there will become a day the kid will realize mom tricked him. What is that doing for the trust?
The kid will just learn to be a teenager who hides her Jack Daniels in her coke (oops, that was me, but my mom tricked me to eat the healthy stuff, already in the 80’s when it wasn’t even trendy), or to lie to get what she wants.
Mom, don’t be alarmed of the day your kid will outsmart you and trick you.
You are the one who taught her the art of tricking.
Sweetie pie, you need your exercise,
why don’t you play your video game?
I know the Seinfeld’s book was among top 100 books of 2007 – and it was published in October – and the Fisher-Price Smart-Cycle (above) was one of the biggest sellers past Holiday season. The water-boxes? They made it to the Ellen show after one month of production.
Is it really just me, or does somebody else think too this trend is backwards?
