Don't take 'no' for an answer | Bangkok Post: news

MUMMYSAYS

In the child's thesaurus, "cannot" is often a synonym of "do not want to."

My 11-year old niece had been living most of her pre-teen life confusing her carers with those two words. She said she couldn't eat a thousand things and, apart from the evil auntie who's writing this column, almost all adults in the family took it as such. Call it child abuse if you want, but when she returned the dish to me saying "I cannot eat chicken," I simply said, in my familiar, fashionably sarcastic menace, "What do you mean by you 'cannot,' darling? If you don't choke up blood or have a sudden epileptic attack when you eat chicken, then just eat it!"

I have a personal belief that carers are responsible for 70% of choosy eating habits in children, and that's due to a number of obsolete, ill-informed childminding tips of olden times. Don't get me wrong, I swear by various old childcare wisdoms, but when it comes to those that can be reasonably contradicted by modern science, I see no reason in not embracing newer, scientifically proven knowledge.