Rational Parenting

I read an article today about how if you want to make your kids eat healthy food, all you have to do is discuss with them how nutritious food makes them feel good and how not nutritious food makes them feel bad. You should talk about autoimmune inflammation and food sensitivities that cause behavioral issues.

I read that and then laughed so hard I cried!

This article was written by someone who believes in "rational parenting". This is the concept that if you treat your children like the rational mini-adults they are, then they will certainly understand and respect the things you are telling them. Usually those who believe in rational parenting are people with only one child to deal with and no other life obligations other than making sure that little Jackson eats his quinoa. They only have a sample size of one with limited experimental variables. I have a hard time believing their hypothesis based on those statistics. Try convincing a daycare full of random three year olds to eat their greens and then come back and talk to me about how rational parenting stands up against that.

I have never met a little kid that can be rationally talked out of eating a bowl of Fruit Loops. I have never met a kid that grasped the concept of food sensitivities or autoimmunity. The whole article was so silly because kids aren't rational. My kid once puked on herself because she was so mad that I gave her a blue cup instead of a pink one. That is hardly a rational reaction.

I am not going to pretend that I have some magical parenting advice to bestow. I know better than to think that because my one kid isn't a total basket-case, that I have somehow figured out this whole "parenting" thing out. My only advice is to caution others on handing out advice as if they got it all figured out.