Day 17 – Why serving cookies for dinner could actually be good for your kids

Welcome to Day 17 of my family dinner photo journal. I hope that you have enjoyed reading. I have another 13 days planned for this thread before I get started on my next threads:

1. Whats for breakfast Picard’s?
2. Whats for lunch Picard’s? (COMING IN FALL – Just in time for back to school!)
3. Ask a dietitian Q&A

If you have a question that about feeding your kid(s) – send me an email at contact@kellypicard.com and I will try to include it in my Q&A Blog Series. I have already had a few questions come in – about how kids eats differently based on time of day and what to do when you kids doesn’t eat anything at a meal, but I would love to answer YOUR questions too!

Piano, Dinner, Soccer, Bath and Bed

Our standard Wednesday night looks a little something like piano lessons, family dinner, soccer (which admittedly got canceled due to thunder and lightning – though not until 5 minutes before the game AFTER my kid had already changed into his uniform), bath with a hair wash (which we only do on Sundays and Wednesdays) and then finally get my kiddos into bed.

With a schedule like this, having something quick and easy is key to getting dinner on the table. To do this, I rely on my weekend meal prep and had this great healthy meal ready to go (leftovers from our Sunday dinner) of vegetables, meat skewers, yogurt sauce, pita bread and roasted asparagus.

But in comes my sweet tooth

You know those days when you are in the mood for cookies? That was me today – the second I got home I felt compelled to make chocolate chip cookies. After consultation with my kids we opted for chocolate cookies with white chocolate chips (courtesy of the recipe on the Chipits White Chocolate Chip bag) – so those delicious morsels made it out on to the table too.

I also added mango lassi to the menu to ensure that there was a guaranteed kid-approved fruit/vegetable option. Must have been primed after yesterday’s post to sneak in some extra F and Vs (fruits and vegetables).

Tonight’s Table

I snapped this photo before the asparagus made it to the table. My kids must have been hungry because they will descending on the table like wild beasts – grabbing the cookies and the pasta noodles, requesting glasses of the mango lassi, etc before everything was quite set.

Tonight we just warmed up the leftovers in the microwave and I put those out along side the cookies and everythign else.

Won’t kids who are offered a plate of cookies for dinner eat only cookies?

Nope! Mine don’t anyways – and maybe you are thinking that my kids are those freaky kids of a dietitian mom that don’t like sweets and prefer kale, however if you have read about our candy Friday’s then you know that that is definitely not the case.

In fact evidence suggests that my kids aren’t freaky at all, that by taking the power out of taboo foods, kids can learn to enjoy cookies AND pasta AND mango AND meat (or whatever you are serving!) all that the same time.

So what did they eat?

The top photos are the before photos – with both boys choosing the noodles, cookies and lassi. My older son also asked for a piece of beef with yogurt sauce (umm – still need to hire that food stylist…).

I forgot to get one of the after shots, so forgive the clip art – message is empty plate. My older son grabbed some asparagus after we got it on the table and ate about 6 or 7 pieces of asparagus, but didn’t love the beef tonight.

So what?

Serving sweets at dinner helps to demonstrate to your kids that these foods are the same as other foods and can take away some of taboo-type allure that sweets have. If you have never done this before – expect your kids to get a very excited at the prospect of cookies for dinner. However, over time by giving your kids a chance to learn how to incorporate these foods into a healthy diet they will likely find that while they like cookies, they also like the others foods too.

If you have a question or comment, don’t hesitate to get in touch. Thanks for reading!