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High calorie tricks for kids
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The Magician has almost completely disappeared at this point. It is now possible to see right through him, which is convenient for doctors and whatnot, but not so good for his parents, or for him. But he has placed himself on a 5 calorie per day diet and is now as thin as a sheet of paper. At the right angle he pretty much disappears completely. He isn't, strictly speaking, 2-dimensional yet, but I believe that to be his goal.
Maybe you have this same problem. These days all we hear about is obesity in kids, the fattening of America, video games and no fresh air make Jack a fat kid with pasty skin and no friends; but what if your kid is the opposite. It doesn't help that the doctor measures your kid against the national average and then declares, in the same tone with which they decry that our kids are too heavy, that your kid is too light.
And the parenting magazines offer all kids of tricks to sneak vegetables to your kids, to cut out the sugar, to make healthy alternatives to junk food...
And they advise you to cut down the TV time to 2 hours a day, to promote imagination, to get the kids outside more...
But these are not my realities. My reality is that I have to struggle to keep my kids inside if lightning is landing in the back yard. We don't have cable so the only TV they watch is the occasional movie. We never feed them frozen dinners, we cook almost exclusively with chicken, and the kids like vegetables. Can't wait, in fact, to eat the ones we're growing ourselves without pesticides or any of that nasty junk in our very own back yard. The ones they helped plant and water.
My kids aren't fat and lazy. (Well, except the Angel, who is 7 months old and is sharing his brother's 2T hand-me-downs with his 2 year old sister.) The larger issue, the big problem, is that the Magician goes through these phases where he hardly eats at all. It isn't that he is holding out for junk food, because we don't have any in the house; it's that he doesn't want to eat. As a result he is this long drink of water, tall for his age, but we have to keep him out of the wind lest he snap in half. And none of the magazines have suggestions for my problem.
The tricks we have are these:
- No white milk unless it is fortified with powdered milk to add calories.
- Alternately, make Carnation Instant Breakfast chocolate milk.
- Whole milk, always whole milk, because, well... duh.
- Cheese everything. You can mix cheese with anything warm to add calories.
- If it calls for milk, use half and half or heavy whipping cream.
- Mashed potatoes get cream cheese and butter (skins on for better nutrition).
- Watch the salt content.
- Cereal bars that they tell you to use to replace meals if you are trying to lose weight are small and our kid will eat 2 of them between meals.
- Keep them grazing on healthy, high calorie snacks. They tell you to snack your kids on fruits and veggies, but if you need to fatten them up you aren't going to get the calories out of apple slices. Fruits are for breakfast, veggies are for lunch and dinner, snacks are for dairy and carbs.
But then, if they won't eat, you can always shamelessly rely on empty threats like hospitalization and tube feeding, which is only actually about 90% empty.
And no, the Magician isn't transparent. And he gets more than 5 calories per day. But despite all our special preparations for meals, he still fills up way too soon (which leaves more cheesy goodness for Papa to eat.)
So that's the next trick. Figuring out how to make him hungry.
