Recently, at a fast food restaurant, I watched in horror a mom feeding her barely 3 years old child oily fries and allowing the child to drink carbonated, coloured water. She has three other kids and you would think that she is probably smarter now that she has more children.
My question here is, ‘Are parents necessary wiser with more parenting experiences?’. I think I have to say no. Many parents are ignorant of their children’s health and nutrition. They still do not see the dangers of too much added sugars and how their children’s health may be affected.
However, parents are now better informed because of the various community messages, informative advertisements and also social media sites to provide the platform for sharing and discussion. For eg. on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/AnmumClub, there is a wealth of knowledge moms can gain.
They have all the frequently asked questions on the Facebook like ‘How do you get your child to switch to different milk?’ and ‘What important supplements and nutrients are moms feeding their children now?’ plus a host of other things moms want to know. Mothers get to discuss with each other and this sharing of ideas usually help moms to gain confidence in bringing up their children.
Do take and look and who knows, you may learn a new thing or two on how to bring up your little ones.
Therefore, as a more experienced mom, I seriously suggest parents to be more informed and be aware of what they feed their children. For example, a seemingly good nutritious drink of growing up milk may have a lot of hidden added sugars. Sadly, some growing up milk have a lot of added sugars because children naturally love sweet things. When ignorant parents like the one I mentioned above fed their children with extremely unhealthy and sweet drinks, the child will be hooked.
So, parents shouldn’t compromise the health of their kids. They should find out how growing up milk without added sugars and one which contain advanced nutrients for brain such a Gangliosides and DHA is good for their child.
I have seen a couple of advertisements on no added sugars in growing up milk and I am pretty sure other moms with younger children have to. I bet they will consciously look out for growing up milk with no added sugars which is supposed to give their children better nutrition and help in brain development.
The Ministry of Health too have published community messages about danger of too much sugars and parents shouldn’t ignore them. Our kids’ health is so fragile so moms and dads better start cutting down sugary stuffs fed to their kids. At all times, we should adopt healthier alternatives and better nutrition.
Therefore, my conclusion is parenting is a learning process and we owe it to our children to learn and adopt newer, healthier lifestyle all the times for the sake of our children.