Originally Posted by Jire

I can keep him happy for some time by giving him everything he wants, but that won't result in long term happiness. We're now talking about times when the child is still so young he can be considered a blank slate. He must be encouraged to exceed in things that many children pick up when they are older; although never pushing them to excess. If I asked a child what he wanted to do would be eat candy and be the king of the world, but if that's what you want to teach your child to be then you're a bad parent.

Originally Posted by Jire

Reading the posts in this thread I find it rather disappointing that most of the posts here are aimed at moulding the child to what YOU [the parent] would want him or her to be.

I want him to be successful in life. Don't we all want that to our children?


Just because you go out of you way and pay for something for your child to do, or make them do something doesn't mean they will like it.

My idea is not to push him over the edge. I just want him to receive the best possible standards to build up the dreams that will grow to be his in time.

The whole point of having a child is yes, to raise them the best that they can be, but most of all you need to keep them happy, not force them into something that YOU want them to do, you want them to do things yourself.

I can keep him happy for some time by giving him everything he wants, but that won't result in long term happiness. We're now talking about times when the child is still so young he can be considered a blank slate. He must be encouraged to excel in things that many children pick up when they are older; although never pushing them to excess. If I asked a child what he wanted to do would be eat candy and be the king of the world, but if that's what you want to teach your child to be then you're a bad parent.

I also read something about the nutritional thing, what the hell? Honestly? I mean kids eat a ton of junk food these days, fair enough they can get fat, obese or even worse, but what's stopping you as a parent to stop giving your child a little bit of it every so often

So you are encouraging teaching the growing generation to eat commercial crap with all kinds of additives and colourings, when you still have the possibility to teach them to eat balanced. You only want junk food if you have been taught to eat it. If you don't eat junk food as a child you won't have such a big tendency later on to eat it either, because the excess of sugar, fats and aroma strengtheners is so overwhelming the junk food won't taste good to you. I don't want to prevent every snack from my children, but I don't want them to suffer from obesity either.

I mean you don't need a nutritional meal for the kid every day! Home cooked meals are a child's best friend.

Are you implying home cooked meals aren't nutritional? I think that what I tried to say was exactly the opposite. The family should share as many meals together as possible consisting of healthy portions of proteins, carbohydrates, non-saturated fats and minerals. There can be a dessert as long as it isn't an industrial bomb of unhealthiness.

So yeah if you didn't bother to read all that, basically I would just do what would make my child happy.

Do what makes your child happy and healthy long-term. < Agreed

Home cook for him/her from a young age, maybe get them to help me to cook from time to time, things like that. And then I would ASK them at a certain age if they would like to do some sort of extra activity, and if yes then try out a bunch of things and see what they like the most! It's the child's future, don't ruin it by trying to turn it into what you possibly failed to be.

For some reason your piece of writing was extremely hilarious to read. So your plan is to have the child's only activity to be cooking with you? Then, at some unmentioned age you would ask him what would he like to do?

Originally Posted by Kittyy

Relating the junk food part and what you were arguing against it, I was trying to say that there is nothing wrong with giving a child a bit of junk food from time to time, I mean nothing HUGE, a treat for example. Like McDonalds is what you would class as industrial waste, yeah? I'd give it to my child [if I had one] whenever they have made an exceptional effort something, for example school or if they achieve something in said activity that they may have chosen to do [Let's say Yellow belt in Karate as it's then semi-toribash related, ha] so in other words somewhat of a celebration, obviously it wouldn't be MCDONALDS MCDONALDS MCDONALDS MCDONALDS MCDONALDS MCDONALDS, other rewards such as being money, toys, things like that, because it would make my child work to receive said, money, toys etc. So more for celebration which will lead to motivation.

Originally Posted by Kittyy

And also I wasn't saying that home cooked meals are not nutritional I meant, referring to whoever said about a nutritional diet that you do not need to go to the extremely of looking at that kind of things, just simple home cooking would do the job fine.

Also referring to your closing sentence, have a bit more respect and consideration before you start bombing off and try understand what others are saying, even if it is not that clear.