"Ed Pawlowski" > wrote in message
...
> On 9/6/2014 7:25 PM, Julie Bove wrote:
>>
>
>
>> Most of the kids I see are at the dance studio and most of them are very
>> skinny. But a lot of them are dancing 12+ hours a week and don't always
>> get regular meals.
>
>
> I'd attribute that to poor parenting. Good parents don't put dance (or
> sports) over proper nutrition.

They tell me that the kids won't eat. One of the moms of such a kid is a
Dr. Yep. MD. Go figure. Things have gotten so bad that the dance
teachers have had to make kids sit out and eat. If they have no food, they
have to provide it for them.

Apparently there are quite a lot of kids who have little to no interest in
food. I saw a lot of them when we lived in military housing in CA. My kid
was never that way and neither was I so I couldn't relate. If left to their
own devices, those kids would just play and play until they collapsed. They
did drink a lot of juice. I'm sure that didn't help because juice can be
filling and it doesn't provide a lot of nutrients. So the parents would
stop them from playing every now and then and insist that they eat 5 bites
of a meal. Just five bites! The kids acted like it was torture.

What I don't get with some of the dance kids is that their parents tell me
that they won't eat protein. They'll tell me that they'll eat bagels,
pasta, crackers, bread, etc. And that is what I see them eat. They have it
in their bags. And while I'm sure they do need the carbs because they are
active, if I had a kid like that, I would make it a rule that they did not
go to dance until they ate some form of protein. I don't have to do this
with my kid because she knows what a balanced meal is and she makes sure
that she eats one. I also never had to push her to eat vegetables but for a
time she had an extreme fondness for canned green beans.

People also seem to be very good at making excuses for why things are the
way they are. And those excuses don't always make sense to me.