Going shopping with your preschooler can end up into a huge scene. No matter how hard you try to avoid those aisles with all the junk food you know your kids love, they always seem to know where to go. You may have asked yourself just what attracts kids to these kinds of food?
New research suggests one culprit: those cutesy cartoon characters used to sell foods in TV ads
The average home in the study had two televisions, and three children in the study had a TV in their bedroom. According to the moms, kids spent about 39 minutes a day in front of an electronic screen, with TV using up the bulk of that time.
Well, so what if kids watch a lot of commercials you may ask? Don’t parents still have the right and authority to say ‘no’ to them?
NAGGING! Kids seem to get what they want by nagging their mothers to consent. They throw tantrums in public, scream, cry-do anything to get their parents to buy those boxes of ‘junk’ that they have come to love.
What can be done to ‘win’ the battle against these ‘cartoon characters’ that have come to have so much appeal on kids? Well, there are a number of methods that can be used.
If you are one of those parents who has difficulty saying NO to your kids, then it would be best to avoid the entire situation in the first place. You could let somebody watch your kid while you do your shopping.
Another good technique is getting to the root of the problem-TV commercials. Minimizing or cutting out the time your kids spend on the TV will be the surest ways to get rid of the nagging problem.
Other parents try and give their kids a chance to choose. If kid wants his favorite but unhealthy cereal for example, saying NO will get you those tantrums. Instead, you could offer them another choice and explain why it’s a better choice. This way, your kids get to learn how to ‘choose’ healthy food.
More on this can be found here.