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Mistake #3: Being a food pusher
Ninety percent of parents try to get their children to eat when they say they don’t want to or they’re full, Satter says. This may teach a child to ignore his body’s signals and overindulge. In one study published in the Archives of Adolescent Medicine, the more parents told their children to clean their plates, the more likely the kids (boys in particular) were to request oversized portions of sugary cereal at daycare. The lesson: Don’t insist that your child finish his meal—or eat at all!—no matter how much you think he needs the calories or hate wasting food.