Lori Alexander believes in force-feeding children

[BabyFullOfSin]

When on earth does that poor little girl get to sit at the table and actually eat? I still can't fathom them sitting there eating while she cries for food.

I have a 4 month old and the idea of that makes my heart ache

[notsocommon]

Add me to the 'picky' eater with sensory issues list.

I had a few episodes growing up where I was pinned down, my mouth pryed open, food shoved in, and my mouth forced shut till I swallowed. Yeah, *that* really cured me. I can't eat a single meal even now without some type of gagging issue. :cry:

I also had several episodes of other people doing the "You will sit there till every bite is GONE!"

I remember one incident in first grade. Evidently, my teacher got tired of me not eating my lunches and made me take my tray back to the classroom, where I had to sit while everyone else went into another room to watch Star Wars (when it was new!) I sat there for hours...all through the movie, recess, then sat out in the hall while class resumed till school let out.

Another, is when a baby sitter made me sit for hours while I refused to eat Lima beans. Then a 6th grade teacher tried the same stunt as my 1st grade teacher. I told her straight up that *I* would win that battle and she should not even try. :snooty: Wisely, she quickly gave up.

[Witsec7]

Her fan girls react as if toddlers are the most evil creatures on the face of the earth.

[Koala]

I have a 4 month old and the idea of that makes my heart ache

Me too. My kids just came into the kitchen for a "midnight" snack (it's only 9:30 here). I couldn't have turned them away hungry if my life had depended on it. Much less make them sit on the floor and watch their father and I eat. While I watched them eat their applesauce and nuts I couldn't help but be thankful they weren't born into a hateful family like Lori's.

My heart breaks for little Emma. Like I said, the thought of her sitting there crying for food while her parents stuffed their filthy faces makes me want to cry and fly into a fit all at once. I just can't even... :cry:

[Koala]

Her fan girls react as if toddlers are the most evil creatures on the face of the earth.

And yet the reproduce like nobody's business. :evil:

[The Archivist]

Wow. Lori's kids are as bad as she is.

BTW, Emma is a toddler, about 15-months old. I hope big, tough Ryan felt good about forcing food down his baby's mouth. I wonder how much came back up while the child was screaming?

This is a perfect way to get a kid to become a picky eater. And possibly to develop an eating disorder.

Good going, Dad! You fucked up this situation in every way imaginable.

[BabyFullOfSin]

This thread just gets me more than the rest for some reason - I keep coming back to it.

The breach of their children's trust is heartbreaking in these families

[HoneyBunny]

And yet the reproduce like nobody's business. :evil:

Amen! :lol:

These people who so love fetuses (theirs and everyone else's) don't give a flick about others' after they're born and seem to take particular delight in torturing their own. I will simply never understand it.

This post has been bothering me now for 24 hours. I cannot get it out of my head. I don't even have any past events that it's triggering memories of. I just know that there is no way to humanely make a 15-month old chew and swallow food she doesn't want. It's such a power thing (a topic about which I DO have memories that can be triggered- so maybe that's what's going on). But that poor baby's beloved daddy did something to her to get her to eat not 1, not 2 , not 10 but 20 bites.(It generally takes less than 20 bites of anything to satisfy a 15-month old toddler.) and to think of her wretched grandma looking on proudly while this played out...I simply can't bear it.

This woman has just replaced the Maxwell's as my second most reviled fundie blogger. Sarah Maxwell can fend for her own darn self; this baby has no control over the abuses they have in mind for her.

[lilwriter85]

This thread just gets me more than the rest for some reason - I keep coming back to it.

The breach of their children's trust is heartbreaking in these families

Me too. I can't explain, but Lori's posting on Emma has really been bothering me. I can't imagine force feeding a 15 month child and as I said before, I think something cruel went down when Ryan was force feeding Emma. I do worry for Emma and any other grandchildren Lori may end up having. Lori is a hardcore Pearl fan and based on what she has posted, it seems like she is very involved in Ryan and Erin's lives. I can see Lori trying to control how her other kids and their spouses parent their children.

[BabyFullOfSin]

I've been thinking more and I think it's that there's something so sacred (this word coming from an atheist..) about controlling what enters one's body - it's a huge violation of the child's autonomy and sense of personal safety. Though I am not equating the two, there is something about this story that brings sexual abuse to mind for me.

[Hisey]

How did Ryan even know what little Emma was saying "no" to? She's 15-months old! At that age, my daughter would say No! even when she meant yes. She was just trying out words. Or perhaps she was saying No to the bird outside the window. Maybe she was trying to say, "No, I'm not done with my first mouthful yet." She's a toddler, she can't express herself.

It's not automatically the evil-defiance-rebellion that the fundies so fear.

Even if she did say no, so what? Put the food in the fridge, hand the kid a bottle, and move on. These fundies make parenting so much harder than it needs to be.

[CanadianHippie]

Even if she did say no, so what? Put the food in the fridge, hand the kid a bottle, and move on. These fundies make parenting so much harder than it needs to be.

But... but if he did that then the poor girl would know that she's allowed to control things about herself like how much she eats. If they don't nip it in the bud they'll end up with an adult female who is capable of doing evil things like thinking for herself!

[LaydNimue]

This topic gives me shivers. Forcing a toddler to eat 20 bites is akin to torture, poor little Emma.

My mom would make us eat fried liver once a week, oh how we hated that! And we had to eat everything or sit there forever, eating it old and cold if necessary. Meal times were a nightmare and "manner teaching" was out of control. For instance, we couldn't touch any food with our hands, not even green peas or fried chicken. Try being 6 and getting all the peas on your spoon with your fork. Most meals ended in tears and I've never understood why it had to be that way. My childhood neighbor had it worse perhaps. When her dad came home from work the kids had to take off his boots and rub his feet and at dinner the mother would butter his bread and cut his food.

(bonus demerit points to my mother for giving my step-father all of the bacon that she cooked with that gross beef liver!)

[alba]

:shock: Huh? Sounds like your SO has set some firm guidelines. I guess I understand though. He probably doesn't want you filling up on cupcakes and chips. :roll:

Seriously, how old are you? If you don't like what he cooks, then make something for yourself.

This is how my partner and I stumbled upon the novel idea of each preparing our own food. Our tastes don't overlap much, so rather than trying to cook for both of us and ending with at least one of us forcing down something we don't like, we just cook separate meals. Occasionally one of us will cook for both if what's being made is something we both like.

It's a work-in-progress, but my basic goal is to have kids who are capable of planning and making nutritious meals for themselves. I don't see choking down food that you hate, that someone else decided that you should eat whether or not you were hungry, as a life skill.

It sounds like you have a good system. I also think that in the long run it does more for your children's health than forcing them to eat things they dislike, in that they're capable of preparing food that's healthy AND tasty and so, when they're in college or on their own for the first time they'll continue cooking healthy food rather than resorting to fast food.

IOW, it's better to teach a child to eat healthy food than to force-feed them healthy food. Then again, in Lori's case I don't think it's about how healthy it is, but about how obedient the child can be made to be.

[Sola]

Urgh, these people.

My daughter has sensory issues with her autism and oral motor skills delay with her CP. When she was younger, from weaning onwards she would projectile vomit food half way across the room if she couldn't cope with the texture. Chewing was a huge issue for her and she frequently would start to choke then puke.

She's 11 now and eats almost anything (with the exception of things she has allergies to) but it took a long time, patience, giving her the time to develop the tolerance to textures and the ability to chew properly. I did not force her, I can only imagine the damage I could have done if I had. But I did try to desensitise her and give her things she had previously refused.

Why do these people have to think black and white? It's either force the kid to eat, or let the kid get away with murder and have them grow up rebelling. It's the same with spanking; they insist that parents who don't spank have rebellious kids and they don't because they spank. There is nothing in between with these people.

[dairyfreelife]

Seems Lori isn't "always learning" as her opinion is always the right opinion. No negative comments allowed, all praise her. So much for learning. :roll:

[velly]

I was reading her blog yesterday and found the post about disciplining your kids... She says that none of her children ended up being violent because of their upbringing (specifically spanking) and REALLY? force feeding and hitting your 15 month old baby is not VIOLENT. Someone mentioned about the sacredness of controlling what you put in your body and that is SO TRUE. I get that sometimes children have to eat and if they're battling something like anorexia they need to sometimes be treated with certain sternness but what they're doing that child is SICK and DISGUSTING and even more than that it is EXTREMELY VIOLENT.

[Kitty]

I was reading her blog yesterday and found the post about disciplining your kids... She says that none of her children ended up being violent because of their upbringing (specifically spanking) and REALLY? force feeding and hitting your 15 month old baby is not VIOLENT. Someone mentioned about the sacredness of controlling what you put in your body and that is SO TRUE. I get that sometimes children have to eat and if they're battling something like anorexia they need to sometimes be treated with certain sternness but what they're doing that child is SICK and DISGUSTING and even more than that it is EXTREMELY VIOLENT.

^This.

Violence begets violence, and Lori's kids just figured out "acceptable" avenues for violence.

[Terrie]

I was an awful eater as a kid. It was a combination of sensory issues and an automatic dislike of new things. There were many rounds of debates at the dinner table:

Parent: Eat your peas.

Me: This many? (3)

Parent: This many. (10)

Me: How about this many? (5)

Parent: Okay, eat that many.

I would then eat the peas one at a time, so I could simply swallow them whole. I only ate the tops of the broccoli, never the stems. My parents never forced me, nor did they indulge me. The goal was always to find a middle ground that would help me move forward with my food issues.

[bananacat]

Nowhere in history have we seen such a diversity of food. If sensory disorder was commonly the reason for food aversion in children, then most children would starve to death in the past. For most of human history, and up until just this past century, our diet was unvarying and very limited. Kids were told they could eat with available or not eat at all because no one could afford anything different. There's not a sudden increase in sensory disorders in the last 20 years. Most kids who refuse to eat because they don't feel hungry or merely don't like what's in front of them.

Surely you realize that kids DID die in the past? Anytime someone says we should do something like they did in the past, it's bad logic. Kids starved to death all the time, for a variety of reasons. They also died of illnesses and accidents. This is no different than the people who say "I didn't use a bike helmet as a kid and I turned out fine!" Of course you don't hear from the people who died from not wearing a helmet because they're not around to make a big stink. Also people generally don't understand statistics on a conceptual level. It's not intuitive. But food allergies were also rarer in the past and surely you're not also suggesting that allergies aren't real and kids should just get over them like they did in the past?

[velly]

Surely you realize that kids DID die in the past? Anytime someone says we should do something like they did in the past, it's bad logic. Kids starved to death all the time, for a variety of reasons. They also died of illnesses and accidents. This is no different than the people who say "I didn't use a bike helmet as a kid and I turned out fine!" Of course you don't hear from the people who died from not wearing a helmet because they're not around to make a big stink. Also people generally don't understand statistics on a conceptual level. It's not intuitive. But food allergies were also rarer in the past and surely you're not also suggesting that allergies aren't real and kids should just get over them like they did in the past?

NO! No one died in the past! sarcasm>

[MarciaBrady]

I'm horrified by the part about him force feeding his baby. But I'm also kind of stuck on wondering, is 20 bites even an appropriate serving for a 15-month-old. I remember when I took child development classes (and I do admit this was about a decade ago and it was only at the high school level) and it said that a serving size for a child was approximately 1-2 tbsp for every year of their age. Wouldn't that come out to quite a bit less than 20 bites? So perhaps the baby didn't even want 20 bites because SHE WAS FULL.

[dairyfreelife]

Surely you realize that kids DID die in the past? Anytime someone says we should do something like they did in the past, it's bad logic. Kids starved to death all the time, for a variety of reasons. They also died of illnesses and accidents. This is no different than the people who say "I didn't use a bike helmet as a kid and I turned out fine!" Of course you don't hear from the people who died from not wearing a helmet because they're not around to make a big stink. Also people generally don't understand statistics on a conceptual level. It's not intuitive. But food allergies were also rarer in the past and surely you're not also suggesting that allergies aren't real and kids should just get over them like they did in the past?

Agree. Also, she ought to remember that when all you have to eat is cornbread, even if you don't like it, you know that's literally it and you eat it or starve. Literally, they would starve. My great-grandmother grew up dirt poor and she said that was all they had to eat. She did not like it, got sick of it, but it was that or feel the horrible hunger pains. Pains that most of us have thankfully never experienced. And want to know something else, she had food issues once she moved to a home with more food. She always had food issues and expected her children to clean their plates and she always cleaned hers as a result of her childhood and didn't want anything to go to waste. My great-grandmother's daughters varied on how being forced to clean their plates affected them. One was "whatever, eat or don't" with her children. One was very rigid about amounts and expectations. The other (my grandmother) would her expect her children to eat what was given them, but she would serve a variety, and they didn't have to eat everything, but something that was there. My mother was not strict at all with food...mostly because she had me, and I made life difficult that way. I was a stubborn, strong-willed child with anxiety issues. ;)

[Wolfie]

[

My parents were excellent at this kind of torture. I will not go into details, because frankly the behavior was criminal Suffice it to say after having to eat one's own vomitus for meals a few days in a row you learned to swallow anything regardless of revulsion. And no it just didn't stop some stuff from coming back up and starting the whole ugly cycle all over.

This- my parents were not abusive in other ways, but they did insist that we taste everything. And I'd throw up a certain vegetable. I still can't eat that vegetable. My mom still insists that I was making it up because after making me eat the vomit a few times I stopped vomiting.

And it didn't help when she told me to just pick it out of something- it was cooked with it and it all tastes like it.

She didn't do it with my brother or sister, and none of us ended up with food issues in the long run, but it was miserable.

[CanadianHippie]

And it didn't help when she told me to just pick it out of something- it was cooked with it and it all tastes like it.

OMG! So many people just don't understand that! They don't get that when things are cooked together the taste spreads and picking out whatever it is you hate doesn't change the fact that you can still taste it!