Parents should care about what they feed their kids. But they also want something that is easy to prepare. Breakfast is an important part of the day. Most parents feed their children too much junk food including processed flour and sugar. Here is a way to avoid that. Read the rest of this entry

Hey, I'm Chris Thompson. I help stressed-out parents deal with toddlers. Grab the free lesson I've prepared for you. You'll love it. Email:

One of the things I’ve noticed about parenting toddlers is that kids can be very demanding. Not only will they make demands of you, but their demands can get increasingly specific. It almost seems like they are doing it on purpose just to see how far they can push things.

My youngest daughters was a great example of this behavior. I remember when she was about 3 years old. She would wake up early and I’d take her downstairs to have breakfast together. She’d tell me she wanted cereal for breakfast, so I’d get out the Cheerios. Then she’d tell me, “No I want Raisin Bran”. After I switched cereals, I grabbed her a bowl. In a very whinny toddler voice she’d say, “No I want the yellow bowl, not the orange one” How can you ever win? Read the rest of this entry

I think that a lot of parents realize that too much juice is a bad thing. So if you catch yourself saying wondering how to reduce the amount of juice your toddler drinks, I’ve got an idea that works really well in my household, and I’m happy to share it with you.
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I want to tell you a story about one recent Sunday morning and how I used language to influence my kids. I hope this story shows you how easy it can be to leverage communication skills. Read the rest of this entry

My kids love pizza. My kids love pizza so much, they have been asking me to make it at least once a week for dinner. They have even been asking to eat pizza for lunch.

I’m sure most parents can relate that once kids eat something they enjoy, they tend to want to eat it at every meal. Well – my kids at least. Needless to say, I am tired of pizza.

The other day my kids were complaining about their lunch. They didn’t want to eat it because it was boring. It got me thinking about – pizza.
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I’ve always been a lover of juices.  Orange juice has long been my favorite, and I’m a huge fan of grape juice, apple juice, pineapple juice, etc.  When I was a kid I’d guzzle the stuff by the large glassful, and as a teenager and adult I never thought it was “bad”.  I knew it was a bad idea to drink soda, or “fruit drink”, which is fake juice, but I did not think that 100% natural fruit juice could be bad.

It turns out I was wrong.  Not because fruit juice is bad, but because drinking too much of it is bad. Even though the sugar in fruit juice is “natural”, it’s still sugar.  Too much sugar leads to obesity in children.

I’d like to offer you a few simple suggestions to reduce the amount of juice that your kids drink.

1. Keep lots of fresh fruit in the house, and eat fruit instead of drinking juice.  You’ll get more of the natural ingredients from the fruit and less total sugar.  An orange is refreshing.  A glass of orange juice is made from several oranges! Less is more here.
2. When your kids absolutely insist on juice and you can’t seem to talk them down, dilute it with water.  We often dilute our kids’ juice so it’s a 50/50 blend of water and juice.
3. Try this amazing and delicious replacement for juice.  I made this one day for myself and absolutely loved it, so I wanted to share.  Take a large glass and drop in a few ice cubes.  Then add orange juice so the glass is 1/4 full.  Now, squeeze in a good teaspoon of lemon juice.  This jazzes up the flavor a bit.  Finally, fill up the remaining space (3/4 of the glass) with water. Stir and enjoy. Tell your kids you are making them a special treat. You’ll be keeping the sugar away, and they will love it.

I’m not telling you that fruit juice is bad.  Instead, I’m simply saying too much of it is unhealthy.  We limit our kids to one glass of juice per day now, and they can eat an unlimited amount of fruit, drink as much water as they want, and I’ll offer up my own recipe of highly diluted juice (shared above).

That’s all I wanted to say for now.  Reducing sugar consumption is an important part of your family’s health.  Take it seriously.

Enjoy your children!

Do you ever deal with kids that won’t eat well?  The story I’m about to share with you is not conventional.  It might alarm you, and it might not be something that you’re going to want to do.  But it will still teach you something.  I’m not advocating this nor am I saying that I think it’s cruel.  I think it’s best that you decide for yourself.

I recently visited my sister in Vancouver.  Her kids are 6 and 8 years old and they have always been fussy eaters.  The way she describes it, they would constantly complain and pick at their food.  After years of this, it got on her nerves enough to make her take drastic action.

What did my sister do to make her kids eat?  Simply put, she created a world where the alternative was very unappealing to her kids.  One day at dinner time the kids were complaining as usual.  She said to them, “Look – if I hear one more complaint out of either of you, then what I’m going to do is feed you nothing but bread and cheese as your meal for the next 3 days”.

Well, it wasn’t more than a moment before she got another complaint.  She took away the kids’ meals and grabbed a couple of slices of bread and some cheese from the fridge.  The kids ate it.  For breakfast the next morning she brought out the bread and cheese again.  Then for lunch, then for dinner that night, etc.

She did this for three straight days.  She told me that her kids really lost their fondness of bread and cheese quite quickly (no kidding!).  But at the end of this ordeal she was amazed at the transition.  The kids have not complained about any of their meals.  They know that if they are out of line they’ll go back to eating bread and cheese.

Part of me thought this was funny, and part of me thought this was pretty harsh punishment.   But at the end of the day here are the facts:

• There are plenty of people on this planet that would give up a lot just to get 3 square meals of bread and cheese per day.
• Although devoid of many essential nutrients, this is not really unhealthy and it is only for 3 days.
• It most definitely makes your kids appreciate some variety
• It certainly teaches them the cause-effect link between their complaining and the “punishment” of being served only bread and cheese
• It works.

If you think of doing this let me tell you that you must be very consistent.  My sister did not break from the pattern for 3 full days.  Even a single break from the pattern shows your kids that you can be pushed and that you’ll cave.  If you do this for 2 days I bet it will still work, but then say “it is for 2 days”.  Don’t say it is for 3 days and give up after 2 days thinking they’ve had enough.  You have to follow through.  Again – I’m not saying I would do this (I have other tools to use), but it is something that works.

If you have gone through my audio course “Talking to Toddlers”, then you have learned about something called “anchors”.  An anchor is something that triggers a certain state within someone.  In this case, my sister created a very powerful anchor where a food complaint would be strongly connected, in her kids’ minds, to being punished with a boring food menu for 3 days.  There are much faster ways to create anchors using the techniques I teach.

Anchors can be very useful to draw out certain states when you need them.  For example, you might want to anchor a calm state of mind so you can trigger it at bed time.

If you’d like to learn more about using these techniques and how to deal with toddlers, please check out my audio course, Talking to Toddlers.