How Do I ‘Get My Kid to Eat’?
I see numerous frazzled parents come into my office, with their heads dropped low. They sit on the edge of the sofa with their hands together in their lap. I can sense their anxiety.
They sit down and I ask “What can I support you with today?”
And without a pause they blurt out:
“I just want to get my kid to eat.”
It seems like a ubiquitous concern for parents of small children (specifically, but not exclusively, to parents of toddlers or kiddos under 5).
As a mum of three munchkins myself (5, 3 & 1) I know… I mean really know, the desire to ‘get your kid to eat’, but as a dietitian, this isn’t even on my priority list when clients come for a visit.
I utilize the Satter Division of Responsibility in Feeding (sDOR) model within my practice and my home. The sDOR encourages that both parents and children have a specific role when it comes to feeding & eating.
Parent’s Role:
What you offer: this ensures that you are offering the foods to your child to eat. You are offering healthy options that provides both variety and some familiarity.
For variety, offering a 3-4 food groups at meals and 2-3 food groups at snack allows plenty of variety in your little one’s diet.
A meal might be roasted chicken with potatoes, green peas and carrots
A snack might be yogurt and graham crackers
Where you offer food: it is the parent’s job to offer food in an undistracted environment. This means sitting down somewhere quiet, with limited distractions and screens. This allows your little one to focus on the task at hand… eating!
This may not happen for every meal, every day, but it is really helpful if it can happen often! It helps your child tune in to their senses and really pay attention to their body as they feed themselves.
Have you ever had the experience of eating an entire bag of chips while watching your favorite show and wonder where the heck they went? Case and point.
When you offer food: you decide when your child is offered food. By ‘closing the kitchen’ during times outside of meal & snacks, you may see your child’s intake at meals increase, just because they are able to build up a bit of hunger when the meal is served!
This doesn’t mean you have to starve out your kids… what this means is offering a meal or snack every 2-3 hours, so that your child is able to decide if they are hungry enough to eat, or if they are going to wait until the next opportunity.
Grazing throughout the day usually results in decreased intake and usually less meal-based foods (as they are eating ‘snackier’ foods more often and less meal-foods, this can impact their overall nutrition)
Building hunger between meals & snacks feels like a terrifying thing for parents
I remember this all too well… “what if she’s hunnnnnnnnngry???” cue excessive mom-guilt)
But hunger is not something to be feared… it’s actually a really positive sign that physiologically, you are operating well! It’s like needing to go to the bathroom – we don’t generally fear that (unless we had taco night and too much hot sauce the night before), hunger is in the same ball park… it’s just our bodies way of signaling us to say “I have a need!!! Meet it!”.
Child’s Role
If they are going to eat any of the food offered: Also, I know… a very scary idea for parents. “What do you mean, IF?!?!”
But I am serious. Your child decides if they are hungry or not. If they want to eat or not. The minute we start to pressure them (bribe, pressure, punish, praise, encourage etc.) to eat more, they will likely experience a minor stress response and do one of two things:
Eat when they are not hungry, and just wanting to please parents (which take them out of their body and move away from their intuitive feeding mechanism) OR
Knock-out any appetite they may have had (due to the stress response) and come to the table for the next meal/snack a little on the defensive (and slightly stressed)
Ultimately, nothing productive comes from ‘getting our kid to eat’… and I can be completely transparent with my own parenting that I myself have even caught myself saying:
“Are you suuuuure you’re not hungry?”
“Would you like to have another bite?”
and the best one…”Come’on… just trrrrrry it!”
I am sure my kid’s just look at me and then at the food and wonder why I am trying so hard for them to eat it thinking: “It must be bad!!”
For all those now-parents who had their own feeding role models in the ‘Clean Your Plate Club’… you feel me. As an adult, it is very hard to leave food on your plate, or waste food… which may mean that you may overeat often rather than listen to your body’s intuitive signals. Pressure moves us away from being able to trust and honor our internal hunger/fullness barometer.
How much of the food offered they are going to eat: I get side-eyes all the time in practice when I tell parents this. It goes something like this:
Me: “Yes! You can offer your child macaroni & cheese, but offer it with other foods. Try some baked beans and green peas beside the mac n’ cheese”
A long contemplative pause ensues… then…
Them: “What if they ask for more mac n’ cheese and haven’t touched their peas or baked beans? Do I just give them more mac n’ cheese?”
Me: “ABSOLUTELY.”
What this does for our children is provide them with a safe and zero-pressured place to eat food. As soon as we start trying to dictate how much of which food, we lose them. We want to teach them that food is food, and there is nothing special about mac n’ cheese as it relates to beans or peas. And if their body is saying eat more mac n’ cheese, they are able to.
Over time, this puts all foods on the same playing field. A child will increase their variety because they have seen those damn beans so many times with their beloved mac n’ cheese that it will become familiar and they are that much more likely to eat that too!
While this can be a challenging concept to sometimes grasp, or even consider how you might start to implement it in your home, I can guarantee that you and your child will experience more positive mealtimes, more points of connection around food and less stress… win-win-win!