Grazing, or offering children frequent (or constant) small eating opportunities, is an easy habit for parents of picky eaters to fall into. In this post, I talk you through why it is worth addressing.
Read More
The three things you need to know to keep treat-foods emotionally healthy
When I work with parents of picky eaters, they often assume that I am anti treat foods because I recommend re-thinking snacks. This couldn't be further from the truth, but there are three things to consider to make sure that you give your child edible treats in a way that is emotionally healthy.
Read More
sally K
Become a Snack-tivist!
American writer Sally Kuzemchak is a mother of two and a registered dietitian. She is based in Columbus, Ohio. I connected with her on twitter ( you can follow her @RMNutrition) and the way she writes about nutrition with such sanity and humour really appealed to me. I am especially interested in her thoughts on snacking and so I invited her to write a guest post on the subject. I hope you enjoy reading about 'snacktivism' as much as I did.
Read More
Raisins-everyone's favourite toddler snack..
Snack week!
Earlier this month I wrote about and how it's become culturally normal to [over] protect our children from feeling hungry. How do we do this? Snacks, snacks and more snacks. I'm looking forward to publishing my first guest post on the blog later this week. It is by Sally Kuzemchak of 'Real Mom Nutrition'-she'll be explaining 'snacktivism' - her challenge to US snack culture.
It's been really lovely to hear from readers of - I always appreciate feed-back, positive or negative. The thing that my readers have overwhelmingly told me has brought about the greatest change in their families is my stance on snacking. It's this simple: If you practice , if your child doesn't want the food you have served him, he can leave it, but there are no snacks or alternatives. Equally, if your child is not eating main meals and you are offering snacks, try cutting the snacks out.
Happy grazers...
Some parents are happy giving their child many small meals over the course of a day - they find that grazing works for them and their families. That's fine. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. What I am saying is that if you are concerned about your child's fussy eating and you want him to be eating three main meals a day, look closely at the snacks you offer.
My tips for cutting out snacks
- Make sure you introduce this change in a positive, non-punitive way. Explain gently that you are not having snacks any more because your child doesn't need them if he's not hungry at mealtimes.
- Be consistent. Once you've decided to stop offering snacks, you can't waver or you will find yourself embroiled in a power struggle.
- Cut snacks out gradually. If you offer a morning and an afternoon snack, try getting rid of the morning one for a few days, if you don't notice any change in your child's eating, drop the afternoon one too.
- Use a schedule. Offer snacks at consistent times so you can assess their impact on your child's eating. This will also allow your child to predict when food will be available, removing his motivation to pester you for snacks at other times of day.
I'd love to hear from anyone who has a picky eater and is offering snacks. Try cutting the snacks out for a week and see what impact it has on your child's eating. Let us know how you get on!
Picky eating and the H-word...
toddler snacks
Here in the UK, our toddlers are the proud winners of the prize for the highest levels of picky eating in whole of whole of Europe. I'm interested in how we achieved that accolade - I've yet to explore eating patterns in other European countries (it's on my bucket list) but I have a sneaking suspicion it might have something to do with hunger. As parents, we feel that it is part of our job to make sure that our children never get hungry. We never leave the house without a snack, no car journey can get under way until raisins have been distributed and every playgroup in the land is punctuated by snack-time.
Children should experience hunger - they should sit down to meals hungry and get up from them full. It's part of the natural rhythm of the day. I'm not talking about the kind of hunger that is born of deprivation, I'm thinking of hunger in the context of appropriate meals being offered at appropriate times.
Many health professionals advocate two snacks a day for young children and that's fine, IF they are also hungry at mealtimes. My message is simple - if your child is refusing food at breakfast, lunch or dinner, cut out the snacks. In fact, I've had dramatically more feedback from readers of about my stance on snacking than on any other aspect of my approach. It really does work. So much so, that I'm going to be having a dedicated snack week on the blog, featuring a guest post about 'snacktivism' - one US mother's fight against American snack culture.
Snacking, however, is not the whole problem, it is simply symptomatic of our urge to stop our children feeling hungry. There are several reasons why we do this - children's behaviour is easier to manage when they are not hungry. Food gets used to entertain - bored children are hard work, so giving them something to eat keeps them occupied. Mini-cheddars are handed out like ritalin. Eat this and be quiet. Research into mothers' confidence about their parenting abilities showed that the less confident the mother, the more likely she was to try to soothe her child with food *.
At the other extreme, we give children snacks to show we love them - our warm feelings become transmuted into shiny pouches of cleverly marketed organic purees and weird strips of fruit-glue in 'fun, peelable strips'... And we give them snacks because, at a very basic level, we don't want them to experience discomfort.
This is a tough one, especially for parents who may have experienced hunger born of neglect or extreme poverty when they were growing up. But appropriate hunger is good. Appetite is your friend - if your child can learn to listen to her body's cues, she will be better at self-regulating and will learn when to eat and when to stop eating according to what her body needs. There are clear links between poor self-regulation and obesity later in life. If you mask your child's appetite by letting her graze throughout the day, it will be hard for her to learn how to listen to her body.
If your child is a picky eater, often refusing food at mealtimes, get her weight and growth checked. If she is healthy, try cutting out the snacks for one week. Put up with some bad moods and complaining and prepare to be amazed.
*C. Stifter, S. Anzman-Frasca , L. Birch, K. Voegtline (2011) Parent use of food to soothe infant/toddler distress and child weight status. An exploratory study Appetite, Vol. 57(3), pp. 693-9