I’m thrilled to share a new guest blog post for you! Ahuva Magder Hershkop is a Registered dietitian with a pediatric based practice and mother of almost three year old twins. She is on a mission to reduce meal time stress for families and reduce the mental load mothers experience in feeding their families.
As a dietitian with a pediatric based practice I work with families every day to improve their mealtime and reduce meal time stress. No matter what, at a certain point with every client, my kids’ eating habits come up!
“Your kids must be SUCH good eaters”
“Your kids must finish their ENTIRE plate all the time”
“I’m sure your kids eat ALL of their vegetables right?”
The truth is- I totally get it! I don’t want to send my kids to a teacher whose children are failing in school! So when families turn to me for support with the various struggles and challenges they are experiencing at mealtimes it only makes sense that parents want to know that my kids eat “well” before I work with them.
So to put all the questions to rest…..the truth is- my kids are PERFECT eaters.
Yes- I said perfect! I didn’t say good, or pretty good or anything like that. I said perfect and if you saw them eat a meal…..you might not think so.
Because if you saw my kids eat you’d see that:
They don’t finish their entire plate every night.
They don’t eat all of their vegetables all the time.
They don’t always want to come to the table when asked, or choose a watermelon cake over regular cake for their birthdays.
They don’t hate sugar the way I think people assume dietitian’s kids must (if you don’t believe me, ask their grandparents).
In my books that makes them perfect, while for many clients that sounds like a DISASTER. Why? Because when we’re talking about how “good” our kids are at eating, very often we’re not using the right scoring chart.
Because while we all want our kids to eat everything they need, finish all their veggies and be over the moon excited about every meal we put in front of them. The reality is:
- Kids are really erratic in their food choices: There have been days where my kids couldn’t get enough of a food item they refused to even look at the next day. Kids are incredibly inconsistent with their preferences. Often it doesn’t mean that they don’t like a food, or that they will never eat it, it just means they weren’t in the mood for it that day.
- Kids DO NOT always have to eat their veggies (but that doesn’t mean you don’t serve them!): Meals are not only a source of nutrition for kids but they are also a learning experience! So if you’re feeling stressed by the fact that your kids don’t always (or ever) eat their vegetables, pat yourself on the back for a job well done in introducing them to new foods. It’s not always about how much broccoli they ate tonight, but about whether in ten years from now they will even recognize broccoli as a vegetable!
- Being a “good eater” doesn’t always mean eating a lot: Eating for kids isn’t just about how much we can possibly get into them at every meal. If it was I would just serve pizza 3 times a day! Every meal is a learning experience and the opportunity to see and experience new foods. Often that doesn’t mean eating the foods first, or second or third time we see them, but if we only focus on the question of “how much” our kids ate at a meal, we lose the opportunity to explore new shapes, smells and colours of foods or use mealtime as the social experience we want it to be.
If we only look at them finishing their meal as a sign of a good eater, we’re going to set them up for failure every time. If the end goal is to set them up to be successful eaters, let’s start by focusing on whether our kids listened to their tummies at a meal instead of whether they finished their plate. Let’s focus on whether they saw new foods at a meal instead of the number of florets of broccoli they ate, and remember that saying “no thank you” to a food doesn’t mean no thank you forever, it just means no thank you right now!
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