If your child didn’t eat much at one meal, it’s tempting to chase him around all day offering a bite of this or a bite of that. Or perhaps you’ve left “healthy food” out within reach or created a special snack box/drawer your child can rummage through when the munching mood hits. While all these are well meaning ways to accomplish feeding your child, they each get in the way of your goals because in one way or another they tangle up your feeding duties, blunt kids’ appetite at meals, create resistance to eating, and turn food into a constant issue.
Implementing an appropriate meal and snack time structure, on the other hand, can set things right again. What often happens with the typical approach to “snacks” is that snack time goes from being a time for eating to a time for eating “kid-food.” We find that a lot of kids complain about family meals and request a “snack” because “snacks” tend to always be really easy, highly palatable foods. So while to you, “snack” means the eating times between breakfast, lunch, and dinner, to your child “snack” easily turns into a category of food.
Now we’re definitely not against typical snack foods, in and of themselves. And certainly it would be exhausting to have to do major food prep 5-6 times a day. But it can be helpful to not have such a major difference between foods served for meals and foods served for snacks. So with this end in mind, let’s blur the lines between a meal and a snack for this lesson. Let’s call them all meals or “eating opportunities” because that is what they are.
If your child is under 3, we suggest planning eating opportunities (including milk, formula or juice) every two to three hours. Any closer than that and you’ll run into the problem of a blunted appetite for the subsequent eating opportunity. Between eating opportunities – only water.
So for example:
Meal #1 – 7:30 AM
Meal #2 – 10:00 AM
Meal #3 – 12:30 PM
Meal #4 – 3:30 PM
Meal #5 – 6:00 PM
Meal #6 – 7:30 PM
Bedtime – 8:00 PM
We realize every family is different and not all schedules fit into the example above. For example, time might be tight enough between supper and bedtime that it makes no sense to offer a bedtime snack. However, for some of you, that bedtime snack might be a lifesaver, allowing you to relax during dinner and not stress about every bite—insurance so you can sleep at night. Maybe your breakfast is later and thus meal #2 is unnecessary. You will have to carefully consider your child’s eating and the time between meals as it is now, and find that sweet spot that works for you and your family.
Chaotic feeding schedules and feeding on demand (outside of infancy) gets in the way of that reliable feeding rhythm kids thrive in. In some children it creates food preoccupation, learning to eat to cope with emotions, stress from worrying about food, and blunted appetites when it’s time for the family meal. On the other hand, structure in feeding provides security and supports the social aspect of eating together. It allows kids to eat as much or as little as they need at meal times then forget about food until the next eating opportunity. It prevents seeking food from boredom and maintains that wonderful pattern of stopping to sit and eat at regular intervals—the meal habit that, in today’s busy world, often gets traded in for grazing.
And just as the new you allows your child to eat as much or as little from what is provided at family meals, this same principle applies to all eating opportunities. Let your kids eat as much as they desire of the foods served at snacks too. Don’t skimp because of a pre-conceived notion of what a snack should be. As long as eating opportunities come at regular times, they will get what they need and sometimes eat more and sometimes eat less.
Meal and Snack Structure is the Antidote to Grazing
If your children have been used to eating on demand, it will take them some time to adjust to the new rules about eating times. They might still beg for food in between eating opportunities. Do your best to be firm but kind: “You’re hungry? Well you’re in luck because we are going to eat again in just one hour!” Remember, you are the leader of mealtime structure–deciding when to eat is not your child’s job anymore. Once your little one gets used to the new rhythm of eating, he’ll settle in nicely and the begging for food will decrease significantly if not go away entirely. Now if the day has been crazy and you have good reason to believe your child really is very hungry, it’s okay to create some wiggle room and make things happen 30 minutes sooner: “That’s great that you’re hungry because food will be ready in just 10 minutes!” (when perhaps the planned time was 45 min away).
Toddlers who Continue to Nurse or Take Bottles
Toddlers benefit from this structure even when it comes to milk feedings (breast or bottle). There are a lot of opinions about breast-feeding schedules vs. nursing on demand. We don’t want anyone to feel urged to wean because that is not what this program is about. We support mothers in maintaining their nursing relationship as long as mutually satisfactory. However, while nursing provides more than just nutrition, it does provide nutrition. Any food or drink with calories will influence a child’s eating of solid food. So for this reason, if you are concerned about your toddler’s eating of solids, we recommend that you begin to move nursing sessions to a similar schedule as discussed above. And if your toddler is taking a bottle, we recommend that those bottles become scheduled feeds and later turned into sippy/straw cups and eventually open cups.
Coming Up Next: Making meals toddler friendly
Assignment: Use the food record you’ve been keeping since the beginning of class and analyze it for mealtime structure using the template provided: Mealtime structure analysis
Discussion: Look at this imaginary dialog, below. Considering what you know about a parent’s feeding job description vs. the child’s eating job, what is wrong with this picture?
