In a new book US parenting expert Dr Becky Kennedy shares her approach to raising children in a way that feels good. This extract, from Good Inside: A Practical Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be, covers food and eating habits.
Kids’ eating habits can cause a lot of anxiety for parents - they may bring up insecurities about our parenting or create power struggles with our children. One reason the feeding process can be so emotionally evocative for parents is that, in some ways, it represents our ability to sustain our kids and fill them up with what they need to survive and thrive. After all, a parent’s primary job is to keep their kids alive. In our food-related interactions with our children, it feels like so much is at stake - that in some way, how much and what our child eats is a barometer for how good a job we are doing as a parent.
When parents around the dinner table start talking about what their kids will or will not eat, what they really seem to be assessing is whether they are doing a good job, whether they are doing enough, whether their kids are willing to “take in” what they want to offer them. Understanding this deeper connection between parenting and feeding is, in fact, the first step to reducing the intensity of mealtime. It helps separate what’s actually happening from the deeper feelings that get evoked in our bodies around this issue, and that helps us intervene in a way that’s based on what’s in front of us, rather than on our fears and insecurities.
Food interactions with our kids touch on deeper issues as well: questions of body sovereignty, who is in control, and whether a child can make their own decisions all come up around food-related episodes between parents and children. When kids push back at mealtime and say, “I’m not hungry,” or “No, I don’t want that,” or “I’ll only eat if you make me pasta” ... what they are really doing is asking questions: “What are parents in charge of and what are kids in charge of?” “When can I make my own decisions?” “Do you trust me?” Kids push boundaries, protest parents’ choices, and ask for unavailable options in order to feel out their own independence ... all things they do outside mealtime too, of course.
These two conflicts - the internal issue of parental insecurity and the external issue of body sovereignty - do, ultimately, intersect. As a child pushes a boundary around food or rejects it entirely, a parent feels like a “bad parent”, causing her to refocus on controlling her kid in an attempt to feel “good” again. Yet the more a child feels controlled, the more she will cling to rejection or boundary-pushing in order to assert her independence, which leads to increased parental desperation, intensified power struggles, and frustration for everyone.
So what do we do about this? How can we unwind this negative cycle to establish food and mealtime patterns that feel better for the family system? I believe the answer begins with the pioneering work of dietitian, psychotherapist and author Ellyn Satter, who created what’s known as the “Division of Responsibility” around eating. Here’s a quick summary of Satter’s framework:
• Parent’s job: decide what food is offered, where it is offered, when it is offered
• Child’s job: decide whether and how much to eat of what’s offered
What’s so powerful about Satter’s framework is that it allows for the development of healthy eating patterns but it also supports self-regulation, self-confidence, consent, and so much more.
Remember, children are in charge of so little - often, the only thing truly under their control is what goes into their bodies. Eating and potty training are areas where parents really have to check in with their own desire to control so that they can give their children the freedom they need.
Strategies
Mantra
If you know that food situations with your kids make you feel anxious, or that it’s hard for you to relinquish control when it comes to their eating, use a mantra to remind you of your job and your focus. You might try saying, “My only jobs are the what-when-where. I can do that.” Or, “What my child eats is not most important. I am doing a good job. My child is going to be okay.” Or maybe, “What my child eats is not a barometer of my parenting.”
Explain Roles
I love having an honest, direct conversation with my kids about my job and their jobs around food and eating. Share Satter’s division of responsibility as a way of holding yourself accountable as well as letting your kids know what they are and are not in charge of. It might sound like this: “Hey, I learned something interesting today and wanted to share it with you. When it comes to food, you have a job and I have a job - and our jobs are totally different. It’s my job to decide what we eat, when we eat, and where we eat. And just so you know, I’ll always offer at least one thing that you like so that eating never feels stressful. Your job is to decide whether you eat what I serve and how much. That’s kind of interesting, right? It means you get to choose what goes into your body, but it also means you don’t get to tell me to make something new if you want something I didn’t choose that day. I get to choose what we eat that day, but I don’t get to make you take more bites of things or tell you what you have to finish. What do you think of that?”
Dessert-Specific Strategies
There’s no one right way to do dessert - the key is simply grounding your decision in your role. Remember, you make the decisions around dessert: whether it’s served, what it is, at what time it’s offered. After that, it’s your kid’s job. But this means parents shouldn’t link dessert to how much a child eats, because that is the domain of a child, not a parent. I know what you’re thinking ... “But my kid only wants dessert, he wouldn’t have dinner at all if I didn’t link it to how many bites he has!” This is a good time to reflect and see if the Division of Responsibility model makes sense to you; if it does, then there are a few things to do about dessert. You can serve a small dessert with dinner - as in, at the same time, even on a plate next to broccoli and chicken and pasta. From a practical perspective, I wouldn’t make dessert so large that a child could fully fill up on it, but I also don’t like the idea of delaying dessert so much that it is set up as a prize to be coveted. Serving dessert with dinner makes dessert less exciting. It exudes a message of trusting your child and sets him up to be less dessert-focused over time. Other families I’ve worked with serve a “dessert” as an afternoon snack so that dinner isn’t linked with dessert at all.
Snack-Specific Strategies
Oh ... snacks. The crunchy, salty, delicious foods we have in our pantry, the ones our kids covet, the ones we vow not to buy anymore but that end up in our grocery bags anyway. There’s no right way to do snacks. Some parents choose no snacks, some parents give free access to snacks, and some parents do something in between. There is no moral superiority to decisions about snacks, so take note of any parent guilt you’re feeling and then ask yourself this question: “Does my snack approach work for my family?” If you’re thinking, “Well, not really, because I want my kids to eat more at dinner,” or “Not really, because my kids no longer eat non-snack foods,” well, this is the only answer you need. On the other hand, if you don’t mind the amount of snacks your kids have, then you have something that’s working for you.
If you want to make a change, it’s critical to remind yourself that your job is the “what, when, where” - you don’t have to ask your kids’ permission, you just need to announce the change and allow them to have their reactions and feelings. Here’s a quick script: “I’m going to make a change to snacks in our house. We have too many snacks, which means we don’t eat enough dinner, which is the food that helps your body grow. When you get home from school, the only snacks I will offer are X and X. I know that’s a big change and I know it’ll take some time to get used to.”
Tolerate Pushback
Making food decisions with our kids requires us to assert ourselves, say no, and tolerate children’s complaints and distress when they arise. This is a critical piece of implementing Satter’s division of responsibility, because after knowing our role, we have to be willing to fulfil it, and that relies on our ability to handle our child’s not being happy with us. This sounds easy in theory - ”Okay, my child isn’t happy with me, that’s fine!” - but tolerating an unhappy child who’s saying she’s hungry and tantrumming during meals ... it’s a lot! Here are a few scripts to help:
• Remind yourself what you know to be true: “I know that my child feels safe with one of the foods I offered. It’s not her favourite but it’s a legitimate option. My job is serving and her job is deciding; this isn’t pretty but we are both doing our jobs.”
• Remind yourself you don’t need agreement: “I don’t need my child to agree with me.”
• Give permission for your child to be upset: “You’re allowed to be upset.”
• Name the wish: “You wish we could have for dinner instead ...” or “You wish you were in charge of every food choice.”
• Separate your child’s protest from your decision: “My child’s protest/tantrum doesn’t mean I’m making a bad decision. And it doesn’t mean I’m a bad or cold parent.”
• Remind yourself and your child of your job: “My job as a parent is to make decisions that I think are good for you, even when I know you’re not going to like them.”
- Edited extract from Good Inside: A Practical Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be by Dr Becky Kennedy (HarperCollins, RRP$37.99).