 Mealtime is about more than food.Meals with young kids can feel chaotic and stressful. It can be a serious struggle. We work with thousands of families who are at the end of their rope (Friends, please consider our toddler course if this is you!) Sometimes it’s important to take a step back and think about what you want mealtime to feel like 5, 10, 20 years from now with your kids. What associations do you want them to have with food? What do you want them to remember? Mealtime is oftentimes the only time of day that we get to sit and connect with each other, hence why we can have such vivid memories of how it felt when we were kids. Here are some simple ways to build positive traditions that your kids will remember:
One day they’ll use these memories to create traditions with their own kids. It’s hard when we’re in the thick of it...but we’re going to miss this, friends! We promise.   An easy way to get variety.The salad bar can be your best friend in a pinch! This trick works for eaters of all ages too! (If you’re unsure about how to let your baby feed themselves foods in their whole form like this, please check out our online Infant Course.) Ideally, we serve ourselves (and thus our babies) a variety of foods every day, but sometimes life gets in the way and we end up eating the same things over and over again. One hack that has helped many of our clients is utilizing the salad bar to add variety to meals. Foods are already washed and pre-cut, and even though you pay more per pound, you may save money in the long run if you only need a few pieces. This also works well for foods you need in small quantities for a recipe or for packing your older kiddo’s lunch in a hurry. We use the Whole Foods salad bar all the time! Since babies new to Baby-led Weaning (infant self-feeding) need larger pieces of food that they can hold with their strong palmar grasp, you’ll have to find salad bar options that are cut into big enough pieces. We recommend starting around 6 months, when baby shows readiness signs including great sitting skills. As they get older and their pincer grasp refines, they’ll be able to manipulate smaller foods like peas, beans, chopped beets, etc. Make sure food is soft enough to pass the “squish test,” where it easily squishes between your fingers or cuts with a fork.   Get (a little) creative for breakfast.Art toast is a fun way to add variety to breakfast and work on some fine motor skills. Judy recommends this starting at around 16-18 months when your toddler can more easily pronate/supinate at the wrist if using spoons for these toppings, but you can start earlier if your child is interested and you can assist! Start with toasted whole grain bread (use gluten-free if needed, watch for honey if serving to babies) and smear it with a smooth base:
You just need something food will stick to. In small bowls or on the side of your child’s tray/plate, put piles of chopped fruit, chia or hemp seeds (hemp hearts are tiny and soft), cinnamon, pumpkin pie spice, applesauce...the possibilities are endless! Let them use spoons, tongs or their hands to add the toppings.  As they get older, they can smear the nut butter or cream cheese themselves - just keep in mind that a large glob of nut butter is a choking hazard. A word on chia seeds: small amounts are safe for babies and toddlers as long as they’re mixed into or stuck on food and are not inhaled. Help your child add a small sprinkling to chia seeds to their toast using their fingers or a spoon, and shake off any excess that’s not stuck to the toast. Chia seeds get EVERYWHERE when dropped, so a small bowl of them is more appropriate for an older child who doesn’t throw their bowls. We use glass ramekins, but younger kids may need a non-breakable material if they’re prone to dropping. If your child wants to pick off the toppings before eating the toast, that’s OK - the point is that they’re interacting with the food and having fun at the meal. If they’ll touch the toppings now, they’re more likely to eat them in many ways down the road. Need help with encouraging more adventurous eating? Check out our Toddler Course.
   Ready, set, SNACK!We are oftentimes asked about portable snacks that don’t have to be refrigerated, and here are just some of our favorites! (We have a LOT of favorite snacks... search #feedinglittlessnacks on Instagram, and in the Toddler Course check out the Snack step for a printable!) Of course, many families use crackers, cereal and puffs for their go-to diaper bag snacks...these are simply some different ideas to mix it up! These snacks are good for adults and older kids too! They all happen to be dairy-free for those who need it. We love snacks that have a little protein/fat and a veggie or fruit when possible - check our Toddler Course Snacks section for more on this!
  Enjoy those sweet snuggles!As World Breastfeeding Week comes to a close, we wanted to share the story of this nursery chair. Megan here. To most people this is a simple gray rocking chair. To me, this chair represented the beginning of my journey into motherhood. I gave it away last year to a mama who really needed something special for her new baby, and I was surprised at how emotional I was when parting with it. This chair was by far the most utilized piece of furniture in my oldest child’s nursery {shown here in our living room}. It represented all things baby to me - nights filled with broken sleep, intoxicating baby breath and gummy smiles, sweet snuggles as you feel their body relax and drift off to dream land, quiet nursing sessions where nothing else exists. This chair also saw us through teething and ear infections and strep throat the night before her first birthday and SO MANY FEEDINGS (including the painful ones). In this chair, we read books, sang silly songs, and held each other close. I know I cried many times in this chair, begging for sleep or simply asking the universe to keep my baby young just a little bit longer. This chair represented my motherhood journey, and for me that journey included breastfeeding. Your journey may include breastfeeding for one hour, one day, one month, one year+...or not at all. You see, these journeys teach us things. They humble us and mold us and impart beautiful lessons. Maybe your experience breastfeeding was overall amazing. Maybe it was really hard. Maybe thinking about it brings back wonderful memories. Maybe it brings pain. These experiences are all unique to YOUR journey, and you learned from them. You grew. Celebrate your journey, whatever it looks like. Be proud of the times you spent in your cozy chair feeding your baby the best way you could. Know that your breastfeeding and early feeding experiences don’t define you as a mother - they teach you valuable lessons of resilience and grace. One day that chair won’t have a place in your house. Those early morning feeding sessions will be a very distant memory. But you’ll still be the strong, rockstar mama you’ve always been.   Need a dairy-free option?Calling all dairy-free peeps (and even those who love dairy)! Have you tried nutritional yeast? This deactivated yeast has a nutty or cheesy flavor and is highly nutritive (hence its name). One tablespoon contains 3 grams of protein, 180% of your adult daily value for thiamine, 140% of your daily value for vitamin B6 and 160% of your daily value for niacin, all important B vitamins. Dairy-free peeps like that it resembles cheese in flavor. It can be found at most health food stores and grocery stores. Here are some fun ways to use it:
  Let me tell you a story.This is my own story, a tale of restriction and calorie counting and obsession about everything I ate. Do you know the first time I purposefully ate almond butter as an adult, I measured it out and only let myself have 1 tablespoon on a piece of low-calorie bread? Ya know, because healthy fats were important, but I couldn’t have TOO much. (Insert major eye roll.) I was convinced that this “high calorie” food would immediately cause weight gain, so I kept it tightly controlled, measuring it out to the last morsel. That’s how I treated all food while I was in college - it was something to be controlled, to be measured, to be counted. My degree in dietetics fed into this obsession, as I kept learning all about my future job as a dietitian and the science of food. I was the queen of fake food - think spray “butter,” Diet Dr. Pepper, Lean Pockets, fat free cheese - as long as it was low calorie, I was game! Fast forward a few years later. completed my dietetic internship and went to graduate school at USC. While there, I met a wonderful professor who introduced me to Intuitive Eating. My world was turned upside down as I learned about this unbelievable concept coined by Elyse Resch and Evelyn Tribole. It completely changed the trajectory of my own life with food and how I wanted to practice. I learned that food is just food - it’s not good or bad, it has no morality tied to it. I needed to eat when my body said it was hungry, to stop when it was comfortable, but if I ate “too much” (according to my fullness signals), that’s it’s OK too. I learned to seek satisfaction in food, to listen to what my body craves and honor those signals. I learned that I really could eat all types of food and still be “healthy,” that I naturally gravitate to lots of veggies, fats, fruits, proteins, and starches without thinking about it because they taste and feel good to me when I let go of that judgment and obsession. This is what I want for you. This is what I want for your kids. Need help? Please read Intuitive Eating by Tribole and Resch! We weave Intuitive Eating principles into both of our courses. Thanks to the other IE/HAES dietitians out there who are helping spread the word!   Start offering utensils at 6 months.Let’s talk some of our favorite utensils! (You’ll learn much more about promoting utensil use in our toddler course). Judy recommends utensils with short handles made for little hands. Offer loaded utensils as early as 6 months (watch sharp ends), but always encourage your child to touch food with their hands and don’t get discouraged if they revert to “cave man/cave woman” eating. We never want to discourage use of hands, as many young children default to this and may stop self-feeding successfully if they are discouraged to use their hands. Check out the utensils section of our Amazon Shop for a complete list of our favorites. Shown, from the left:
Offer utensils often so your tot gets used to seeing them and eventually can stab, scoop and cut food herself! Start by loading them for her, and eventually you’ll see that she’s wanting to load it all by herself.   Quick and easy!Ready for another simple Instant Pot recipe? We LOVED using the Trader Joe's Marsala Sauce. We dumped 2 jars over 1.5 pounds boneless skinless chicken thighs (more tender and cheaper than chicken breasts) and cooked it on high for 10 minutes. That's it! For an easy veggie idea, roast broccoli and cauliflower in olive oil, oregano, salt and pepper and serve it with Organic Super Grains from Whole Foods (basically a combo of white and red quinoa, millet and buckwheat). Add an easy side dish: Throw together a tomato, basil and burrata salad with balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper! YUM! We are ALL about fast, easy, tasty, filling and nourishing meals that don’t take forever!   What I wish I would have told myself.This is me, age 29, with my husband and first baby Hannah. I didn’t cry when she was born...I cried when she latched for the first time, which happened moments before this image was captured. This photo, taken by Doula Dianne, means so much to me now because it was the beginning of my feeding journey. It’s also the true start down a path that led me to knowing all of you wonderful humans and getting to live out my passion with my amazing business partner Judy. I appear giddy and joyous here, but I was also so anxious about breastfeeding. I put SO much pressure on myself to breastfeed, and fortunately after a TON of pain and latch issues (we later realized she had a severe tongue and lip tie), I had a great breastfeeding experience. Not always easy, but great. I wish I had told myself that no matter what, it would all be ok. When we started baby-led weaning at 6 months on the nose, my eldest took to it like a champ. My second daughter was even more of a foodie and was demanding to take part of every meal we ate once she started with solid foods. I have been fortunate to have the wisdom of Judy and what would eventually become our online infant and toddler courses to help me navigate any challenges that came up. I know I am lucky. I know from the clients I see every day that not all feeding journeys go this way, that mine may seem especially easy. Judy and I work with feeding and nutrition challenges every day - we listen to and comfort sweet mamas as they cry, mourning the loss of an experience they so wish they had. We celebrate even the tiniest of successes and offer our professional and mama-to-mama support when things get tough. We adore meeting such wonderful, diverse, passionate families and witnessing new parents evolve into the fiercely protective people they never knew they were. Feeding and nutrition are SO emotional, so personal. Everyone does it differently, because everyone is different. We are grateful to be part of your journey. Thank you for being part of ours too!  |
AuthorsMegan and Judy, co-owners of Feeding Littles, bring you helpful info on food, nutrition, picky eating, and feeding young children. Megan McNamee MPH, RDN is a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist based in Scottsdale, Arizona. Judy Delaware, OTR/L is an Occupational Therapist specializing in feeding therapy with children 3 and under in Boulder, Colorado. Megan and Judy are both moms of two and love helping families develop a healthy appetite for all foods!
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