How to have awesome meal times in your house.
As parents the job can seem so big. When it comes to food and nutrition, what can we do to make our own lives easier?
Take the small wins!
You are doing your very best! This counts. We may not get all the things right on all the days, be kind to yourself. We all have days that we count as good or days that could absolutely be better. If your child has been at daycare, and has eaten some of this food ! Yay pressure released. Offer them some food that they are likely to eat and call it done! They are tired, and so are you. If a sandwich on the way home is eaten, that's dinner! Win win. Focus on the connection and time you get once you get home.
Early meal times for littlies.
Babies and toddlers meal ties really are earlier than we adults like to eat. Their days are shorter and they need more sleep than us so fitting in all the things can be tricky. If you are cooking your adult meals after the children are in bed, fantastic. Put aside leftovers for your child or children for tomorrow night's dinner. You know it has the nutrients it needs, it is already done then when it comes around to dinner time tomorrow night.
Try this….
One night a week make a bigger batch so that you can freeze a few meals as back up dinners. There may be a night that you want to take away, or have a ‘cheat meal’ and you don't want your little one eating this. Having some back up dinners ready to go, helps you to know that your child is well fed and you get to reward yourself with a sneaky meal too.
Tiredness is significant.
As adults, remembering that children's days are long and their ability to chew and eat at the end of the day can be exhausting for them. Helping our kids out so that they aren't tackling the most challenging meals at the end of their day when they are tired may help make mealtimes more harmonious. Offering that tricky protein at lunch time instead of dinner, ensuring that there is a variety of vegetable options at each meal time. Kids will surprise you in what they will eat and when.
Gourmet or not?
Whilst every meal does not need to look gourmet, we can change up the way we think about foods and when we offer them. Offering a variety of foods at each meal could release the pressure on us so that we know we have offered a balance of foods and over the course of a day or a week our kids have eaten what they needed to. If your little person has trouble with food, then having a liked food included at each meal means that you can be assured that they won't be left hungry! Offering foods over and over helps our kids to become familiar with them and possibly even eat them eventually!
Expose often
Little ones need lots of exposure to foods. This helps them with knowing what a food looks like, what it tastes like and allows their taste buds and their brains to adapt to new experiences. As adults you may think that 3 - 5 offerings are a lot. But food can be offered up to 20 times before a child will know, understand and accept it.Offering the same food in different ways could help kids too, pureed, mashed, in fingers, baked, alongside other foods, inside other foods. All of this counts and helps kids to add it to their catalogue of foods. The more often we are exposed to a variety of foods, funnily enough the more likely we are to accept them. Keep on keeping on, offering those foods with no huge expectations and your little one may actually add that food into their repertoire.
Eating together.
Family mealtimes are awesome! For so many reasons, but do we need to do this every night?
I don't think so. The days are long for Mums and Dads and for little people too. 4pm dinners just might not suit the adults in the house, but breakfast or lunch on the weekends or days off totally count! This means our kids get to enjoy us when we are at our best and the time of connection feels even more special. But even if you aren't eating at meal times, being present and enjoying our time with our little people helps them to feel connected to you and helps them to feel good about the food they are eating.