5 Tips For Feeding Your Kids

Confidence means believing in your abilities. Feeding confidence means trusting yourself to offer your children a variety of foods in a structured, supportive, nurturing, diet-free environment.

Unfortunately, much of the child feeding and nutrition advice is steeped in fear and diet culture messaging. One reason we started Sunny Side Up Nutrition is that, over the past 20-plus years, Anna and I have worked with countless parents and kids who suffered the harmful effects of all the fear-based nutrition information out there.

It’s hard to wade through all the noise and feel confident about feeding your kids! Anna and I are child-feeding experts, and we, too, have moments where we question whether we’re doing things right.

Preschooler with blond wavy hair eating with chopsticks.

1. Trust yourself

You know your children best. Much of the child nutrition information out there leaves parents like you confused and worried about feeding your kids. What can you do to promote true health? Read Anna’s post: What Are Parents to Do? 3 Nutrition Actions to Promote True Health.

2. Trust your children to eat and grow

It’s easy to run across child nutrition and growth information telling parents they’re responsible for their child’s weight and to feed them only the “healthiest” foods. Trust that your child will do their job of eating and growing. It can help to ZOOM OUT. Feeding our children is a long-term process, as Anna writes about in her post: Family Feeding – The Long Haul.

Teen with light brown hair eating pizza at an outdoor restaurant.

3. Create a pressure-free and pleasant atmosphere during meals

Do you have a picky eater or a child who’s easily distracted during meal and snack times? You likely feel frustrated, which is completely understandable!

One way to decrease pressure is to remind yourself of your jobs (what’s offered, when it’s offered, and where the food is offered), and your child’s jobs (what and how much they eat of what’s offered). If we push kids to eat more, try what we make, or eat one more bite of their vegetables to earn dessert, mealtime can quickly become an unpleasant experience.

However, most important is the time together to connect with others, not what or how much kids eat. Do you want tips for how to avoid pressuring your kids to eat? Check out Picky Eating: If Pressure Doesn’t Work – What Does?

4. Have a flexible plan for meals

Meal planning doesn’t have to be rigid. A simple and adaptable plan can help you feel less stressed and more confident about feeding your kids. We share our planning tips and “go-to” meals in the following posts:

5. Offer a variety of foods at regular intervals throughout the day

Remember, part of our job in the feeding relationship is deciding what food to offer and when. In previous blog posts, we shared lots of tips and ideas to help you offer a variety of structured meals and snacks!