Family Feeding

It’s that time of year again, children are heading back to school. As you and your child transition back to school, we’ve pulled together diet-free back-to-school resources to support you and your student.  

School Letters for Parents and Guardians

Have you seen our downloadable, customizable school letters that we made with the National Alliance for Eating Disorders? Unfortunately, diet culture shows up in schools, because schools are a part of our larger culture. Teachers, parents, and school administrators are not immune to diet culture messages. These letters are ready to support you when you need to send some information explaining the harm of dieting and weight focused messaging. Just download, customize one of these letters, and advocate!  These are the perfect diet-free back-to-school resources to have on hand! 

5 letters: 

• Introductory Letter to Your Child’s Teacher – Want to be proactive? At the beginning of the school year, use this letter to introduce yourself to your child’s teacher and tell them a bit about your nutrition and food philosophy. 
• Letter regarding School Weigh-Ins – Have this letter on hand if your school conducts student weigh-ins. 
• Letter regarding a Harmful School Assignment with Diet Culture – This letter will help if a school assignment includes calories, weight, or good/food bad food messaging. 
• Letter regarding Food Police in the School Cafeteria – We often hear about adults in the cafeteria telling a child how and what to eat their lunch. This letter will explain that you’d like your child to be in charge of the order in which they eat their lunch and how much they eat. 
• Letter requesting your Child Opt-Out of An Assignment – Does your child have a history of an eating disorder? And/or do you feel strongly that your child needs to opt out of an assignment? This letter is to help you request that your child opt out of an assignment that may be potentially harmful. 

Diet-Free Classrooms

In addition to our letters, there are many other diet-free back-to-school resources to support diet-free classrooms.

• Let’s Make Our Children’s Classrooms and Activities Free From Diet Talk This free downloadable handout is great to share with teachers, coaches, troop leaders, and school administrators — anyone who is helping teach and care for children. The handout lays out how weight-focused comments can be harmful and the evidence for the risks associated with dieting. 
• Please Don’t Teach My Kids to Diet: 5 Resources to Give Teachers and Schools This blog post is an oldie-but-goodie. It provides ideas on how to work with educators around these important topics and 5 resources to support you! 

Nutrition Education

We believe nutrition education needs to be developmentally appropriate and free of diet culture. These podcasts and blog posts provide information on supporting your school and children’s teachers towards this goal. 

• School Nutrition and Health Curriculums with Sarah Ganginis
• Early Childhood Health with Educator Shawna Daniels
• A School Nutrition Lesson: The Edible Parts of a Plant
• Nutrition Education for Kids

Sports and Activities

Back-to-school also means back to activities! These podcast episodes and blog post are packed with information about how to support your child in their activities this fall, and important addition to your diet-free back-to-school resources. 

• Eating Disorders and Athletes with Shane Jeffrey
• Nourishing a Dancer’s Mind and Body with Monika Saigal
• Sports Nutrition for Kids and Teens with Leslie Schilling
• Hydration Essentials

Middle, High School, and College Students

Do you have a teenager? The teen years are full of transitions, boundary-pushing, social media, and independence.  These podcast episodes provide you with many perspectives on how to support your teen as they transition back to school. 

• Parenting Middle and High Schoolers with Michelle Icard
• Helping Your Child Transition from Home to University with Alison Crossley
• Boundary Setting and Parenting Your Teen with Signe Darpinian
• Caroline, Ellie, Miriam, and Izzie – Perspective from Our Kids!
• Social Media Wellness for Kids and Teens with Ana Homayoun
• Fostering Positive Body Image in Teens with Dr. Shelley Aggarwal

Packing School Lunches

Back-to-school means back-to-packing lunches!  Neither one of us love this job, but we try to keep it simple and quick.  We have tons of resources to support you in taking the dread out of lunch packing! 

• Purchase our E-book – Your Ultimate Guide for Stress-Free Lunch Packing
• Dreading School Lunch Packing? Tips for Getting the Job Done
• Lunch Packing with Teens and Tweens
• Three Easy Back to School Lunches
• What’s for Lunch
• 15 Minute Lentil Ragout
• Make These Easy Baked Beans to Simplify Your Lunch Packing Routine
• Our Favorite Lunch Packing Supplies 

Kids Podcast Series by Age Level

Do you have questions about feeding your child of any age? We have you covered!  Listen to our Kids Series!  This series is 4 podcast episodes where we answer listener questions about feeding kids.  

• Feeding Preschoolers
• Feeding Elementary Schoolers
• Feeding Middle Schoolers
• Feeding High Schoolers

We hope the transition back to school is a smooth one!  Do you have diet-free back-to-school resources that you love? Or questions for us about feeding kids and teens? We’d love to hear from you! 

 

 

 

It’s Summertime! In North Carolina, Summer means an abundance of amazing tomatoes, berries, and peaches and a great time to teach children nutrition education! Instead of teaching kids about nutrients and what they “should” or “shouldn’t eat,” talk to children about where food comes from, what’s in season, and maybe even head out to a farmer’s market or “U Pick” farm, if possible. THIS is nutrition education!  

Summertime Nutrition Education: What’s in Season?

When teaching children about nutrition, a developmentally appropriate topic is learning about what produce is in season. Many of us live in a food environment where we can buy most produce year-round and may not understand what it means for a food item to be “in season.” Summer is a great time to teach children what is in season, what that means, and maybe visit a farm or roadside stand to learn more. 

Here in North Carolina, “Got to Be NC” Agriculture created this chart showing what months certain foods are in season in this state. You may be able to find a similar chart for where you live through your Cooperative Extension or state-supported agriculture.  Or, Check out the Seasonal Food Guide App. This app has compiled information from state databases.

Summertime Recipes

What’s in season for you?  In NC, July and August offers an abundance and variety of produce. We’ve pulled together our recipes of our summertime in-season produce.  

• Berries: Mixed Berry Cobbler – And Other Ways to Serve All Those Berries You’ve Picked
• Sweet Corn:
  • Our Annual Corn Fest
  • Corn Pudding (We will sometimes use summer corn we’ve frozen)
  • Pasta with Zucchini, Corn, and Cilantro
• Watermelon: On the go Summertime Snacks
• Tomatoes:
  • Summer Tomato Basil Pie
  • More Summertime Snacks
  • 10 Easy Everyday Sides
  • Lentil Salad with Feta and Salami
• Cucumber:
  • Crisp Veggie Salad for Summer
  • On the go Summertime Snacks
• Zucchini:
  • Pasta with Zucchini, Corn, and Cilantro
  • Wondering What to Cook With All That Zucchini? Zucchini Fritters!

Hands-On Nutrition Education

Children learn best from modeling and real-life experiences. Rather than telling our children “fruits and vegetables are good for you,” we can teach them this concept by offering them fruits and vegetables, modeling eating a variety of foods, and teaching them about produce. Learning where food comes from and, maybe even seeing our food growing, can be fabulous education and exposure for children. Not everyone has access to a farm, check out my post The Berry’s Journey: Learning Where Food Comes From. It includes a list of ideas on how to teach children about where their food comes from. Also, in case you missed it, I made a video lesson for upper elementary-aged students about the Edible Parts of Plants. This lesson plan can be shared with educators in your life and includes handouts and downloads.

Learning Through Experience

Nutrition education isn’t just for the classroom. Visiting u-pick farms and roadside stands and foraging can be fabulous ways to learn about what’s in season and how produce grows, and expose children to fruits and vegetables. An added benefit is you are also supporting your local economy! Exposure without pressure is the best way to help children expand what they eat! Picking fruits and vegetables can be a great way for children to be exposed without the pressure of eating what they pick. However, not everyone can visit a u-pick farm. In my post, Picky Eating If Pressure Doesn’t Work, What Does? I discuss many ideas, including picking fruits and vegetables, to help support your child in expanding their food choices. 

We hope you find simple ways to enjoy the abundance of the season! And remember – it’s not your job to “get” your children to eat certain foods.  Just keep offering!