Our words and messages to our kids often become their internal words and messages to themselves, so it’s worth being mindful of the messages we are sending. The phrases I’m sharing today have something in common: they’re all ways to communicate meaningfully with our kids about food without adding pressure.

Talking About Food

Here we want to be mindful of nutrition but avoid moralizing about foods.

Instead of calling certain foods “bad for you/unhealthy/junk food/sweets/dessert”…

Call them “play food.” Play foods are foods that we eat for fun, just for the pleasure of them, even though they don’t always have the nutrients we need.

Instead of certain foods “good for you/healthy”…

Call them “nutritious foods”. Nutritious foods give us what we need to help our bodies to grow and be healthy.

I love the framing of both of these because they feel morally neutral. Both are presented in a positive way. It shows that both have a role in a diet that goes beyond “avoid this” and “eat that.” There’s absolutely space for play foods on our plates, we just don’t want to have so many of them that there’s no room for us to get the nutrients our bodies need.

Talking About Bodies

Here we want to send a consistent message that our bodies are good and smart and know what we need if we listen to them.

It’s difficult for parents to believe that their kids are done at the table when they’ve been distracted or rushed. My favorite strategy here is to ask a neutral question.

Instead of “Are you done?” or “Did you get enough?”…

Ask “Are you satisfied?” Satisfied means your body feels good. You no longer feel hungry, but you aren’t uncomfortably full, either. It’s a comfortable feeling.

Then accept your child’s answer.

Need more resources for healing your own relationship with food? Subscribe below to get an instant link to my favorite books, podcasts, and online resources, including a life-changing 10-minute TED Talk.

Parents often name getting their kids to eat at the top of their list of the most stressful things about parenting. This episode is the first of a three-part series that will transform the way you think, talk, and act, so you can better help your kids grow up to have a healthy relationship with food.

Parents I talk to name getting their kids to eat at the top of their list of the most stressful things about parenting. This episode is the first of a three-part series that will transform the way you think, talk, and act, so you can help your kids grow up to have a healthy relationship with food.

4 Facts Every Parent Should Know About Feeding Kids

These Can Transform Mealtimes

1. Kids are born with the natural ability to regulate their appetites when they are offered a balanced set of choices.

2. It is developmentally normal for kids to develop neophobia—picky eating—between ages 2 and 5.

3. Your kids want to grow up to eat like you.

4. External pressures can interfere with natural appetite regulation.

The Alvas just welcomed a new baby, so Rachel is currently on maternity leave. Listen for details on what to expect in upcoming episodes.

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(You can also find me on Instagram @blue.cadence)

The Alvas just welcomed a new baby, so Rachel is currently on maternity leave. Listen for details on what to expect in upcoming episodes.

We all want to give our kids the best chance to develop intellectually. Here’s how we can get out of the way—and meet them exactly where they are—to boost the impact of learning experiences.

Four strategies for deepening kids’ thinking

We all want to give our kids the best chance to develop intellectually. Here's how we can get out of the way—and meet them exactly where they are—to boost the impact of learning experiences.

In this episode, I use the example of taking kids to the butterfly house at a science center, but these strategies can just as easily apply to informal or formal experiences at home, school, or anywhere in the community—no fancy memberships required. After I recorded the episode, I regretted not mentioning this because I never want to imply that families with fewer resources are less invested in their kids’ cognitive development. That’s clearly not the case, and these strategies are accessible independent of finances.

Here are the strategies:

1. Give lots of hands-on experiences to facilitate discovery.

2. Help kids put words to observations—“What do you notice?”

3. Turn kids’ observations into questions —“I wonder if/why/how/what…”

4. Let kids formalize their learning in their own time. Don’t rush to a conclusion!

Your turn to share below: What are your biggest takeaways from this episode? After you tried out these strategies, what were your wins with your child? Where do you have questions or need more support?

Five simple steps to creating more effective routines with your kids at home or school

Five simple steps to creating more effective routines with your kids at home or school

These steps can be done with individual kids at home, whole classrooms of students at school, or anything in-between. The process is initiated anytime someone notices that there’s an ongoing struggle with a procedure that happens regularly. It could be getting ready in the morning, lining up for recess, engaging in meaningful partner work, or any other routine that happens in your context on a regular basis. When I started as a classroom teacher, I worried that kids might not take my concerns seriously when I initiated the process, but I quickly discovered that anything that bothered me bothered at least a few kids, and my students tended to be very empathetic whenever someone—including me—presented an issue.

Part of what makes this process so successful is that everyone has a chance to feel that their concerns are acknowledged and gets to participate in developing an effective solution. To recap, here are the steps:

1. Bring together stakeholders. Evaluate your current routine--what works or doesn’t work about it? (What do you want MORE or LESS of?)

2. Determine the desired steps of new routine. Negotiate a plan.

3. Formalize the plan. (Written or photo checklist? Act it out?)

4. Try it out for a while.

5. Re-evaluate as often as needed and repeat steps 1-5.

Listen to the full episode for further explanation of each step, including an example of how my family recently used this process to improve our three-year-old’s bedtime routine.

Join the conversation below by sharing your wins with the process as well as any struggles you’ve had with the process that you want support to troubleshoot.