Read on to learn how you can help your children have a truly healthy relationship with food!
It’s no secret that our society doesn’t help people have a healthy relationship with food (especially female people). With diets and detoxes trending right and left, it can be difficult to navigate this minefield if you want your children to have a healthy view of their bodies and food. Most of us were never given the tools to develop truly healthy food habits ourselves, much less instill it in our daughters and sons.
When I was pregnant with my first child, I became really concerned about how to help my kids avoid absorbing all those negative messages about food and bodies and self-worth. I was still recovering from my own internalized issues with food and body image and felt really lost. I knew I wanted my kids to have a healthy relationship with food, but I didn’t know how to give it to them.
So I researched a ton! And while it felt awkward to talk about food in this new way for the first couple of years, pretty soon it became second nature.
Now I honestly find it just laughable that it ever felt weird to discuss food in such a healthy way. For everyone’s sake, I hope it’s already laughable to all of you, too, but if it’s not that’s ok. You’re here because you want to instill healthy eating habits in your kids without shame.
Spoiler: there is no such thing as healthy eating that is rooted in shame.
Here are the best tips I’ve found to effectively help your kids — and you — have a healthy relationship with food.
Table of Contents
1. There are no “good” or “bad” foods.
I’m sure you’ve heard this one before, but it’s a good one! When you assign morality to food, there is the implicit understanding that the person eating is making either a moral or immoral choice based on what they’re eating.
This is RIDICULOUS! Choosing to eat a cookie sometimes does not make anyone a bad person, even in that moment when they’re enjoying that sugary goodness! Likewise, eating a salad every single day does not make you a good person — it simply makes you a person who eats salad every day. The end.
2. Do not put certain foods over others.
How often have you heard parents say to their kids (or have you said this yourself), “You can’t have any dessert until you eat your dinner!”
Friends, please, please, please do not do this! What happens when you hold one food — usually treats — over another, usually healthier, food is you elevate that dessert. You make it even more desirable!
You’ve told your kids that they should want it and that the healthier food is so undesirable that it needs a bribe. If you’re also teaching them that some foods are good and bad, whether directly or indirectly this is especially problematic.
They’ve learned that some foods are bad but they should want them and that some foods are good but they should not want them! Is it any wonder that we have so many health problems related to food and eating in our society?!
3. Give them dessert and dinner at the same time.
Building off of the last point, how can you easily avoid pitting desserts against dinners? Put them together! Yes, you read that right — serve dessert and dinner at the same time!
But then my child will fill up on dessert! I hear you. But remember– you’re still the parent. You get to decide how much dessert to give them. It’s not like you place a pan of chicken casserole and a whole pie in front of them and just let them go to town.
For example, if we have cupcakes around, we usually just give our kids each a half of one, sometimes even a fourth depending on how big the cupcake is and how many treats they’ve had lately.
They might eat their dessert first, but that’s ok because you don’t give them enough dessert to actually fill them up.
For what it’s worth, sometimes my kids eat their treats before the main dish, but that’s rare. They usually try to save it for last all on their own.
And you don’t always have to have a treat with every dinner — of course not. But when you are having dessert, serve it at the same time as everything else.
4. Teach your children that food is fuel.
Do talk to your kids about how their body uses and needs food. This is where I got stuck when I was planning ahead during my first pregnancy– I knew what not to say, but I didn’t know what to say.
Teach your children about how different foods contain different nutrients that their bodies need to be healthy. For younger kids, I usually don’t say they need certain foods to “be healthy” because they don’t really understand or care about something as ambiguous as “health.”
Instead, I tell them how the foods can help them run fast or give them strong muscles for gymnastics (or swimming or whatever they’re currently in to) or help their brain work better so they can learn to read/ about dinosaurs/ how to count to 100/ etc.
That may sound too gimmicky to you as an adult, but if you start kids out understanding this when they’re little, it sticks! They believe you just as easily as they believe your kisses make their bumps better — and this one is actually true! 😉
5. Tell your kids to, “Listen to your tummy.”
This is something we say daily in our house. Babies are born understanding and listening to their bodies’ cues about hunger and when to eat and stop eating. That’s something we often unlearn as we get older, but it doesn’t have to be that way!
Don’t force your kids to eat everything on their plate. If they’re consistently not finishing their food, give them less to start out with. Then when they’ve eaten it, have them “listen to their tummy” to see if they need more.
The way we usually go about this is if our kids ask for more food after they’ve finished what we gave them, we tell them to drink some water and wait a few minutes because sometimes it takes our tummies a while to tell our brains that we’ve had enough. Then we tell them to close their eyes and pay attention only to how their tummy feels. After a while, it becomes a habit for them and we don’t have to walk them through each step every time.
Now, admittedly, this works better with some kids than others. My oldest child, for example, is very earnest by nature, so she usually really does try to “listen to her tummy” and see if she’s actually still hungry or just wants to keep eating because it’s tasty.
My youngest on the other hand… let’s just say it didn’t take her long once she started talking to string together the sentence, “I listened to my tummy and it’s still hungry, but only for crackers.”
The solution that we eventually found for her was to keep some cooked baby carrots (“soft carrots” as she calls them) in the fridge at all times. Whenever she’d complain that she was hungry but we knew she’d actually had enough to eat, we offered her the carrots. And you know what? Ninety-nine percent of the time she took some and then went happily about her way! She never flipped out because we didn’t give her crackers or whatever she was angling to get that day.
So if you’re concerned that your child really could be hungry or you don’t’ want to dismiss what they’re telling you even though you know they aren’t really hungry, just give them an acceptable option that you choose.
6. Have set(ish) food times.
This is a simple one. If you consistently have meals and snacks at the same time every day, your children will feel more comfortable actually listening to their tummies. They’ll know that there is always another chance to eat coming and that it’s not too far away.
7. Don’t eat in front of the TV.
Now I’m not saying that eating snacks while watching a movie or occasionally having dinner and show is going to ruin your kids– of course not. But if eating while watching TV or the iPad is the norm and not the exception, that’s really going to hinder their ability to listen to their bodies’ cues.
When most of your brain is focused on something, you simply can’t pay as much attention to other things. And if you’re trying to help your kids “listen to their tummies,” this is a big problem.
Plus when you’re focused on something else, you aren’t fully enjoying your food. And part of healthy eating is appreciating what you’re eating.
8. Make mealtime a social event, too!
Eat together as a family as often as you can! No phones or tablets at the table, either. Try to make mealtimes a time of peace and happiness. A time when everyone can share about their days and laugh together — not a time for lectures or unpleasant business.
This helps your kids (and you) associate positive feelings with food — and family, too! It is much easier to make healthy food choices as an adult when your primary associations with food are good.
9. It is still ok to encourage certain foods more often than others. What matters is how you do it.
When you’re new to thinking this way, it can be hard to know how to teach your kids to actually choose healthier foods without presenting unhealthier foods as “bad for you.”
But it really doesn’t have to be difficult. Now that you and your children have a good understanding and communication about how your body needs and uses food, you can talk about how some foods are better to have sometimes instead of all the time.
Think of foods like chips, cookies, or ice cream.
These foods still provide our bodies with energy and some nutrients, but other foods give our bodies a lot more effective energy and even more nutrients, so it’s important to mostly eat those ones.
In kid language: Some foods only help us be a teeny bit strong, while others help us be our very strongest and even help our brains think faster! That’s why we want to have plenty of the foods that help us be so strong and smart and have the other ones only sometimes.
10. Watch how you talk about food (and your body)!
Do you talk about how you shouldn’t eat that hamburger or how you will need to do extra exercise to eat a piece of cake? I totally get it if you do — it’s not at all uncommon. But please, don’t do it anymore!
Even if you aren’t saying it to your children, they do pick up on your own negative views and anxieties around food and body image. Kids absorb so much more than adults realize.
Try replacing those negative comments with positive ones when you eat. Mention how you’re glad you get to eat that chicken sandwich so you can have the energy to run around and protein to help your muscles be strong.
If you are turning down a food because it’s unhealthy, instead of saying, “Those will go straight to my thighs,” try something like, “I do like french fries, but right now my body needs something that will give it more energy, so I’m going to have a yummy apple with peanut butter!”
Really, the very best thing you can do to help your kids truly have a healthy relationship with food is to work on how you view and interact with food yourself.
If you feel like body image (which directly affects how healthy our relationship with food is) is something you need to work on, then I highly recommend checking out the work done by the Kite sisters over at Beauty Redefined! They are amazing at breaking down why our society has such rampant body image issues AND how to fight back for your own sake.
Whew! Did you make it through that whole thing? Good for you!
That commitment right there is proof that you’re on the right path to helping your kids develop a truly healthy mentality around food and eating!
I know this is a lot of information, and I tried to not go too deep into any one topic. But if you have any questions or some of your own tips to offer for helping kids develop a healthy relationship with food, please comment!
