by alyssa Said – certified body image and food relationship counsellor
In a world inundated with diet culture and food restrictions, fostering long–lasting healthy eating habits in our children can seem like navigating a minefield. However, the concept of intuitive eating offers a refreshing perspective—one that emphasises moving away from external motivators of eating and instead, tuning into our body’s internal cues.
Intuitive eating for children might conjure images of unrestricted snacking and chaos at the dinner table, but what it does is encourage your child to maintain a sense of safety and trust in themselves at mealtimes. As parents, we have the privilege of guiding and supporting our children in developing essential food relationship skills, laying the groundwork for a lifetime of balanced, intuitive eating habits.
Allowing your children to eat intuitively at mealtimes means trusting that they can use their internal cues to make food choices and gives them freedom and self–control over their eating. We can still decide what foods we buy, make, and offer, but we are providing our children some agency over their own food choices.
Supporting your child’s intuitive eating at mealtime might look like:
- Letting them decide how much dinner to put on their plate.
- Letting them decide when they have had enough to eat.
- Allowing them to reject food on their plate.
- Allowing them to eat foods that are separated from each other on the plate.
- Letting them decide whether they try a new food.
- Accepting that they are interested in a particular food one day, but not the next.
- Accepting that they will eat a lot one day, and very little the next.
The temptation for many parents is to use bribery as a means to an end at the dinner table, and this concept can be so difficult to change because many of us grew up with this mentality of food allowances based on compliance (operant conditioning). However, bribing a child with dessert or treats if they eat certain foods can result in three potential outcomes:
- The child believes that the food you want them to eat is not a food to be enjoyed and is something to be ‘suffered’ through.
- The child believes that their intuition around food isn’t important, and that their food choices should be controlled by external sources.
- The child develops the habit of craving sweet foods after a meal, regardless of internal cues.
It’s important for a child’s intuitive eating practise that food be excluded altogether from your systems of rewarding and disciplining. Food rewards interfere with their natural ability to regulate their own eating, encouraging them to eat when they’re not hungry, or not to eat when they are hungry.
If you’re now wondering ‘how on earth am I going to get them to eat their vegetables?!’, I encourage you to reframe the thought from ‘getting them to eat vegetables’ to ‘supporting’ – trusting that they will choose to become more adventurous with food in their own timing. Continue to offer the foods they are unsure of and remember that it can take dozens of tries before a child is comfortable eating something. In the meantime, you might like to find some other ways to include foods they are wary of into their meals, such as;
- Grating veggies to add into spaghetti bolognaise or sausage rolls.
- Processing veggies into a ‘rice’ to mix into baked goods.
- Purchasing powdered vegetables to add into scrambled eggs.
- Dipping veggie sticks into nut butters or sauces your child enjoys.
- Adding avocado into smoothies, or beetroot into juices.
Another important way you can support your child’s intuitive eating practice is to ensure the mealtime atmosphere is positive and peaceful, free from stress and anxiety that kids may begin to associate with eating. An emotionally regulated child is far more likely to be able to listen to their internal cues (and try new foods!) compared to a stressed or anxious child. The dinner table is not the place to air family grievances or discipline children.
And finally, never underestimate the power of your own food relationship as an influence on your child. Modelling your own intuitive eating practice is so important for your child to watch and learn from. If you’re partaking in any dieting behaviour, ask yourself the question – ‘Would I be comfortable with my child engaging in this food behaviour, now, or into adulthood?’ They will internalise what they are seeing from you and possibly take on those same eating habits, so nourish yourself well, and avoid dieting practices.
I’ve always found it interesting how we accept that a child takes over eighteen years to develop physically, yet we expect their taste preferences to match ours in such a short space of time. Supporting a child’s intuitive eating journey often requires us as parents to take a step backward and allow our kids to lead the way a little more, which can feel tough, I know! But your child will get there, so let’s let them put into practise their intuitive eating skills and cheer them on along the way. You’re doing a great job!
Raising body confident kids, with positive food relationships, for life. www.redwoodwellbeing.com.au
Alyssa Said is a mother of two, a high school PDHPE teacher, and founder of Redwood Wellbeing as a certified body image and food relationship counsellor. Alyssa coaches women with poor body image and disordered eating patterns and equips parents to support their child’s body confidence and balanced approaches to eating.