Five Surprising Things You Might Not Know About Feeding Kids

Tonight I’m running my ‘Raising Embodied Eaters’ workshop; the idea is to help give parents and carers some tools to support their kids feeling connected to their bodies in ways that feel nourishing and build trust. One of the earliest ways that kids learn their body isn’t trustworthy or their own, is through food. They learn their appetites are too big or too small. They learn that the foods they enjoy are ‘bad’ for them. They learn that if they don’t eat foods that they don’t like they…won’t grow ‘big and strong’ or they’ll get sick or lose their eyesight in the dark (actually wild when you stop and think about it!).

The goal is not to engineer ‘perfect’ eaters who like broccoli as much as they like cake. But to help kids feel confident navigating a complex food environment (which includes everything from advertising for so-called ‘junk food’, to diet products and protein powders). 

The One-upMUMship of Kid Food Instagram

What are the salmon and broccoli burgers really saying?

Can I Have Another Snack?Laura Thomas

Critiquing ‘Kids Eat in Color’ Advice on Talking to Children About Food

Kids Eat in Color is at it again

Can I Have Another Snack?Laura Thomas

I also want parents and carers to go away feeling reassured that they’re not fucking it all up. Kid Food Instagram is full of contradictory advice, blame, and pressure to feed kids perfectly. It can feel pretty high stakes (even I feel like this and this is my job!) but it doesn’t need to be like that. So I want to strike a balance between practical tools and Things You Can Do, plus some encouragement that kids are weird and it will be fine. Probably.

To this end, I’ve been thinking about some of the little factoids I like to trot out when I’m working with families who are freaking out about one aspect of feeding their child or another. I’m sharing a few of these here, and will have plenty more in tonight’s workshop if you can join us (it’ll be available to playback whenever you like too!).

1. We talk about babies being ‘intuitive’ eaters – I’ve said this myself in the past – and while they are definitely attuned to their appetites, learning to eat is a skill like anything else. Babies develop the sucking reflex in utero (around 14-15 weeks gestation) which allows them to drink milk when they’re born. From around 6 months of age, they start ‘munching’, where they mush food on the top of the mouth with the tongue. They don’t need teeth for this - the gums are hard because of the unerupted teeth just below the gum line. Next they have to learn to move the food side-to-side with their tongues in order to get food from the centre of the mouth to the gums and teeth for chewing. As baby becomes more skilled, they will move food to the side of the mouth to break it down then return it to the centre and it will be swallowed straight over the back on the tongue in the same way that milk and other liquids are swallowed. If babies don’t progress from purees to more textured food between 7 and 10 months, it can be harder for them to develop this side-to-side movement and they can get ‘stuck’ on easily swallowed foods. 

Dear Laura... My baby isn’t into solids - HELP!

Hey team - welcome to ‘Dear Laura’ - a monthly column where I fashion myself as an agony aunt and answer the questions that readers submit. If you’d like to submit a question for me to answer next month - then you can leave it as a comment below

Can I Have Another Snack?Laura Thomas

Dear Laura... The Division of Responsibility doesn’t work for my family - is it me, or the model?

(Spoiler, I’m not a DoR purist)

Can I Have Another Snack?Laura Thomas