What is mealtime like with your four year old? Smooth sailing? Easy peasy? Favorite part of the day? A person who doesn’t have kids must’ve written this! you shout at the screen.
We know that for so many families mealtime is stressful, to put it lightly. There’s conflict and power struggles, and you often leave exhausted. We understand. In this episode of Tiny Big Moments, we explore why food brings up so much for parents and caregivers, and we offer some evidence-based strategies that can help make mealtime easier and – dare we say – fun.
Listen time: 22 minutes
Tiny Big Moments is a production of ParentCorps, an evidence-based early childhood program housed at NYU Langone. You can also listen to this episode on Spotify. This episode was produced by Clarissa Donnelly-DeRoven, Leila Eldomyati, Lisa Ellrodt, Cindy Gray, and edited by Shanika Gunaratna.
You can learn more about ParentCorps programming at www.weareparentcorps.org and you can donate to support our work at www.weareparentcorps.org/support-us.
A transcript is included below.
Clarissa:
This is Tiny Big Moments, a podcast about the tiny moments in early childhood that teach us big lessons. I’m your host, Clarissa Donnelly-DeRoven. I’m the communications specialist here at ParentCorps – an evidence-based early childhood program, housed at NYU Langone.
Clarissa:
On a recent visit home, I sat down for lunch with my five year old brother, Rowan. As we ate, I asked him about the accessory that my mom never lets him go anywhere without.
Clarissa:
What does your bracelet do?
Rowan:
It says my allergies.
Clarissa:
What foods are you allergic to?
Rowan:
Eggpeanutspineappleandfish.
Clarissa:
Could you say it slower?
Rowan:
Eggs, peanuts, pineapple, and fish.
Clarissa:
What happens if you eat something that you’re allergic to?
Rowan:
I’ll get sick
Clarissa:
Rowan has lots of severe allergies, which can make family meals difficult. But for all the foods he can’t eat, there’s lots that he can and plenty that he enjoys. His favorite at the moment is a split between mac and cheese and, quote, green pasta, by which he means pesto. During our chat, he was also eating guacamole – also something green – but his mind was clearly… elsewhere. In the clip, you’ll hear rowan and my mom talking.
Liz:
Okay, so you're done eating? Cause there's no food till dinner then.
Rowan:
Yeah, I know. Only water.
Liz:
Yeah, water.
Rowan:
Water to hydrate. Water to hydrate.
Liz:
Yes. Water to hydrate.
Rowan:
I'm full.
Liz:
Are you sure?
Rowan:
Yes.
Liz:
Because you had one bite.
Rowan:
I'm full.
Liz:
Are you feeling okay?
Rowan:
Yes.
Liz:
Okay.
Clarissa:
It can be complicated for parents when kids don’t eat as much as parents think they should. Feeding your child is one of their most basic needs, so when you do what you think you should – that is, offer them what seems like a properly sized, well-balanced meal – and they refuse to eat, it can feel devastating – like you’re coming up short despite your best efforts. In today’s episode we’re going to talk about mealtime – from the power struggles to the complicated feelings these dynamics leave parents and caregivers with, and so much more. We’re also going to offer some tools and strategies that we use in ParentCorps to help transform mealtime from an ongoing source of struggle to a space for connection. ParentCorps senior program coordinator Cindy Gray is going to tell us that story. I’ll let her take it from here.
Cindy:
For most people, food is usually more than just sustenance. Food is love, it’s tradition, culture, and connection.
Mia:
So yeah, pork chops is my favorite thing.
Sharmin:
I love rice.
Yusuf:
Dal and bhaat.
Cindy:
As for me… my grandmother’s miso soup, it’s simple, it’s sweet, and it’s one of my favorite slurps of food. When we visited Japan recently, she made me and my wife her favorite miso soup. It’s full of naganegi,which is a type of leek. My wife grew up eating miso soup at American Japanese/Chinese restaurants, and it’s usually made from a powder. So she loved trying my grandmother’s favorite, and my grandmother delighted in sharing it. It’s a joyful scene I play over and over in my head.
But talking about food isn't always joyful. We see this all the time in our parenting program, which is a group based program for families of young children where caregivers can come together, build community, learn about childhood development, and reflect on how their own experiences influence their parenting today.
ParentCorps Educator Sair Goldenberg told us that, especially during the week that focuses on mealtime, the conversation can get heavy.
Sair:
So much comes up in the room because we ask families what mealtime was like when they were kids. We talk about what mealtime is like now as they feed their children and whether it sort of squares with what they want to see. Oftentimes, as parents reflect and parents and caregivers reflect on what mealtime was like when they were growing up, they reflect on having to eat foods they didn't like. They talk about having to eat all of their food when they weren't hungry. They also talk about not having enough to eat. And, I mean, pick one, and that's going to bring up a lot for a person.
Cindy:
Reflecting on mealtime brings up a lot for the school staff facilitating these groups, too.
Mia:
My grandfather would make me center-cut fried pork chops.
Cindy:
That’s Mia Roberts. She’s a longtime facilitator of ParentCorps at many schools across New York City.
Mia:
Most of my friends had bologna sandwiches or peanut butter and jelly. And if we went on a trip, I got three of them. One for lunch, one for my friend if she didn't have a good lunch, and just in case the bus broke down and I got hungry. So food was always through love. I don't love to cook, but I love to feed people that I love.
Cindy:
Mia knows mealtime means a lot for families because it meant a lot for her, too.
Mia:
So as a child, I was raised by my paternal grandparents. When it came time to eat, we ate dinner together. So a lot of the things that I'm seeing in ParentCorps, maybe that's why it resonates so much with me, because each one of those sessions I can relate it to how I grew up with my grandparents, especially the session on mealtime. Mealtime is really a space, was a space where we would talk. Food was always plentiful, thank God. I know that when I talk to different families, and over the years of doing the session, that is one of the most emotional sessions that we ever had, where food really kicks up a lot for people.
Cindy:
There is a ton of research on the benefits of family meals. Studies show that family meals support academic success and healthy food selection, and it can help children avoid high-risk behaviors when they're older.
Sair:
dinner was always family dinner. And we always waited till my dad got home from work. And even though my mom also worked, my mom did 95% of the cooking.
Cindy:
That’s Sair again.
Sair:
and dinner time was really, was a time where we all got together, and it wasn't always a super excellent time, but it was always a time where we talked about our day. It was always a little weird if we weren't all at the table for dinner
Cindy:
Family meals look different in every household. Instead of dinner, your family meal might be breakfast. You may start your meal with a prayer, and you might end it with something sweet. Each person may have their own plate and pass the salt, or everyone might gather around one or two main dishes with eager utensils or hands waiting to dig in.
Mealtime is a place to share about our family’s culture, and is a time where children can learn about important customs, traditions and develop a sense of pride in who they are. And this can really have a big impact. Research shows that children who have a strong racial or ethnic identity are more likely to do well in school, have higher self-esteem, and get along well with others.
Still, our appreciation for the foods we grew up with might only come with time. That was certainly the case for Sharmin Hoque, ParentCorps’ program manager of digital products. We heard her and her son Yusuf’s shared love of rice, or bhaat, earlier.
Sharmin:
I'm from Bangladesh. A lot of our cuisine is heavy on, like, vegetables and fish and chicken. We are not really meat heavy. But honestly, I didn't want to eat any of the vegetables or, like, fish that my mom would prepare. And so it was often a struggle for my mom to get us to, like, eat what she was cooking. So there was always chicken, there was always chicken curry, because that was the one thing she knows that, like, me and my brothers would eat. And it was expected that we would eat that and anything else, at least in our family, things like chicken nuggets or pizza was often seen as a snack because the real food is rice and anything that accompanies rice.
I think that I feel like it's, like, a basic requirement for a Bangladeshi to like rice because it is the, like, base layer for every meal. You know, a good plate of plain white rice is sometimes all I need, and I do see it as comforting for myself.
Cindy:
Sharmin’s son Yusuf is three years old, and he wholeheartedly agrees.
Cindy:
Do you like pasta or rice?
Yusuf:
Rice. Dal and rice.
Cindy:
Dal and rice. Yum. Who makes good rice in your house?
Yusuf:
I like Dhadi's Rice.
Sharmin:
Dhadi as in his paternal grandma.
Cindy:
Oh Dhadi’s rice. Very cool, wow. Does your dad also make good rice? Did he learn how to make rice from Dhadi?
Yusuff:
Mmmmm, no.
Cindy:
Nooo.
Sharmin:
Yusuf is really curious and observant, and I really enjoy just hearing his opinions about different things, especially, you know, at this age where they start forming opinions and tastes and preferences.
He loves going to my mother's house. His good old reliable is essentially white rice, which we call bhaat. He's obsessed with white rice, just plain by itself, and also with, like, dal, which is a lentil soup. He has a really good relationship with that, and that is the one thing that he keeps gravitating towards. But he's definitely, I wouldn't say adventurous, but open to new foods.
Cindy:
Lots of kids are like Yusuf. They have their favorite foods, and are sometimes open to trying new things, but they’re not exactly what we’d call adventurous eaters.
Lots of kids, also, are not like Yusuf. Sometimes children love a food one day and they hate it the next. Some kids have no interest in trying new foods at all.
All of this, we want to assure you, is normal, even though it can feel distressing for many parents. But, there are some evidence-based strategies that we know can help ease this stress, and help parents form new dynamics around mealtimes. One of our favorite strategies, which we share in our work with parents and early childhood teachers, is called the division of responsibility.
Sair:
which is a strategy from Ellyn Satter, which basically divides the responsibilities of mealtime for the adult and for the child.
Cindy:
That’s Sair again.
Sair:
So the parent's job is to decide what's for dinner, when dinner is happening, and where it's happening, and kids are going to decide whether they're going to eat and how much – and or how much. So everybody has a job, and once you do your job, you're done.
Cindy:
Sharmin uses division of responsibility at home with her son Yusuf, but it didn’t always come naturally.
Sharmin:
There's definitely a lot of unlearning that I'm still doing as a parent with the how much to eat and what to eat. You know, when you think of your child developmentally, a lot of us think of it as, like, a physical thing. You know, like, meeting those, like, milestones, like, those weight and height milestones. Intellectually, I feel like as long as you're meeting the social, emotional milestones, like, that's what's important. But, like, in my gut, I still want Yusuf to be healthy, quote unquote. I'm putting that in quotation marks because unfortunately, my instinct, healthy is, like, an appearance thing, right? Like, you're not too skinny or you're not – like, I recently found out that there's, like, a husky option for kids clothing, and I thought that was really interesting. But, like, in my head, healthy is, like, a very physical features thing. And I'm trying to unlearn that because my husband is like, oh, like, Yusuf hasn't eaten like that in two days. But he's still, like having fun doing his thing.
And I'm trying to, like, explain to him, like, sometimes toddlers just survive on air and, like, chicken nuggets, and that's fine. The division of responsibilities, I feel, like, the parent thing, I feel like I wholeheartedly, intellectually, and practically understand that. I think it's the child being able to decide how much they eat that I definitely struggle with because there's, like, a sense of accomplishment that I feel when he finishes a meal, and I don't like that. I’m like, why am I finding like a sense of self worth when he finishes a meal, like I did something? It's not my responsibility or my accomplishment when he finishes something. That's his. And so not trying to tie his growth and my self worth around him completing a meal.
Cindy:
Like Sharmin shared, the division of responsibility isn’t exactly intuitive. It goes against a lot of the messaging that we’ve received. Parents who come to the parenting program often feel the same way. Sair, who we heard earlier, hears a lot of initial skepticism. She welcomes it.
Sair:
So, the conversation we may have just had about being forced to eat, even though that's still present and in the room, parents, out of – what they believe to be and what they know to be – care and care and concern for their kids, is that they can't let their children leave the table hungry. They can't have them not eat something. When we talk more about how much they care about their children and how much they want their kids to grow up and be healthy, the more we can continue to come back to this idea of supporting children to trust their own bodies, because so many families who come to the parenting program, as they reflect, they never had that opportunity to be trusted, to know when they were hungry, and to know when they were full. They were told to eat and told not to eat.
Cindy:
What Sair is referring to there, is that children are born knowing when they are hungry and when they are full. This is called satiety. Many of us adults have unlearned this. Studies show that young children know how much they need to eat. But at around age 5 or 6, children often start focusing on external signals, like portion sizes and being told by adults in their life to clean their plate.
What the division of responsibility tells us – and this is is backed by evidence – is that if adults stick to their responsibilities, and allow children to own theirs, we create conditions where children become open to trying new foods, and where children learn to trust their own bodies.
Mia, who told us about her grandfather’s pork chop sandwiches, now lives with her daughter Alicia and grandson. Growing up, Alicia always felt her mom encouraged her to listen to her satiety cues.
Alicia:
I think back to when I was growing up, mom, okay, I have to say, she's always been pretty good, as far as like, if we didn't like something, I don't know, lima beans, she never made us sit and eat it. She would make broccoli, let's say. So she'd make two, whatever, vegetables. Um, but now with my son, he's such a picky eater. But I also try to give him that space to say what he likes and what he doesn't like. And like when we're eating, the satiety, eat until you're full. And that might not be a lot, or it It might be a lot that night.
Cindy:
When we’re talking about the division of responsibility, ultimately we’re talking about communicating to our children that we trust them to make choices about their bodies. When children get to decide what to eat and how much to eat, it’s empowering.
Traditions are made anew with every generation, and if we’re lucky, we get to pass them on to our own children. Or, in Sharmin’s case, pass on a new tradition that she and her parents made together.
Sharmin:
My family was very big on, like, running around after the kid to, like, make sure that they're eating. But that would mean that my mom would literally be following us around for, like, 30, 40 minutes to make sure that we finished a meal. And I personally don't think that that's a good use of anyone's time now. And so one thing that I've ensured with Yusuf is that you're gonna sit here for as long as you can eat, and then if you really don't want to eat anymore, it's okay.
Funny enough, she's completely changed with him. She has also adopted a lot of the same traditions that I have now. I don't know how that happened, but she is actually the first one that told me, like, no, make sure that Yusuf sits here in one place, not in front of the tv, to eat. And so it's not how she raised us, but it's funny that we align on that now together.
Absolutely, there's always going to be, I think, a lingering bitterness, like, hey, where was that when I was younger? And I'm trying to give more grace to my parents, because I think the most important thing is that I didn't have those tools either when I was younger, and now I do have those tools, and I think that it's my responsibility to share those tools with my parents. And it's not like a perfect conversation, and they're not always like, oh, yeah, sure, we'll do that. There's still a lot of things that they're like, you know, we'll stick to what we know. But there's definitely been an openness that I almost wish I had. But I think I actually feel happier that Yusuf has that.
Cindy:
Even if we have people in our village, so much of parenting can feel isolating. When families have safe and supportive spaces to come together, they start to reflect and share stories, hear each other’s struggles, celebrate successes, and work through parenting challenges together.
One of the things we hope families can start working through during ParentCorps is the question: what lessons am I teaching my children about food? Sair talked about how this came up in one of her groups.
Sair:
For example, I had a parent who was always forced to eat oatmeal when she was little, and it used to make her sick.And her mother, for whatever reason, I don't know what the situation was, insisted that this is what she was going to eat. And now that mother will not eat oatmeal, but insists on serving it to her children because she believes it's important for them to eat foods that they don't like either. And having a moment where she mentioned that and another parent said, wait a second. You're feeding your kids something that you were forced to eat that you didn't like? The parent had, like, a moment of silence and then started to sort of fumble through, like, but it's important that they. And then she just kind of burst into tears and hadn't really taken the time to really reflect on what her experience had been like as a child and what she feared she was doing to her own kids without even considering it. And in that particular group, parents were so supportive of her and saying, like, we get it.
Cindy:
Realizations like this can be challenging and painful, but they can be empowering, too – especially when these insights happen in a community space, where people can show up to comfort and support one another through these vulnerable conversations.
Once we realize what we don’t want to keep doing, we can change up the recipe – pun intended – and make mealtime our own.
Sair:
Yeah, so there was a parent that came to one of my parent groups, who had been really struggling with their child's behavior in a lot of different ways, but a lot of it was really about mealtime. We talked about the division of responsibility and when I shared the strategy, she said well I’ll try it, I don’t know. And she came back the following week, having tried it every single night, and she felt like she had found the holy grail. She could not believe how different it was to offer her child the food and then be done. The pressure was off the parent, and then it was off the child. And spoiler, the child ate! So mealtime can work, using the division of responsibility.
When we think about food and we think about mealtime, it's really a time for people to come together and to connect over food. And it doesn't necessarily mean that the food that's on your plate matters. It's about connecting and being together and sharing an experience.
Clarissa:
Thanks for listening. Tiny Big Moments is produced by me, Leila Eldomyati, Lisa Ellrodt, and Cindy Gray, with editing support from Shanika Gunaratna. A big thank you to Sair Goldenberg, Sharmin Hoque, and Mia and Alicia Roberts for sharing their mealtime stories with us. And the biggest thanks to our widdlest Tiny Big Moments contributors, Rowan and Yusuf.
To learn more about ParentCorps, visit our website, we are ParentCorps – with an S – dot org. You can donate to support ParentCorps programming at the link in our description box.
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