End Mealtime Battles and Raise Intuitive Eaters With These Phrases
You want to raise children who feel positive about their bodies and have a good relationship with food. More than anything, you want to enjoy freedom with food as a family and find joy again in eating together.
But how do you get there? This can feel like such a daunting task. You might be feeling overwhelmed about how you even start.
Raising an intuitive eater is not something that happens overnight, and there are many different factors that will shape how your children feel about food and their bodies. And when you’re up against an overpowering dieting culture, you might feel helpless in even being able to make a positive change in your child’s life, when it comes to food, eating or body image.
If you’ve struggled with your own relationship with food and your body or if you’re still working on healing how you feel about eating, it can feel all the more complicated when you’re trying to feed your own children.
There’s a lot of pressure to raise healthy, happy children - I mean, what parent doesn’t want that for their children? But getting there might feel like an uphill battle - how or where do you even start?
Here’s where I want you to be encouraged and empowered, my friend.
You might feel like everything is against you, but it’s the little things you’ll do that will matter the most and that will leave a lasting impression on how your children feel about food and their bodies.
And know matter what your journey has looked like, you can build a positive and trusting feeding relationship with your children to support their intuitive eating abilities.
The simplest place to start doing this is at mealtimes.
And I know what you might be thinking - mealtimes are madness!
It might feel like a juggle just to get everyone to sit down together and to offer something everyone in the family will eat without complaining. As a mama of 5 rambunctious children myself, I totally get it.
But even in the middle of the mealtime chaos, there’s opportunities for you to seed positive moments and memories that will help your children grow into their innate intuitive eating abilities.
And how can you accomplish this?
Well, simply said, it boils down to your language and how you talk to your children about food and eating.
Why Our Language at Mealtimes Matters
While that might not seem like much, there’s so much power that lies in our words and how we communicate to our children, especially around food and during mealtimes.
You see, children often pick up on hidden messages around things we might say to them about food or how they’re eating, which can often set the stage for how they feel about food, especially over the long term.
Ultimately, we want to be able to raise children who trust themselves, not just with food but with all aspects of their lives. Helping our children build autonomy and trust within themselves often starts at mealtimes because this is a tangible time in which they’re learning how to listen to their bodies.
This is why focusing on building a trusting feeding relationship with our children is fundamental to preserving their intuitive eating abilities.
When we purposefully choose language that communicates that we trust our children and respect them as the best experts of their own bodies, this can be a powerful supporter for raising intuitive eaters.
I know this can be easier said than done.
As parents, we talk to our children about food in a similar manner to how we were talked to as children. We tend to recycle the same phrases we heard from our caregivers or we formulate ideas around food and our bodies based on past experiences, especially around childhood.
Truthfully, you’ve been doing the very best you can with the information and resources you have - all of us are, and parenting is about PROGRESS, not perfection.
You can take a powerful step toward progress by proactively using helpful language at mealtimes that can help your children build positive associations with eating and confidence in their bodies, no matter what the external world might be doing.
And yes, it might not come natural to you to use different types of wording around mealtimes and food.
You might have a tendency to micromanage how or what your child eats or use language as a way to offer positive reinforcement around eating. If you find it hard to practice a new perspective when it comes to food and eating, try to keep the big picture in mind: You want to raise intuitive eaters who trusts themselves as the best experts of their bodies, who are able to listen to what their bodies want and need versus what the outside world is telling them to do.
This starts with how we talk about food at mealtimes and what we say to our own children when they’re eating.
Ask yourself - are you saying things that might cause your kids to question how or what they’re eating? Are your comments rooted in fear about how your child is eating, or are they coming from a place of trust?
Raising Intuitive Eaters
The goal here is to help you transition to feeding your child from a place of TRUST - this is a keystone to raising an intuitive eater.
It means you’re approaching food with your child from a place that allows you to focus on your responsibilities with feeding while trusting your child to do their part with eating.
From this place, your language and wording around food is communicating that you trust your children to eat what they need from the food you provide, which means you’re dropping any pressure to get your kids to eat in a certain way.
Helping wording around food also reassures our children that food is always part of their future, which creates reliability and trust around food and eating experiences.
We also want to be intentional about approaching food in a neutral way, where our language is devoid of polarizing food with “good versus bad” phrases.
Food is just food, and we want to offer our children opportunities to eat what they need without any added feelings of guilt or shame. This is possible when we take a neutral stance in our language around food and how we talk about food with our kids.
I know all of this can sometimes feel abstract, so I want to give you tangible examples and specific phrases you can use to help practice this with your children at mealtimes.
These phrases can support your children in learning to become the best experts of their bodies and to help them trust their intuitive eating abilities at mealtimes. These phrases can be especially helpful for children who might be more selective about food or who might have sensory sensitivities.
Saying these phrases can also help your children feel more at ease at mealtimes, which means less stress for you and your family.
They’re also intended to help cultivate mutual respect between you and your children, which can help strengthen your parent-child bond.
When your children can trust that you’re going to follow through and do your part with feeding them and allow them to do their part with eating, they’re going to feel more confident in themselves, and in turn, learn to trust their bodies in all circumstances (especially around food).
Phrases to Say to Your Kids at Mealtimes
So here are the phrases, as well as potential situations in where you might want to plug in these phrases:
#1: You can listen to what your body needs
Instead of telling your kids what or how much to eat, help your children remember they are in charge of their bodies.
Their bodies already house the innate wisdom they need to guide their food choices, and they simply need to listen to their bodies to help them decide what and how much to eat from the food you provide.
This also reinforces the message that their internal cues can be trusted over external rules; meaning, you’re helping your child learn to tune into and listen to what their bodies need versus looking to the outside for rules on how or what to eat.
This is essential to preserving their innate intuitive eating abilities that are already there and that reside within them.
#2: How does your tummy feel? You can trust what your body is telling you.
Similar to the first point, you’re reinforcing the fact that your child is the best expert of their body and can be trusted to navigate their food choices at meals and snack times.
Asking reflective questions can help your child look inward into their bodies to decipher how they’re feeling during mealtime and to troubleshoot eating experiences.
I like to pull out this phrase when my kids seem to hesitate with food or perhaps, aren’t showing much interest in eating. Instead of telling them things like, “You need to eat this”, or “Why don’t you try a bite of this”, I like to pose the question of asking what their tummies are “saying” or how their tummies are feeling.
Oftentimes, my kids will pause and say things like, “My tummy wants to eat [X] food right now”, or, “My tummy says it’s all done eating.” Of course, you can readjust the wording to match your child’s age.
For older children, I ask, “What does your body feel like?” This can also be a helpful reminder to check in with what they’re needing.
#3: You don’t have to eat it if you don’t want to
For many children, mealtimes and food can often be associated with some anxiety, especially if they feel pressured to eat or if meals are filled with power struggles. And this is no fault of yours. No parent is at fault for wanting their child to eat.
What’s important here is helping your child be the one to decide to eat, and not pressuring them in your quest to get them to eat. One key area for helping your child feel confident in their eating abilities is to assure them that mealtimes are a safe place for them to come and explore food.
They need to trust their bodies’ signals will be respected. That means, we need to trust them, even when they don’t want to eat or aren’t interested in eating the foods we’ve offered and prepared for them.
Letting your children know they don’t have to eat if they don’t want to immediately removes the pressure and anxiety that’s often associated with mealtimes.
You’re reminding your children they’re in charge of their bodies and they can decide whether or not they want to eat at any given mealtime. This can also help take the pressure off you too so you can focus on connecting with your child and making mealtimes a positive experience for all of you.
#4: Is your tummy all done eating?
If our kids haven’t eaten very much or a quantity we feel comfortable with, it’s easy to apply pressure. Sometimes, we say things like, “You need to take one more bite”, or “If you don’t eat more now, you’re going to be hungry later” in effort to get our child to eat MORE. But again, this can communicate the message that we don’t trust them to be the best experts of their bodies or to be able to decide on what or how much they need to eat.
If you feel inclined to check in with your children about how much they’ve eaten, ask reflective questions that will help them check in with themselves and their bodies.
For younger children, I like asking, “Is your tummy done eating?” instead of, “Are you full?”, as this can help them gauge if they’ve eaten enough to feel satisfied. For older children, you can ask the question of, “Do you feel satisfied?” This also helps them learn it’s safe to eat to a place of satisfaction, and satiety is important to helping us decide when we can stop eating.
Personally, I try to avoid associating the word “full” as a cue to stop eating because it implies that children have to eat until their tummies are “full”.
In reality, fullness cues are much more nuanced than this. Fullness doesn’t equal satisfaction and vice versa. We want our children to be able to trust all the information their bodies are telling them to help them decide when to stop eating and not solely rely on having a full tummy as the only marker of satisfaction.
#5: We can eat more of this again soon. I'll make sure we put it on the menu
This is an important phrase to say when your child is repeatedly asking for more of something, especially around sweets and desserts.
If you’ve offered a dessert alongside your child’s meal, they might eat all the dessert and ask for more of it. Rather than shutting your child down or dismissing their requests, you want to reassure them that all foods are part of their future.
Leading with a yes is a way to acknowledge your child’s food request (whatever it might be) without giving in to that request in the moment. In other words, you’re saying YES, we can have more of that, but not right now.
This can help decrease any anxiety a child might have around not being able to have more of the foods they like and want to eat.
In this way, you’re also validating their food requests, which can help them feel all foods are safe and that they have permission to eat and enjoy a variety of foods, especially sweets. You just want to be sure to follow through and intentionally reintroduce that food again at a future meal time. In doing so, you’re building trust with your child around food.
If you need more help with responding to your child’s sweet requests, be sure to check out this blog post here: “Child Constantly Craving Sugar? Helpful Language to Talk About Sweets”
#6: Would you like to help me put this food on your plate?
In effort to build a respectful and trusting feeding relationship with your children, it’s important to remember that they need to learn how to eat on their own timelines, not yours.
Sometimes as parents, we’re eager to get our children to eat certain quantities or foods (ahem - vegetables, anyone?) or we desperately want them to eat foods we feel are going to keep them healthy and strong.
But this often comes with the cost of creating pressure around food at mealtimes, which can inadvertently create negative associations around the eating experiences. Instead, you want your children to feel excited to come to the table and to enjoy eating. This is possible when they don’t feel pressured to eat and are allowed to choose what they want to eat from the foods you’ve provided.
This is largely why I’m a proponent of offering meals family style, which you can read more about here: “How Family Style Dining Makes Feeding Kids Easier at Mealtime”
However, another way to approach this is to ask your child if they would like to help you put something on their plate instead of simply doing it for them.
Sometimes, having food on a plate in itself (especially if it was put there without asking) can feel like pressure. This is especially true for kids that may have more sensory sensitivities or are more selective with their food.
Again, we might pre-plate our children’s food for simplicity purposes. Or sometimes, we put food on our children’s plate with a hidden agenda of them actually trying it. Neither are wrong!
But if you’re struggling with mealtime battles or simply want to take a more respectful approach to feeding, consider asking your child first before plating, or allowing them to self-serve from the foods you’ve offered. This can help them feel like they have more autonomy at meals, which can boost their self-confidence when it comes to eating. This can also help them engage with food in a way that doesn’t involve any pressure to eat it, which is a WIN!
Staying Consistent With Practice
I hope these phrases help you, my friend! Remember, raising intuitive eaters is a journey, one that takes practice, repetition and consistency.
Working on this language piece can support you in building confident eaters and in creating more peaceful, joyful mealtimes with your family.
Let me know which phrase you’re going to practice using in your home in the comments below - I’d love to hear from you!
To get a free downloadable cheat sheet with these phrases summarized for you, be sure to get your copy down below. You can print this out and keep it on your fridge as a helpful reminder for you.
Cheering you on, my friends!
