Tips For Supporting Children’s Eating

Virginia Watkins is a local nutritionist who leads classes on introducing solids, making your homemade baby foods and more. Here is a recent post from her about children and mealtimes and class information at the end.

“Some children (and adults) need more support than others when it comes to making healthy food choices. Follow the suggestions below and notice a positive shift in your family’s attitudes at mealtimes. These suggestions should help bring a sense of calm to meal planning, preparation, and eating enjoyment.

Eating Environment Guidelines
Creating a safe, welcoming environment at mealtimes may be just as important as serving foods that contribute to your child’s health.

1. Emphasize family mealtimes. Take time to sit down together regularly with the TV, smart phones, and all electronic devices turned off.  Aim for at least seven times per week. Breakfasts and weekend meals may be more do-able than weeknight dinners.

2. Model healthy eating behavior. Make sure your own meals include good sources of fat, vegetables and protein. Even if your children reject the food you offer, you’re showing them that a variety or healthy foods taste good to you.

3. Enlist your children’s input: Ask what they would like for breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks and discuss which foods and combination of foods would make good choices. Make a point to try some of the meals or snacks you’ve discussed.

4. Enlist your children’s help: As your children become more independent, let them serve themselves and help with food preparation. Using salad tongs can be so fun that children begin to eat salad. Sprinkling cinnamon on sweet potatoes and adding butter suddenly makes eating them more appealing.

5. “You are in charge of when and where your child eats and they are in charge of if they eat and how much.” – Ellen Satyr, author of Child of Mine, and How to Get Your Child to Eat But Not Too Much.  If children are pressured too much to eat certain foods, mealtimes can become unpleasant for everyone.

6. Relinquish bribes and reward foods, i.e. no more, “If you eat your broccoli, you get to have dessert.” If necessary, serve dessert at the same time as the meal to help avoid mealtime battles.

Food Guidelines

7. Offer 3 meals and 2 snacks per day, plus water, unless the snacks are making your child too full at mealtimes. Consider cutting back or eliminating them if they are.

8. Offer small amounts of meat, poultry, or fish at most meals. Animal protein provides sustained energy, helps keep blood sugar levels and moods even, and is easier to digest than a diet heavy on grains and dairy products.

9. Eggs, beans, nuts and nut butters, cheese and yogurt are also great sources of protein. Keep in mind that they can be harder to digest and are more allergenic than meat and poultry. See below for the most allergenic foods.

10. Include healthy fats with all meals, including extra virgin olive oil, coconut oil, butter, cream, and some animal fats such as the crispy skin on roasted organic or pasture-raised chicken, or greens cooked in bacon grease. Try adding fat and sea salt to veggies for a higher acceptance rate. Fats help with vitamin and mineral absorption, improve digestion, and stabilize energy and moods.

11. Offer vegetables even if you suspect they’ll be rejected.

12. Serve whole, fresh, seasonal fruits rather than processed ones.

13. Try to keep breads, pasta, and grains as a complement to most meals versus the foundation. Make it a goal to present variety. Most grocery shelves now offer steel-cut oats, polenta, sourdough breads, buckwheat pasta, wild rice, quinoa, and more.

14. Keep healthy snacks on a pantry and refrigerator shelf your children can reach to foster independence and appetite regulation.  If it’s close to a mealtime, let them know that they need to wait to eat or to have a smaller portion.

15. Keep treats as treats, something to eat on occasion.

The eight most common food allergens are milk, eggs, peanuts, tree nuts, fish, soy, wheat, and shellfish. (website referral here)

Other Resources:
http://www.ellynsatterinstitute.org/index.php
http://donnafish.com

Featured Recipe

Avocado Toast
4 slices organic sourdough bread
8 tsp extra virgin olive oil
1 ripe large avocado
Rosemary Salt or coarse sea salt*

Toast bread.
Drizzle each slice with about 2 tsp of olive oil.
Spread ¼ of the avocado on each slice of toast.
Sprinkle with Rosemary Salt.

*I love the Rosemary Salt from Eatwell Farms.

Variations:

  • Add sliced tomato on top of the “smooshed” avocado and then sprinkle with Rosemary Salt.
  • Cut a clove of garlic in half and rub on dry toast, then proceed with recipe.

Upcoming Classes

Introducing Solids and Raising a Healthy Eater

Tuesday, August 12, 11am-12:30pm
Tuesday, October 14, 10:30-12noon
Natural Resources, 1367 Valencia Street, San Francisco
Click here to register.

And

Friday, September 12, 12:30-2pm
Birthways, 1600 Shattuck Ave, ste 122, Berkeley
Wednesday, September 17, 10:30am-12noon
Awaken Chiropractic, 3515 Grand Ave, Oakland

Ideal for parents of babies 3-6 months of age. Babies are welcome!
Cost: $40, Email virginia@vwnutrition.com to sign up.

This class takes all of the guesswork out of giving your baby the best nutrition and a healthy relationship with food right from the start.

Topics include:

  • Understanding when your child is ready for solid food and why
  • Safe first foods, looking beyond rice cereal and across the globe
  • Foods to avoid
  • How much food to give your child
  • Food texture and choking hazards
  • Recommended “tool kit” for making first feedings fun and stress-free
  • Discussion of our own relationship with food
  • Conversation on family mealtime and why it’s important
  • Recommended resources on healthy eating for you and your growing child

Making Homemade Baby Food and Raising a Healthy Eater

Friday, September 5, 12:30-2pm
Birthways, 1600 Shattuck Ave, ste 122, Berkeley
Wednesday, September 10, 10:30-12noon
Awaken Chiropractic, 3515 Grand Ave, Oakland

Ideal for parents of babies 3-8 months. Babies are welcome!
Cost: $45, Email virginia@vwnutrition.com to sign up.

And

Friday, September 19, 12-1:30pm
Friday, October 24, 12-1:30pm
at Carmel Blue, 1418 Grant Avenue, San Francisco
Click here to register.

Fresh Baby Bites joins Virginia Watkins to lead an educational and lively class on making your own baby food. Participants will learn several foundational recipes, taste and take home samples.

Topics covered include:

  • 6 key time-saving tips, such as, “Cook the same foods for baby as you cook for yourself”
  • Recommended safe first foods
  • Foods to avoid
  • Herbs and spices
  • Raising a healthy eater and avoiding the picky-eating stage
  • Progressing to finger foods
  • Freezing and thawing

To schedule a free 15-minute consultation, private cooking class, speaking event or market tour, please call me at 415-385-6538 or email me at virginia@vwnutrition.com

Be well,
Virginia Watkins”

New Mom’s Group starting in Berkeley

*New Moms Group at BirthWays*

*Tuesdays 1:30-3pm*

*August 26th-september 30th*

According to Sara L on Yelp this is the “BEST MOMS GROUP EVER!! Fantastic
facilitator, wonderful women, we’re still hanging out months later. This
group will save your sanity.”

This is a facilitated support group for new moms and their babies -(usually
babies rage in age from 2 weeks to 4 months). *Tuesdays August
26th-September 30th from 1:30-3:00 *we will gather at the BirthWays space
to take some time to give back to yourself and share the intensity and joys
of new motherhood with other moms.

This 6 week series will cover such topics as: sharing birth stories,
finding time to heal your body and mind, feeding your baby, adjusting to
your new identity as a parent, trusting yourself enough to know when not to
listen to another piece of “good” advice, navigating changing relationships
with partners and friends, going out with your baby, preparing to go back
to work or stay home with baby, sleep… what sleep? And most importantly,
realizing that you are not alone in this journey.

For a lot of moms this is an opportunity to practice getting out of the
house and feeding and caring for your babies in public in a safe space.

Brooke on Yelp says this: “I took a Birthways new mom class that started
when my son was just two weeks old. It was such an amazing experience to be
with about 12 or so other new moms going through the same things I was
going through. I learned a lot about breastfeeding, sleeping issues,
massage, and much more for my son, but also self-care for me. It’s been
three years and our group still keeps in touch. I feel a deep connection to
those kids, too. When I see those little guys at the Y or around town I
think back to those early sleep-deprived days and actually miss it.
Birthways is such a great supportive environment. Highly recommended!!”

Facilitated by:

Stacia Biltekoff ~Postpartum Doula, Co- Founder of Bun & Bundle and Mama

Cost: $175 per 6 week session

For more info and to sign up go to:

www.BirthWays.org/classes

Laid Back Breastfeeding class in Albany

Laid Back Breastfeeding: Biological Nurturing taught by Beth Rago, CLC and co-founder of the BABMC.

Sept 14th 3-6pm in Albany. Sliding scale, donation based. Suggested donation $20/person. No one turned away for lack of funds. Includes phone support after your baby is born.

Take an instinctive and biological approach to breastfeeding in the comprehensive 3 hour breastfeeding class. Learn about your babies instincts, body language and enjoy your breastfeeding experience by letting baby lead. Topics covered include: 9 instinctive stages in the first hour of birth and how to recognize readiness to feed, breast milk composition and nutrients, body changes, how to know if your baby is getting enough, what to do if you are sick, self attachment/baby led latching, instinctive parenting, partner roles, hand expression, pumping and storage.

Mothers with new infants encouraged to come.

Beth Rago is a Certified Lactation Counselor trained by Healthy Children, and has been helping women with lactation since 2010 when she co-founded the Bay Area Breast Milk Cooperative to help local families gain access to breast milk. You can find out more about the BABMC on the facebook page or go to http://www.bayareabreastmilk.wordpress.com http://www.bayareabreastmilk.wordpress.com

email bethrago@yahoo.com to register