Why children’s mealtimes can be tricky

Supporting children’s mealtimes

Children’s mealtimes with can create key issues and challenges for both parents and practitioners. To help support practitioners with mealtimes it is best to look at why these times of the day can be challenging.

For both children and practitioners mealtimes can be stressful, how this shouldn’t be the case as they are so many learning opportunities that can arise during mealtimes. Children can display many forms of behaviour and practitioners are sometimes rushing as it is nearly time for parents to collect their child. Meal times at nursery should be seen as a social time, whereby children are grouped together along with adults to enjoy the food put before them.

At home mealtimes can also be tricky as some children may be fussy eaters and parents feel like they are constantly battling to get their child to eat something. Occasions like these for parents are part of their everyday routine and for children it means they are only eating certain types of food. For setting that allow children to bring in packed lunches there is a tendency that parents provide enough food to feed the whole class and then question staff as to why their child hasn’t finished everything. In nurseries things like quantity and calories intakes are closely monitored and children are provided with the correct amount according to government guidelines. To help parents who provide packed lunch why not display an example of a packed lunch for parents and show what is expected for different age groups. The information provided may come of a surprise to parents as they may think a child of two will eat a whole apple when realistically they may only manage a couple of slices.

Fussy eaters can make mealtimes very difficult, but by putting less on children’s plate can sometimes can cure these issues and reduce the levels of stressful.

Examples of ways to help fussy eaters

• Encourage children to help prepare the food
• Allow children to serve their food – with adult support to reduce any risks
• Provide a wide range of different tastes and textures

For many families mealtimes is about sitting round a table and enjoying a meal together, however over a period of time this has slowly moved away and mealtimes are now for some families shared in front of a screen. The opportunities for children to experience a social sharing occasion are now becoming sparser and for children they are losing out on social interactions. To help parents to look at the benefits of having meal times together round table, this may mean advising benefits of a sit down meal. For settings it may be worth looking at how you are offering snack times as rolling snack may be lending itself to children eating by themselves where as smaller groups are revisiting the aspect of social sharing occasion.

Way to show how you’re setting is promoting healthy eating, as well as what children are learning from mealtimes

• Carry out a audit first to see how well your setting support health eating
• Display photographs with captions about what children are leaning.
• Audio video clips to show parents of children pouring own drinks and using cutlery.
• Communicate effectively about the benefits of mealtimes.