We generally focus on sleep here, but I also love bringing in other parenting experts to help equip us!
So today you get to hear from Alyssa Miller, a mom of three and registered dietician + picky eating specialist with Nutrition for Littles. She’ll be sharing some picky eating tips that our family has directly benefited from for a few years now, and then she’ll be chatting all things bedtime snacks.
Whenever I chat with families about bedtime snacks, it’s all from what I have learned from Alyssa! She’ll be sharing:
- Her top three picky eating tips
- When a child needs a bedtime snack
- When a child does not need a bedtime snack
- How bedtime snacks and picky eating are often connected
- The fear many parents carry about nighttime hunger
- What to do if you’re worried your child might wake up hungry
And more!
Introduce Yourself and Tell Us About Nutrition for Littles
I’m Alyssa and I’m a registered dietitian and picky eating specialist. I have three kids of my own, so I’ve really been through the wringer with their eating; one of them is still very much in the throes of toddlerhood.
When my oldest son, who’s now 10, started getting picky, he went from a baby who ate everything, to what my friend called a “bread-itarian.” It happened so quickly and I did not see it coming. I wasn’t a picky eating dietician at the time and I just figured like it was a phase and he’d grow out of it.
And while it is very common for toddlers 18-24 months of age to start to get pickier, now I know, after working with thousands of families, if it’s been longer than six weeks, we’re no longer in “a phase”; this has become a pattern and a habit in your family.
During this picky “phase,” I started to see the consequences of my son’s picky eating – it was having bigger melt downs and tantrums, sleep was getting thrown off, he was getting sick more often, etc.
And I really just felt very passionate that I wanted to figure out a way for this kid to no longer eat just “kid foo”d and start having a wider variety. So I started sharing publicly in my blog about how I was reversing my son’s picky eating and really saw this new world.
I thought, “What if it doesn’t have to be this hard to feed our kids? What if parents didn’t want to feed their kids mac and cheese, put them to bed, and then eat their adult dinner after the kids go to bed?”
Research shows how important family meals are, and not just the nutrition. Just being together, around the dinner table, no matter what you’re eating, is so important. But it’s so hard for families to do that if they hate feeding their kid. And it was such a priority for me to spend time all together, especially when I was working out of the house and he was at daycare all day, and I wanted to enjoy our evenings together and not dread it.
So I found a way through these power struggles of picky eatingand started sharing it online, and ultimately that all became the backbone of what I teach here at Nutrition for Littles. And now our primary mission is to help parents really build strong families around the table by reversing pick eating so that they can enjoy meal times together.
What are your top three picky eating tips?
1. Follow the Division of Responsibility
First and foremost, you have to follow what Ellyn Satter calls the division of responsibility. I have found time and time again, it’s proven in practice, that this is probably the most important thing that you can do. And the biggest thing that parents often get wrong (on accident!).
A really easy way to remember it is “the parent provides and the child decides.” So essentially what that means is you decide when you’re eating, where you’re eating, and what you’re eating. Then the child decides if they’re gonna eat that food, and then if they do decide to eat it, how much of that food they’re gonna eat.
This division of responsibility means you’re no longer doing your child’s role. You don’t have to figure out how hungry they are and figure out how many bites they need to eat to stay asleep through the night. You only have to worry about you, and it immediately releases so much pressure and tension off of your shoulders.
So if we can just stay in our lane of, mom and dad decide what is being put on the plate, and the child gets to decide how much of it they eat, that can take care of so much of pick eating. And I know it’s hard because you love your child and you want them to eat well.
And I know that for a lot of parents this brings up anxiety – “What if they don’t eat??” We can tackle that concern, but we first need to start here, because bringing pressure to the table just makes everything worse. Which brings me to my second tip…
2. Stop Pressuring Your Child to Eat
My next picky eating tip is to stop pressuring your child to eat – and pressure can come in all different shapes and sizes!
Bribing, begging, negotiating, pleading, guilting them, and praising them all fall in this category of focusing too much on the fact that your little one isn’t eating and you step into a power struggle. And there are three things you cannot make a toddler or a young child do: go to the bathroom, sleep, and eat.
And if they’re not doing one of those three things, the only tools parents have in their tool belt are often the things that other parents are doing or that their parents did to them, which is often “eat three more bites,” or, “You can’t have the iPad until you finish your plate.”
So following that division of responsibility lends itselt to stop pressuring your kids around the table, and that brings me to the third tip…
3. Set Up a Meal and Snack Routine
It’s important that you set up a meal and snack routine that works really well for your family where your child is getting an opportunity to eat.
Remember they don’t have to eat! They could skip a meal, if they want, but we want to give them an opportunity to eat every two to three hours, whether that’s a snack or a meal. So we’re not going too long where we’re trying to get them hungry enough to eat, but we’re also not feeding them every 20 minutes and letting them graze.
This daily routine is your first step toward having a system in your home that’s actually going to support your kids eating more. You’re giving them more opportunities to eat, so when they do say no, it’s okay, because another meal or snack is just a few hours away.
And I actually recommend leveraging snacks to get our nutrition in in between meals. A “snack” doesn’t have to be goldfish, it could be a small version of a meal you’d give them! I know a lot of parents want their kids to eat dinner, but what I ultimately want is them to have a nutritious varied diet. Do I care if that comes at 10:30 in the morning or at 6:00 pm?
No! As long as when we zoom out, they’re getting what they need, it doesn’t matter really when it comes.
And when, if we think it does matter when the nutrition comes, who does it matter to? Because it’s probably not actually your child and their health, it’s probably you. You want to impress your mother-in-law, or you want to feel good about the food you cooked. I don’t want my food to go to waste. This is totally normal to feel!
But the other piece I want you to think about is that how much kids eat will absolutely vary differently day to day because their growth doesn’t come in this beautiful curve that the doctor’s office says that it does. It comes in more stair steps. So we see a growth spurt and then it levels off, and then there’s another growth spurt, and their eating is going to reflect that.
So even managing your own expectations of what your child will eat is so important in the conversation of picky eating.
Who needs a bedtime snack and who does not need a bedtime snack?
Bedtime snacks is one of my favorite conversations because it’s such an easy thing that parents are getting wrong, by no fault of their own.
But at the end of the day, it’s such an easy fix…
Not every kid needs a bedtime snack! In fact, in most cases, I wouldn’t recommend it. However, here’s what I want everyone to lean into right now: if you’re going to give your child a bedtime snack, do not give it just because they didn’t eat dinner.
That is incentivizing your child to skip dinner if you’re giving them another opportunity to eat on only the nights where they didn’t eat “well enough.”
So in your reguly meal and snack routine, either have a bedtime snack that’s available every single night, or don’t have a bedtime snack as an option.
Now listen, I’m a mom, and I get it. Sometimes my kids are sick or distracted or there’s homework or there’s baseball practice. Stuff happens, but we’re talking about at least 80 % of the time we want that consistency to really be the backbone of our home.
If your child starts learning that they don’t have to eat their dinner because if they throw a big enough fit, mom or dad are just going to give them yogurt or their favorite food right before bed. That’s not your child being manipulative, that’s them learning cause and effect! It’s a developmentally normal phase.
And so when we get into this pattern of little-to-no-dinner, therefore here’s your bedtime snack, we basically set them up to learn that when they don’t eat, they’ll get a bedtime snack, and that feels like a reward.
The times that I do recommend a bedtime snack are typically schedule dependent.
Do you have a family culture of everyone eating a bedtime snack? Do you have a newborn at home? Do you have an older kid at home? What time is your bedtime? What time do you get home from work? What time does your husband get home from work? What is your family structure look like?
And if you eat dinner around 5 pm and bedtime is around 8 pm, you’re hitting that three-hour mark in between meals and your child might really benefit from a bedtime snack!
What are some bedtime snacks you’d suggest, as well as bedtime snacks to avoid?
I really like when parents have a limited menu at bedtime snack. Again, we’re not incentivizing skipping dinner because this exciting bedtime snack is coming.
It doesn’t have to be a literal menu of five or six bedtime snacks your child can always choose from. If you want to give your child a choice, that’s fine, but let’s choose bewteen these two options. But I would recommend having more of like a rotation. I think it makes it really easy for bedtime snacks.
What the snacks actually are might change for your child and how that food impacts their sleep. Some kids are really affected by certain foods (i.e. berries or milk) and others not. What I recommend is almost always having a fat source, as high fat helps keep us fuller for longer, and it’s been shown to help with deep sleep.
I also recommend low fiber foods, so your child doesn’t need to go to the bathroom right after you tuck them in. And maybe even a little protein to sneak some in at the end of the day.
Here are some bedtime snacks we recommend:
- Avocado toast
- Banana with peanut butter
- Cheese stick and with fruit
- Cottage cheese with some fruit
- Full fat Greek yogurt with some honey on top
What if a child wakes up in the night because they’re hungry?
It’s common for parents to be worried that if their toddler or child didn’t touch their dinner, they’re going to wake up hungry in the middle of the night. Or that their picky eater needs that bedtime snack so they can sleep through the night.
First and foremost, I think a lot of times that’s more fear than it is real life. The fear of your child waking up, or when they do wake up, parents are so quick to think it’s because they didn’t eat well that day. But it’s likely not because they didn’t eat.
When we’re asleep and our body is in rest and digest, we are not experiencing hunger pains while we are sleeping. So hunger is typically our first thought, but it’s not actually what’s going on with our child.
All of my kids have gone through a picky eating “phase” in their life, and I can count on one hand how many times I’ve been woken up with my child saying that they’re hungry.
Sometimes a child will say they’re hungry because they’re bored and they’ve learned that food will like pacify boredom.
Sometimes they will say that they’re hungry because they know that food gets you to perk up and they know what is going to get you to let them stay up or let them eat.
So again, we’re just training what our boundaries are! And our boundaries are, “The kitchen’s closed overnight.”
So if you tuck your child in and they say, “Oh, I’m hungry.” Sometimes it’s just boredom stalling because they don’t want to go to bed. But even if they really are hungry, we have a conversation! And I am so compassionate. “Man, that must be really hard. Okay, tomorrow we’re gonna have a really big breakfast. Do want me to wake you up early so we have more time to eat seconds before school?”
You’re hungry? Great, let’s have a super big breakfast tomorrow. You’re hungry? I’m going to double the portion so that you can have enough for seconds in the morning. This is a supportive environment that’s going to get them a food that they need. It’s okay that it’s not right this second.
Now, this is outside of extreme sicknesses. If your child is really struggling to get in their nutrition, of course this is a different story. Even any sort of food insecurity, different story. We’re not talking about those situations here. We’re talking about the 90% of kids that are waking up in the middle of night and parents worry that it’s hunger.
So I wouldn’t recommend giving your picky eater food in the middle of the night, because again, that’s going to create a cycle of them learning that when they wake up and say that they’re hungry, you’ll get them a snack.
Now, if your child is actually waking up saying that they’re hungry, they’re acting hungry, and you truly suspect that they’re hungry, I would recommend giving them more opportunities to eat during the day. Whether that’s feeding them earlier when they first wake up, or giving another afternoon snack, or making that bedtime snack a routine. It probably just means that they need to eat more during the day, and their body will adapt over time.
What picky eating resources does Nutrition for Littles offer?
We have so many resources for families!
The first place I recommend any parent start, even if your child is just starting to get a little picky, or if they will only eat five foods, is my free training. It is 42 minutes and it will tell you exactly what’s going on, why your child is still picky, and how to approach it in a completely new way.
I walk you through the four steps that you need to take, and it’s literally what I wish every parent knew before their child turned two.
And the biggest thing that you’ll find in there is empathy, because I’ve been there. I understand how hard this is and I’ve worked with thousands of parents who are struggling with picky eating, too. And I really want you to know that you don’t have to just throw in the towel, make mac and cheese and chicken nuggets every night, and call it a night and…
I also have a podcast! I could talk about picky eating forever, so go check out the podcast and subscribe.
Is there anything else you would like to share?
I always encounter parents who are on such a large spectrum of guilt around picky eating. Some parents who are like, it’s 100 % my kids’ fault, they’re so stubborn.
Then there are also parents who are just beating themselves up over this pickiness, like it’s all their fault. So I really want you to understand first and foremost, if your child is picky, it does not mean that it is your fault. There might be some things that you’re unintentionally doing to support pickiness, but you do not know it.
This was me! I thought I was “winning,” because the pressure strategies actually worked in the moment! My son would take the three more bites before he could be done. And then it got to the point where it was like, “Please just take one bite. And then you can have the iPad,” and it spiraled out of control.
But the fact of the matter is, while I was “winning” nightly battles, over time, I had lost the war of pickiness. He was eating less and less and I was having to fight harder. My mental load, emotional load, my capacity, everything was tanked.
And I didn’t really know what I was doing. And the reason why I was doing this was because I love my kid! The intentions were so beautiful. I wanted him to have healthy food and I wanted him to grow up and develop and have all the nutrients his brain needed to have in order to learn and stay healthier and it was all so well intentioned.
I also want to say that it’s okay if your child’s pickyness isn’t your top priority. If you have a child who’s not sleeping, focus on that first. Figure out your biggest pain point (it’s okay if it’s isn’t picky eating!) and start there, just tackling one thing at a time, and then you’ll not only have the capacity to figure it out, but also the confidence that because this one thing worked, the next thing can work, too.
And this perspective has helped me so much in motherhood.
About Alyssa
Alyssa is a registered dietitian, picky eating specialist, founder of Nutrition for Littles and mama of three. She is also a podcast host for the Nutrition for Littles Podcast and creator of Table Talk, a Picky Eating Reversal Program for families. She has a gentle root cause approach for more peaceful mealtimes where little ones can learn to like new foods. She is passionate about teaching moms how to raise healthy, independent eaters and is dedicated to seeing families have success at mealtimes and seeing lifelong healthy eating patterns start at a young age. Her work has been featured on Good Morning America, Huffpost, and more. Follow her on Instagram here.
