Ever grappled with your child's constant hunger pangs right after meals? Fear not, for this episode is designed to help you navigate those mealtime challenges and put your worries to rest. Together, we'll demystify why your child might be feeling hungry soon after a meal, helping you understand their needs better. We'll also delve into recognizing your triggers and finding ways to ensure your child knows that food is never off-limits. You're not alone in this - I'm right here with you, and we're going to tackle this together!
This episode doesn't stop at troubleshooting; it digs deeper into the pivotal role of environment during mealtimes. We'll uncover how to create a nurturing and stress-free atmosphere that encourages your child to enjoy their food without pressure. It's not just about the food, rather the connection and relaxation that comes along with the meal. We'll discuss the importance of having regular eating schedules and self-care practices for parents. Let's redefine meal times together, transforming them into an enjoyable experience for both you and your child, and put an end to the legacy of diet culture in our homes for good.
Show Links:
Questions about today's episode or do you have topic requests for future episodes? Please send your feedback via email to hello@crystalkarges.com or connect with Crystal on Instagram.
Ever grappled with your child's constant hunger pangs right after meals? Fear not, for this episode is designed to help you navigate those mealtime challenges and put your worries to rest. Together, we'll demystify why your child might be feeling hungry soon after a meal, helping you understand their needs better. We'll also delve into recognizing your triggers and finding ways to ensure your child knows that food is never off-limits. You're not alone in this - I'm right here with you, and we're going to tackle this together!
This episode doesn't stop at troubleshooting; it digs deeper into the pivotal role of environment during mealtimes. We'll uncover how to create a nurturing and stress-free atmosphere that encourages your child to enjoy their food without pressure. It's not just about the food, rather the connection and relaxation that comes along with the meal. We'll discuss the importance of having regular eating schedules and self-care practices for parents. Let's redefine meal times together, transforming them into an enjoyable experience for both you and your child, and put an end to the legacy of diet culture in our homes for good.
Show Links:
Questions about today's episode or do you have topic requests for future episodes? Please send your feedback via email to hello@crystalkarges.com or connect with Crystal on Instagram.
Hey there, mama, you're listening to the Lift the Shame podcast. I'm your host, crystal, mama of Five and your family's intuitive eating dietitian, here to help you cut through the diet culture clutter so you can enjoy feeding with food as a family. I'm on a mission to help you end the generational legacy of diet culture in your home so you can experience motherhood free from food guilt and body shame. Listen in weekly for guidance on how you can ditch diet culture, heal your relationship with food in your body and confidently raise intuitive eaters. Let's dive in and live the shame together. Hey Mama, welcome back to the show. I'm so glad that you're here and I hope that you and your family are enjoying your summer.
Speaker 1:Today I am tackling another great question, and I have gotten this question in many different forms, and so I'm not going to read a specific question per se, but just talk about a scenario in general. I want to paint this picture for you first, because there's a good chance that, if you are a parent feeding kids, that you have encountered this in some shape or form. I want you to imagine it's the end of a long day. You're trying to figure out what to put together to feed your family. You gather your ingredients, you do the work to put it together and put it on the table and have your family come together. That in itself is a huge feat, right? And your child doesn't seem to want to eat or seem interested in the meal at all. And you, doing the great work that you're doing and trying to support your child in honoring their intuitive eating abilities, are doing your best to not pressure them to eat or take a bite or try anything that they don't want to. You're trying your best to honor their autonomy and support them in learning to listen to their bodies. And the meal goes on. You notice your child really hasn't eaten a whole lot.
Speaker 1:You now go through the motions and the routine of having to clean up the meal that you've just prepared for your family and starting to transition into bedtime routines, only to be met with your child telling you Mom, I'm hungry, I want to snack, minutes after you have just finished dinner. What do you do? This is such a challenging situation and it can definitely be frustrating and even triggering. I've had a lot of moms who've expressed to me that I feel really triggered when I've gone through the trouble and put in all this work to feed my family and to make a meal for my family, only to be met with my child refusing to eat or maybe eating very little or showing little interest and engaging in the meal or eating at all, and then to ask for a snack quickly or soon after the meal is done. This can bring up a lot of feelings and if this is something that you've been through, I want you to know that you're not alone.
Speaker 1:This can come up and I want to, today, just talk to you a couple reasons why this can be happening and how you can potentially troubleshoot this if this seems to be a reoccurring issue in your home, and also just to hold space for how frustrating it can be and to know to you that often, when we're feeling triggered by something like this, just to remember you know, we want to try to separate our own feelings and our experiences from our child, because it's easy to project our frustration, our anger, the things that are coming up for us onto our kids, and oftentimes our child's refusal to eat or maybe refuse to eat the things that we have gone out of our way to prepare for them and thoughtfully put together for them can sometimes feel like a direct rejection of ourselves, and it can often put you in a position, as a parent, where you feel like I'm not seeing. The invisible labor of what I do to take care of my family goes unnoticed. And I just want to remind you, as triggering as it can feel, remember that it's not your child's fault and this is something key to remember to you and it's not our child's job to eat, to give us any sort of validation, and oftentimes we look subconsciously, are looking to our kids to validate the needs that we have as parents and as humans who are parenting and who are often parenting in the trenches, without any sense of encouragement or support, or often feel isolated or alone or that the work that we're doing is more often than not going unrecognized. And so I just want to encourage you in understanding that if you're feeling triggered, this isn't your fault. It isn't something that you're doing wrong.
Speaker 1:As a parent, it's very normal to have these feelings if they're coming up for you, and remember that practicing awareness of what's coming up for you is always a first and powerful step to examining what's sitting there and to learn how to better support yourself through these situations. So I just wanted to start there before we jump into potentially troubleshooting what might be going on, but this can be a really tough situation. As you can see, it's definitely layered, and as a parent, it can be helpful to just remember the big picture goals here that we want our children to build positive associations around food and with eating, and a default reaction to your child's request for snack or for food soon after you have provided a meal for them that they rejected or maybe didn't want or ate very little of, maybe to shut them down out of your own frustration or anger about them asking for food after you just provided it and they didn't want to eat it. And so I want you to just see some other possible scenarios that may be going on here in order to help your child feel assured that they are allowed to eat and that food isn't off limits, and that sometimes there can be things going on that may make it harder for them to eat when food is presented, and so that's what I want to talk about today and just give you some things to consider.
Speaker 1:I want to talk to you three main things that may be going on if your child is asking for a snack or asking for food, or telling you they're hungry soon after you have provided a meal or an eating opportunity for them. So first thing here that I want you to consider is is your meal time feeling safe for your child? So really, any source of anxiety or stress that may be coming up around meals or meal times can actually cause your child's appetite to be shut down. It may actually cause them to physiologically lose their desire to eat. So if you think about the stress response in our bodies, our body is reacting to forms of stress and that can cause physiological reactions in our in our body. And for kids who are moving into a flight or fight state because of stress or anxiety inducing surrounding, that can cause appetite suppression, where their body is actually releasing hormones in their body that are causing their appetite to be suppressed, where they may not actually want to eat, even if they were expressing hunger earlier, or you know that they haven't eaten a lot in the earlier part of the day and that they likely are hungry.
Speaker 1:If there's a lot of things happening in the environment or around the meals or, let's say, something stress inducing just happened prior to the meal and now your child's coming and sitting down, they may not have a desire to eat and there's a lot of different things that we want to think about in terms of troubleshooting, but often what I see is sometimes meal times in itself can be stressful for a child if there's pressure for that child to eat, or if the child doesn't feel like there are enough access to safe or accepted foods, or if meal times tend to be a source of conflict. So this can happen inadvertently, like unintentionally. If, let's say, you tend to get drawn into a power struggle with your child, that can induce stress in your child's body which again puts them in that flight or fight state which can make it harder for them to tune into their appetite or have a desire to eat. It's just like if you think about how your body may respond under high stress or high anxiety. It's common to lose that sense of appetite or lose touch with your body's hunger when that's present. And the same thing happens for our kids. And what we want to examine is are there potential sources of stress occurring around the meal time itself that we can help troubleshoot or potentially decrease so that our child can eliminate that source of stress in their own body? And this is not to say that we should expect meal times to always be this glorious experience where there's never any stress, and unfortunately that's not just feasible.
Speaker 1:As being humans, as being family, sometimes we're running in the door at the end of the day and your kid has 10 minutes to eat before you head to practice, and just the hurried nature of their routine or their schedule in itself can be very stress inducing, and I know it's not always possible to eliminate all the sources of stress. However, when we're thinking about the big picture and we're thinking about creating positive associations around food and around eating experiences for our kids, we want to think are there things or interactions that are happening around meal times or that I'm engaging in with my child that may potentially be stressful or triggering anxiety for them? Because often what happens is when that child, let's say, leaves that stressful situation or stressful for them and the anxiety in their environment goes down, the anxiety in their body is now going to decrease and they may register that they're hungry again. So this is why you know if you have a child who is not showing a lot of interest in eating but then leaves the table and notices now, oh, I'm hungry, or they go play for a little bit and then they realize, oh, I'm hungry. I want to eat, I'm hungry. That is likely.
Speaker 1:Something that could be happening is that the table or the eating environment may be feeling stressful and in some capacity and during the mealtime environment that is being reflected in how they're feeling in their body. That's triggering or inducing that stress response in their body which is blunting their appetite. And as soon as they're removed from that situation and engaging in an activity they enjoy, let's say play, that helps decrease that stress response and then their appetite will resurface again. So this is something that's really common and again, we want to think about any sources of anxiety or stress at mealtimes that can be happening in order to help decrease those situations so that we can support our kids in being able to tune in to their appetite as they're coming to the table.
Speaker 1:And just remember too that if your child is feeling stress or any stressed induced state during a mealtime, after they leave the table and that stress response decreases, we often see that kids realize that they're hungry again and they often gravitate toward eating something safe, which for many kids corresponds to a snack or a packaged snack of some sort. And this is where it can be really stressful for parents. When you took the time to put this meal together and your child didn't want any of it. And now they're coming back and saying I want this, and it tends to be packaged snacks of sorts, and that can be really hard for a parent to grapple with and again, that can trigger frustration, anger, all the things. And so I want you to think about what is your environment looking like? Are there things going on in your eating environment that can be potentially stressful or anxiety provoking for your child?
Speaker 1:And it's really key to look at the situation through your child's eyes. And we want to think again big picture, about focusing on keeping mealtime safe for your child in order to create a supportive eating environment that allows them to tune in to their body as best as possible, and we don't want to create some unrealistic expectations here. That's not the goal at all. But a key thing to think about is is your child feeling pressured to eat? And remember that pressure to eat can be very subtle. Often when we think about pressuring a child to eat, we think about forcing a child to try a bite. But remember, pressuring a child to eat can look very subtle. It can look like encouragement, it can look like bribing, it can look like praise if a child is trying something that they might not normally try. It can look like using health information or weaponizing health information as a way to get your child to try or eat something that's on the table. All of these things can be viewed as pressure in a child, and remember that pressure can feel like anxiety or stress coming up for them, and so a key way that we can keep the environment supportive is by truly honoring their body autonomy and refraining from pressuring them to eat, whether certain foods or quantity of foods.
Speaker 1:Another thing here is we want to think about keeping the conversation away from the food itself, so it's very easy to make meals be about the food. Right, it's like we're eating and so let's have a conversation about the food we're eating, and sometimes we're drawn into that because that feels like a way to get our kids to eat, and we want to remember that Food is so much more about food. Eating together is about connection. It's about facilitating that connection and enjoyment, and if we're constantly harping on the food itself or only focusing on the food, that can also feel like pressure to a child, and I often tell parents and encourage parents when you're having a meal. Try to talk about anything or everything but the food itself. Talk about things that your child is interested in. Try to engage in a conversation that is meaningful to your child and that allows you to connect with them in a meaningful way, in order to take the focus away from what they're eating or how they're eating, and it really does infuse an element of enjoyment and relaxation at the table.
Speaker 1:This is just a little funny example, but my seven year old son is obsessed with Zelda, the video game right now. I mean obsessed. The kid loves it and could play it all day, every day, if I let him, and I will tell you that, as his mom, I could care less about this video game. I really don't understand it and it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. However, in effort to connect to my son, I will often try to ask him questions about it, and it's one of the few topics that he will engage in, and he loves to talk about it, and he's also very easily distracted and tends to move around a lot at meal times and has a hard time sitting at the table, and so talking about something is a gentle way of engaging with him that does help him to be more present and does diffuse any sources of anxiety that may be coming up, and so this is something I want you to think about and just encourage you with too.
Speaker 1:It can be really hard to engage with our kids, especially about things that they're interested in, whether it's a video game or a movie or a craft or something that they're really into. I know it's not easy, and especially at the end of the day when your capacity is very depleted because of everything that you've been doing, that can feel like another chore. But I just want to encourage you to think about the connection that you're forming with your child and just remembering that that is the intention of the meal. The intention of a meal is not about trying to get your child to eat certain bites of veggies or certain quantities of food, but really just to reconnect after the day, whatever that might look like, and this is something that can really help diffuse any sense of pressure or stress that can come up for kids at meal times. So something just to think about.
Speaker 1:We also want to think about avoiding any potential topics of discussion at meal times that are high conflict. So sometimes, because by default, meal times are a time that we're reconnecting as a family. That might be the only time that you feel like you have to talk to your partner or to talk to your kids about things that are going on, and I do just want you to consider and just have some discernment around the topics that you are bringing up at family meals. We want to think about is there a high conflict topic here that may be better reserved outside of meal times? Because, as much as possible, we want to facilitate that positive connection. We want to facilitate your child being able to build positive associations around eating, and if they know that when they come to meal times, like, oh, we're about to get this lecture from our parents or we're going to talk about this incident that happened, that was really hard and painful, whatever it might be, we want to understand that those high conflict topics can be a source of stress for our kids, and this can also help us be mindful of how we're engaging with other people who are at our table too.
Speaker 1:So if you have a family member that you tend to engage in hot topics or hot discussions with, or if there's conflict or raising voices at the table I know that these things are not always easy to address. We just again want to look at it through our child's eyes, and if there's a lot of conflict happening around the meal time itself, your child is likely picking up on that. Our kids are highly attuned to our emotional state and they're picking up on how we're feeling, and even if we're not directly talking about something that's contentious, if they notice that we're feeling stressed or angry or upset, they will pick up on that too. So this is something to think about in both our verbal conversations but also non-verbal cues. Maybe you are coming home after a really difficult day at work, or you just got off the phone with a difficult conversation with a family member, or you just got some bad news.
Speaker 1:It can be hard to sit at the table and be present with your child, and I'm not suggesting that we just put on this facade or a fake image of where we're really at. We just want to consider is the meal time the best place to share those things or to invoke those emotions? And perhaps that we can look at meal times as a place to keep as safe as possible for our kids and reserve other times in our day to have family discussions that may be more difficult or reserve different times for those conversations that may bring up conflict or that may be more difficult to work through together as a family. So something again just to consider when you're thinking about your meal time and your meal time environment, and if you have a child who's frequently avoiding eating at meal times but then as soon as meal time is finished and wrapped up and they're coming and asking for snack or telling you that they're hungry, this may be something to look at a little more closely. Another thing to consider here is is there something related to the food itself?
Speaker 1:So if your child is frequently asking for a specific food after you've provided dinner or you've provided a meal and you've cleaned it up, and your child's coming to you and saying I want chips or I want cookies or I want a snack, and if by snack they're referring to a specific category of foods, that tends to be those packaged, processed snack foods like, I'm thinking, goldfish, crackers, chips, right, anything in a crinkly package. Sometimes when kids are saying snack, they're referring to those types of foods. So if your child is asking for a snack shortly after a meal, this may be because they are wanting a specific type of food that they associate as a snack, like the crackers or the chips or the cookies, and kids may gravitate towards snack type foods if there wasn't something at the meal that they felt comfortable eating. So in this case and this is why we want to just be observant of what our child is doing, what they're asking for, their behaviors around food Again, if you're noticing that your child is asking for a snack or a specific type of food shortly after a meal, it may be that they need to see those types of foods more frequently, and or they may need other foods that help them feel more comfortable at eating times. So if your child associates a snack with those snack foods that we've talked about, they may need to see those more frequently. And this is the same type of strategy and principle that we talk about with sweets.
Speaker 1:Oftentimes, kids are asking for sweets or showing a high interest in sweets. If they're not seeing them frequently enough, or if sweets are only held for certain times or special occasions, or kids are only allowed to have a sweet after dinner, we see similar types of patterns where they're showing a high interest in those foods because they're not accessible at other times, and so, in order to create an equal playing field for all foods, we want to think about snack type of foods in the same way. Oftentimes we reserve these types of packaged snack foods for quote snack time, so like if we're going to the park and having a snack there, sure I'll pull out the applesauce pouch or the goldfish or the granola bars, and then kids never see those foods at other eating times. And again, that can be ingrained food rules that we have in our own head. That like no, why would I offer my child goldfish at dinner or at breakfast?
Speaker 1:But if your child is having or showing a high interest in these snack type foods or is asking for them frequently or is asking for them right after a meal, this can be an indicator that they need to see those foods more frequently. And I know it can feel so counterintuitive to integrate them at other eating times, especially when you have other food available. But I also want you to consider that when your child sees these foods that they're gravitating towards, it does actually help them feel safer at meal times. Which goes back to our original point here is that we want our kids to feel safe and when kids see foods that they easily identify and that they love and that are easy for them to eat. It does help them feel more relaxed and comfortable at eating times in general. So this is something else to consider.
Speaker 1:If you suspect that this may be the case, consider offering these snack foods that your child is gravitating toward more frequently within the context of your child's meals and snacks. So maybe allowing those favorite foods whether it's chips or goldfish or the applesauce pouch, whatever it is allowing them or plugging them in at other times strategically to help your child understand that these foods are part of your future and not something to obsess about or reserve for a special time. That does help also preserve their intuitive eating abilities, as we are creating that equal playing field for all foods. So this is something else to consider, especially if you notice a pattern around the type of food that your child is asking for and what do they mean when they're asking for snack. That's something that comes up really frequently when kids or parents are saying my child keeps asking for a snack. Well, what do you think your child is asking for when they're asking for a snack, and are there ways that we can plug in those foods at other eating times so that your child feels safe and assured that those foods are available to you. So something else to think about.
Speaker 1:Last point here is to just consider your approach to feeding your child in general. Sometimes, when there is not reliable or predictable access to food and regular eating times throughout the day, that can sometimes create anxiety or just this need to seek out food more frequently, and especially during the summer months when there's less structure generally for kids and more of a likelihood that kids have less to do. They might be more bored. They might be seeking out things to do. It's easy to forget about the frequency at which our kids need to see foods and I actually did a whole podcast episode about this in terms of how to adjust how we feed our kids during the summer or when schedules are off, and so I will put a link to that in the show notes for you if you're interested in listening to more about this.
Speaker 1:But sometimes when snacks or when a child has no clear understanding about when food is going to be available next, it will cause them to want to seek it out themselves because they have no real assurance that food is coming next, or when food is coming next or when their next eating time will happen, and so this is why we want to be as intentional as possible as offering our child regular eating times throughout the day, so that includes frequent meals and snacks, and I know this can be really challenging. It can feel like a full-time job literally in itself, feeding your kids, because it is. It takes a lot of mental energy to do this, and I know it's hard and it's really challenging. It can also be an invitation to you as a parent to check in more regularly with yourself too, because often we neglect ourselves as part of this equation and we think I'm good, I can make it through my day with three meals, and I will tell you that more often than not, I see that the moms that I work with are constantly in this under-eating mode, and it's so easy to prioritize your kids and what they need and push yourself on the backburner and mama, that's not sustainable either, and so when I'm describing these ideas of feeding your kids more frequently, I am definitely thinking about you as part of this equation, too, to think about. Have we checked in with our bodies? Have we fed ourselves regularly? Are we eating every two to three hours and making sure that if we're going somewhere for any length of time, we're thinking about the food that we're bringing or making sure that we have enough to eat, and this is a big task.
Speaker 1:I really do understand that as a mom myself, and I just want to encourage you that as a long-term strategy, when you get into this rhythm and again I say rhythm because I don't believe that it should be rigid or it's something that is like hard ingrained rules we're only eating at this time and so such and such it's not like that at all. But when we are in this flexible rhythm of eating frequently and prioritizing that as a form of care for ourselves and our children, that naturally helps our children relax around, knowing that food is coming frequently, and that can also create just an inbuilt buffer. So let's say that your child, for whatever reason, wasn't interested in eating dinner. Maybe they were distracted, maybe there was a lot going on, maybe there wasn't a lot of time, and you know in your head okay, I'm going to offer one more snack before we head to bed tonight. And if your child's coming to you right after dinner and saying I'm hungry, I really want to eat, I didn't eat any dinner, then when you know that you have this built-in rhythm around frequent eating times throughout the day, it becomes easy to defer to that next eating time where you can acknowledge and say I'm so sorry, we're just cleaning up dinner, we're about to have a snack right after we do X activity. And helping our kids see that and understand that really creates this inbuilt reliability around food, which is hugely important to helping them relax and decreasing any anxiety that may be coming up for them about what am I going to eat. What am I going to eat. It's showing some leadership with food which again just helps our kids be able to flex their intuitive eating abilities. When our kids don't have to worry about when am I eating next or what's coming, it really does allow them to relax in their own bodies and that's really important, again, to preserving their body's intuitive eating abilities. So something to think about, and kids can be the ones to be asking for snacks or be asking when they're going to eat if that reliability is not there for them or if food doesn't feel predictable for them. So something for you to consider as well. I hope this was helpful. Again, I know every situation is super nuanced and individual.
Speaker 1:If you have any follow-up questions about this, I would love to hear from you. You can connect with me at hello at crystalcargiscom. That email address is in the show notes for you, as well as any other questions or topic suggestions. If you have any topics that you would like me to address anonymously on the podcast, I would love to hear from you, mama, so feel free to connect with me. I will also put in the show notes a link to my free snack guide. So if you are struggling with snacks which I know can be stressful for many reasons and trying to figure out a more streamlined way to put these together for your family, make sure you snag that free guide.
Speaker 1:Again, the link will be in the show notes for you, and I can't say thank you enough for being part of this community, for tuning in regularly to this podcast and for being here. I just want to say thank you, and if you have found this podcast helpful, I would so appreciate if you could rate or review the podcast. That helps other parents be able to find it as well. So, sending you so much love and thank you again. Can't wait to connect next week. Thank you for listening to this week's episode of the Lift the Shame podcast. For more tips and guidance on your motherhood journey, come connect with me on Instagram at Crystal Cargass. Until next week, mama, I'll be cheering you on. Bye for now.