The Early Months at the Family Table

A lot of families view the discussion about “introducing solids” as a conversation about nutrition.  Yet, focusing on nutrition might actually undermine your efforts. The most important developmental goal when introducing solid foods is to teach your child to enjoy the process. This in turn will lead to a happy and social eater.

When you are ready to begin, your first step is to look at your own relationship with food and disabuse yourself of any preconceptions that you might have about infant eating and mealtime.  We have asked Marci Silver, an outstanding speech pathologist, to discuss some of the common misconceptions around infant eating and mealtime.  She has developed a list of the top 10 mealtime myths.

10 Mealtime Myths and Misconceptions of America

  1. Eating is the body’s number one priority.
  2. Eating is instinctive.
  3. Eating is easy.
  4. Eating is a two step process: first, you sit down and then you eat.
  5. It is not appropriate to touch or play with your food.
  6. If a child is hungry enough, he/she will eat.  They will not starve themselves.
  7. Children only need to eat 3 times a day.
  8. If a child won’t eat, they either have a behavioral OR an organic problem.
  9. Certain foods are only to be eaten at certain times of the day (i.e. breakfast foods only for breakfast, lunch foods only at lunch, snack foods only at snacks, dinner foods only for dinner), and only certain foods are “good for you”.
  10. Mealtimes are a proper social occasion. Children are to “mind their manners” at all mealtimes.

Marci will join us on Instagram Live on Thursday to talk a bit more about teaching your baby to be a happy and healthy eater. She will bring her unique perspective of a speech pathologist and discuss early feeding milestones, feeding cues, how to establish a cooperative relationship around food among other topics.  Feel free to submit your own questions  and we will make sure to get to them.

If you cannot make the IG session but would like to see the video, we will have the link up by Friday for you.