Helping Your Child Build Healthy Eating Habits
As a licensed marriage & family therapist and certified intuitive‐eating clinician, I help families build mealtime environments where children learn trust, autonomy, and pleasure without stress.
Research shows that early experiences shape eating patterns and that parents’ own intuitive eating styles strongly influence their child’s long-term relationship with food (1).
Here are 4 research-backed mealtime habits that help support your child’s healthy relationship with food and innate intuitive eating abilities.
Model Intuitive Eating as a Parent
Children learn by watching. Parents who eat with awareness of their own hunger & fullness are more likely to create homes with low‑pressure feeding practices (2). This helps children naturally maintain internal cues for eating and develop self‑regulation later in life (3).
Provide Structure, Let Go of (Some) Control
Use Ellyn Satter’s Division of Responsibility:
Parents’ role: decide what, when, and where food is offered
Children’s role: decide whether and how much to eat, tuning into their hunger and fullness cues.
This clear delineation of roles fosters autonomy, and self-regulation for your child, and helps prevent power struggles at the table.
Build a Positive, Low‑Pressure Mealtime Culture
Consistent family meals bring multiple benefits. Research links family mealtimes to better dietary habits, higher self-esteem, and emotional resilience, with reduced risk of depression, teen pregnancy, and substance misuse (4).
Family mealtimes do not equate to perfection. We’re all busy! Frozen dinners and takeout pizza count just as much as a home-cooked meal. The most important part of a family meal is that you’re authentically showing up and being present.
Use Gentle Exposure to New Foods
Picky or selective eating is common in early childhood (25–45% of children). The research shows that repeated, neutral exposure to new foods without pressuring can improve acceptance over time.
You may need to offer a new food to your child dozens of times before they accept it! Start with small portions (a single piece of a new food is fine), and work your way up.
Exposure to new foods can take many forms! Get creative with it and try:
Having your child look at the new food on the grocery store shelf
Talk to your child about the sensory properties of the new food
Offer the food prepared in different ways (steamed broccoli versus roasted broccoli)
Have your child help prepare the food, if age appropriate
As a general rule of thumb, it helps to offer a new food along with foods your child is already familiar with.
When to Seek Additional Support
If mealtimes feel overwhelming, consider working with a licensed therapist, intuitive‑eating clinician, or registered dietitian. Our program, the Mindfull Method, is designed to help you build healthy food relationships and prevent eating disorders before they start.
We uniquely use an integrative approach that combines therapy, nutrition, and intuitive eating to set you up with all the skills you need to build healthy mealtime habits at home.
