There’s no doubt that some days feeding your family will be hard. But, mealtimes can be healthy, happy, stress-free and a way to spend quality family time together and you can make that happen.

One of the easiest ways to feel you’ve got mealtimes under control and to take some stress away is to reframe your thinking about mealtimes, to stop worrying about how much or little your children are eating and to stop panicking about which foods they will or won’t eat.

We know from other areas of our child’s behaviour management, that we need to set boundaries, we have routines for a reason – we can’t let our children stay up playing all night and there’s a time when it’s lights out, for example – we need to show them that we’re the grown up and we’re there to look after them, do our best for them, keep them safe. And it’s the same with mealtimes.

The division of responsibilities in feeding allows you to set boundaries both for you and for our children around your responsibilities at mealtimes.

If you consider that you are responsible for when and where your children eat and the food on offer whilst your children are responsible for what and how much they eat then this is the starting point for turning mealtimes around.

If you can stay within your boundaries, you can help your children to develop a positive relationship with food as well as create healthier, happier, less stressful mealtimes. You can take away that guilty feeling or that feeling of failure you might have because you’ve done your bit and then it’s down to them.

The division of responsibility is a key piece of your mealtime toolkit in helping you remember that you can do this and your children can do this too! It might just take them a bit more time.