Establishing Routine for Meals and Snacks
I hope that after reading last week’s post on creating mealtime structure, you see the value and are ready to get started in creating structure and routine for your family!
In today’s post, I’m sharing 6 tips for establishing routine in your home. Use these steps to create a routine that works for your family now, and come back to them in the future when you’re ready to adapt your routine for the next stage of life.
Establishing Routine: 6 Steps
These six steps will help you set up a more structured feeding routine for your family. They can be adapted for any age or stage of life, so you’ll want to save this post for later, when you’re ready to update your routine!
Before we jump in, remember: by offering meals and snacks 2-3 hours apart, you are not starving your child. In fact, it’s the opposite! You’re helping them develop great appetite regulation by setting them up with regular meal and snack times.
Note: If your child is used to eating on demand at any age, expect it to take around two weeks to establish a new routine. Most typically developing toddlers, they can begin to successfully transition to this type of routine between ages 1-2.
1. Consolidate Meals & Snacks
Aim to consolidate your meals and snacks into more concise time intervals. Ideally, you want your child to sit long enough to have a chance to eat and to participate in a family meal, without getting up prematurely. Depending on how long that equates to in your family, a typical goal might be:
2 minutes/year for snacks
5 minutes/year for meals
For example, if your child is 4 years old, snacks should take about 8 minutes (4 years x 2 minutes), and meals should take about 20 (4 years x 5 minutes).
Start Where You Are & Work Up To It
Start with either 2 minutes/year or whatever amount of time you know your child could be successful with right now.
Let them help you set a timer. This could be a timer on your oven, an app on your phone, or even a sand timer like these!
Whenever they successfully stay seated for the entire amount of time, add 1 minute to the timer for the next time, until you reach the ideal times listed above.
If they get stuck on a certain amount of time, stay with that amount of time until they’re successful. Identify if and what other barriers are making it challenging for them to participate in the meal to help appropriately lengthen how long they can participate at the table.
If meals times are too short, the problem could be either behavior-based (distractions, unclear boundaries) or skill-based (lack of postural stability or feeding skills).
If meal times are too long, the problem could be due to distractions (tech, books, others at the table), your child wanting your attention, or your child putting off eating what they don’t want (in this case, just cut the mealtime off!).
2. Reconsider What Counts as a “Snack”
Snacks are great! They give our kids (and us) more predictable chances to eat during the day, taking the pressure off at mealtimes. They’re intended to fill in nutritional gaps, which they do well! What they aren’t meant to do is fill emotional gaps.
A little tough love here: snacks are not meant to soothe, entertain, or distract our kids. Of course, food can have an emotional component and sometimes it does offer comfort, but we don’t want to teach our kids that they should eat whenever they need to meet an emotional need. So as much as you can, let snacks focus on filling nutritional needs over emotional ones.
To help promote satiety between meals and snacks, aim to offer snacks with protein, fat, and/or fiber. These will each help to satisfy hunger for longer than snacks made up of exclusively simple (vs complex) carbs.
3. Close The Kitchen
Having trouble with all day snacking? Here’s one of my best tips: If it’s not “time” in your routine for a meal or snack, simply say “The kitchen is closed!”
For Children Ages 1-2: It should be relatively easy to work towards this at this age. Kids who are newly verbal take well to distractions, so keep them out/away from the kitchen and redirect behaviors until it is again time to eat.
For Children Ages 3-4: Reassure them that they can still have the foods they’re asking for, just at the next meal or snack that you deem appropriate. Protests may be bigger at this age, so remain consistent so they realize this is not a power struggle they will win.
It can also be helpful to teach them the routine in ways they can understand, so that they don’t have to wonder what will happen when.
Use pocket charts with images or times.
For younger kids, make your schedule activity- and routine-based. Use activities your child knows well, with visuals they can understand.
For older kids, make your schedule time-based.
Example: In the morning we wake up, eat breakfast, get dressed, brush our teeth, then play outside. We come inside when baby brother needs to nap, wash our hands, and have a snack.
4. Open the Floodgates
In between meals, give them water, water, water (and nothing else!). Avoid milk, juice, lemonade, and any other beverages.
If milk is something your child grazes on often, begin to lump it in with your new meal and snack times, and work towards limiting milk to 16 oz over the course of the day (from around one year on). Since nutritive beverages have calories, grazing on beverages can interrupt appetite regulation between meals. This is why drinks, like food-based snacks, can provide our bodies with just enough to "take the edge off."
Dealing With Meltdowns & Complaints
If they whine about being hungry between regular meals and snacks, do not reason with them. Stay as calm, cool, and collected as possible and redirect them with a water bottle and another activity.
If they throw a fit, sit with them and let them feel all their feelings, but stay calm and remain confident. Do not let their fits reshape your approach to structure and routine! Instead, acknowledge how they’re feeling, and explain that they’ll get to eat foods they enjoy during regular snack- and mealtimes each day. If you find that their feelings DO indicate that a change in structure and routine is needed, make a mental note of this and adapt in the future (more on this below).
When they’re calm enough to hear it, use these “teachable moments” to gently reinforce that routine is here to stay, because acknowledging a meltdown will just make it last longer and happen more often. Try and get in the habit of reinforcing “love with limits,” and move on.
5. Adapt
The Division of Responsibility and feeding routines are meant to be responsive, but if you respond EVERY time your child shows hunger outside of your routine, they’ll never learn appetite regulation.
That said, as the parent, you have both the right and the responsibility to adapt your family’s feeding routine if need be. For example, if your child is consistently hungry outside of routine times, it may be time to adjust. The key here is we are looking for recurring trends in their appetites and how we could best respond, rather than reacting in a new way on any given day with a change to our routine (which, by nature, negates routine!).
Instead, watch for things that might indicate your current schedule isn’t working, like:
Night wakings
Can’t-make-it-until-dinner hunger levels
Only eating snacks, no meals
Too full or under-fueled for activities
If/when these happen, you might find you do need to adapt your feeding routine to better fuel your child. There are several ways you can be responsive to your child's needs while still respecting the benefits of routine. For example, you could try bumping dinner forward and introducing a bedtime snack might help them to go to bed more satisfied. Or, you could introduce an "appetizer hour" before dinner where fresh fruits and veggies are offered might help give them something to satisfy their hunger before dinner.
6. Involve Your Child
Including your child in the rhythms of your family’s daily routine will help them make the transition to more structure.
If they’re not thrilled about the change yet, get them to buy in by showing them what a valuable part of the new feeding routine they are. This will help your child reframe the new routine. They’ll feel less like it’s happening “to them,” and more like they have a part in the process and new plan.
Easy swaps to diffuse any pushback and get them on board:
Is your child against what is being offered? → Invite them to help with meal prep.
Is your child resisting the new routine? → Ask them to help set out placemats or dishes.
Is your child particularly antsy at the table? → Use cues and countdowns to meal/snack times.
Does your child struggle with transitions? → Use songs/activities to cue them.
Stay tuned!
Loving this series so far? Be sure to keep following along, because next week I take you through the exact steps I use to make feeding schedules that work for the whole family, no matter your kids ages and life stages.
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