The transition to table foods can seem…abrupt! Here we give 3 tips to help ease your mind and feel good about this transition.

Moving to table foods comes with a ton of emotions for parents. Excitement is there, for sure, as you find out what your kid likes. You get to introduce them to your favorite foods, they can sit at the dinner table and eat with the family… it’s pretty great. But there’s also a lot of anxiety in there: choking and allergies are among the top concerns, of course, but also something many of us might not expect: a loss of control.

When our babies are living on milk, we have a lot of control over their food intake. We know how many bottles or feedings they get, and we can get a sense of how well they’re doing with taking in calories. Plus, as they get older, most of us get used to feeding them in a way that works, and the idea of disrupting that feels exhausting and stressful. 

After our kids turn one, solid food will become a bigger part of their diet, and it will become much much harder to track their calorie intake. How many cubes of sweet potato actually even out to a fair number of calories? If all they eat is toddler puffs, are they going to get scurvy? 

It’s also harder to get them to eat. Toddlers will go back and forth between eating so much that you’re sure they have two stomachs to eating nothing at all and seemingly growing bones out of thin air. 

Food and calories are often major trigger points for moms, as well. We worry we’re feeding our kids the wrong foods, or not enough food. Many of us grew up in Clean Plate Club families, where we were expected to eat everything on our plates. Do we do the same with our kids? Or is it potentially damaging?

So. Let’s keep it simple here. If you try to keep these three things in mind, it will help reduce your stress through this transition.

1. Try to think of your kid’s food intake by week instead of by day. Toddlers will eat in fits and starts. So sometimes they’re starving and eating a whole chicken by themselves, and sometimes it seems like they’re eating dust bunnies when you’re not looking, and nothing else. That’s normal. Pay attention to possible signs of sickness or gagging (these can be signs you might need extra support), but if your kid eats a lot on Tuesday and nothing on Monday and Wednesday, you’re doing just fine.
2. Remember that they are still pretty tiny. Often we compare how much we eat to how much our toddler eats. But they’re still small, and their food needs are similarly small. Try to offer healthy foods as much as you can, and remember that they will eat a lot or a little, depending on their mood or how many butterfly wings were beating in Madagascar that morning; you can’t control it, as much as you might want to. Once you get used to that idea, the stress of toddler eating will go way down.
3. When in doubt, talk to your doc. There are guidelines you can use -- measurements for how much of each food group your kid should be eating on a given day. In our experience, it’s really hard to get your kid to actually do that, but if you’re a rule follower, you can absolutely talk to your doctor about what those guidelines look like. Just remember that your toddler doesn’t care how many bites of broccoli you want them to eat. They are creatures of chaos, and we are all just witnesses to their greatness.