Why your kid refusing dinner isn't actually about dinner
I used to think dinner time stress was just part of parenting. Like, this is the tax you pay for having small humans.
You make the food, they reject the food, you spiral a little, you make something else, or you don't, and then everyone goes to bed slightly resentful and you wonder if you're doing permanent damage.
And I think what made it worse was that I genuinely didn't know what I was supposed to be doing. Like, there was so much information — baby-led weaning versus purées, protein goals, food guides, quinoa bowls versus chicken nuggets — and somehow I was still ending up stressed at a table where a three-year-old was throwing pasta on the floor.
So I've been doing a lot of thinking about what the table is actually for. And I think I had it kind of wrong.
Picky eating is a personality trait
There's this thing that happens when your kid refuses a food they loved last Tuesday, and your brain immediately goes to: what did I do? And I get it, I really do, because we're a generation of parents who read everything and tried everything and still somehow feel like we missed something.
But picky eating isn't usually caused by anything the parent did or didn't do. It tends to show up in the child's temperament, in how cautious they are, how sensitive they are to textures and tastes, and that's just... who they are.
And the humbling part is that you can do everything "right" and still have a kid who won't touch anything green. Which, honestly, is kind of a relief if you let yourself feel it that way.
Your kids need carbs more than they need protein
I know. I KNOW.
We are living in the protein era.
Everything has protein in it now, protein is the answer to everything, and I have definitely stood in a grocery aisle reading labels looking for the highest number. But that's information for us, not for our kids.
Toddlers' brains run on glucose, and carbohydrates are how they get it.
Their main fuel source is supposed to be carbs, and when we layer our own diet culture stuff onto their plates and start steering them away from the bread and toward the chicken, we're actually working against their biology a little.
The protein goal for a toddler is something like 12 grams a day. A cup of milk has eight. They're probably fine. And the kid who wants plain pasta and nothing else? Biologically, kind of making sense.
A snack is a mini meal
I had been thinking of snacks as these little tide-me-overs — one pouch here, one rice cracker there — and then wondering why my kid was either always hungry or completely uninterested at dinner.
And of course, those snacks weren't actually satisfying him. They were just taking the edge off hunger just enough that he'd arrive at dinner not quite hungry enough to try anything unfamiliar.
So now I'm thinking about snacks differently — like, if I'm going to offer something, I want it to actually hold him. Something with fat, something with iron, paired together into a little mini meal.
And then actually leaving some space before dinner so he shows up to the table with real appetite.
It's all about timing and building the snack up into something that actually does its job.
The table is for connection, and your job there is actually pretty small
The dinner table is a place your kids are going to form memories and feelings about for the rest of their lives.
And if it becomes a place that's tense and pressured and full of commentary about what they're eating and how much and have you tried the broccoli, just one bite, just lick it — they're going to want to leave.
And eventually they will leave, in the way teenagers leave, which is permanently.
So the job at the table should be “connection”. Show up, eat your own food (or don’t), actually enjoy it, let them see that.
The research on this is kind of wild — kids who grow up with relaxed mealtimes and no pressure around food are actually more likely to have healthy relationships with eating as adults.
So the work is less work. Which is the only kind of news I want at 6pm on a Wednesday.
Food has no moral value
When we label food as good or bad, or healthy or junk, we're not just talking about food — we're attaching a moral charge to it.
And kids don't have the context to separate "this food is bad" from "I am bad for wanting it." And that quietly becomes the foundation for a complicated relationship with eating that can follow them for a long time.
So let’s just... remove the labels.
Food is food. A donut is food. Broccoli is food.
You can have both, and neither one makes you a better or worse person. It's such a simple thing and it's also kind of everything when it comes to setting kids up to actually enjoy eating for the rest of their lives.
Want more of this?
This blog post was inspired by a conversation with Soleina Karamali, a registered dietician, the founder of Every Eater, and a mom of two. She completely reframed how I think about feeding my kids, and it's a conversation that every parent should listen to.