Grace Mortimer, author of My First Meals: Fast, Fun and Easy Recipes for Children Using Just Five Ingredients shares five essential things that you should not worry about when feeding your children:
- My child has eaten his fair share of junk food. We all think we’ll be the perfect parent before we have kids – you’ve not let anyone down if they occasionally eat all the things you swore you’d never let them have. It’s absolutely fine!
- We don’t eat together as often as I’d like. I know it’s preferable to eat with your children but I don’t want to eat when I’m not hungry and Harry should be able to when he is! I always sit with him and we chat when he’s eating but don’t feel bad if you don’t sit down and share every meal with your children. I think you’ll find lots of other people don’t too…
- I found weaning difficult. I was too intimidated by mums groups so I didn’t have many mum friends therefore I found most of my information about it online. I felt very unconfident. We got there but I didn’t love it to be honest. It’s ok if you don’t love it too.
- I felt frustration like no other with Harry when he was going through his fussiest stage. As a foodie, I couldn’t understand how he wasn’t the eater I’d expected he would be. But that was a ‘me’ problem – I’d made expectations about how he should be when it came to food and he had other ideas. I had to remove that pressure from both of us and it made a world of difference.
- Don’t let social media make you feel like you’re not ‘nailing it.’ It can be toxic that way. I permanently deleted my personal Facebook page when Harry was about 12 months old because I didn’t want to see how well everyone else was (seemingly) getting on. It felt like a punch in the gut. I would only see glamorous bright-eyed mums feeding their babies organic steamed broccoli whilst ‘out to lunch’ and I felt like I didn’t belong to that world – I didn’t need to see any reminders. You do what works best for you and your children, whatever that looks like for you.
My First Meals isn’t a book full of ‘never do that’ or ‘only ever do this’ – we all muddle along as best we can and I hope this collection of ideas takes some of the mental strain away from mealtimes in your house 🤗
My First Meals: Fast, Fun and Easy Recipes for Children Using Just Five Ingredients by Grace Mortimer is out now.
