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I have had this image in my head lately, of when my son was just about a year old and I was trying to make dinner and also feed him because he clearly could not wait for me to cook. And so I pulled his highchair right into the doorway between the kitchen and dining room, which was 100% in the way, and fed him whatever random food I could find while I made dinner for the rest of the family.
I am glad, looking back, that I gave myself the freedom to do what I needed to in that moment. And more broadly, I think it speaks to how often we forget that along with recipes and meal ideas, we simply need strategies and tools for how to make a meal when schedules—and hunger patterns—are all over the place.
Over the past few weeks, I keep seeing large social media accounts and news outlets “reporting” on how much better kids eat when they are fed dinner at 3:45 or 4pm when they are naturally more hungry. “They’ve been trying all sorts of new foods because they are so hungry they’ll eat anything!”, Dr Becky Kennedy said in a reel on the subject.
(I am not linking the reel because she categorized the entirety of “snack foods” and also “crunchy foods” as inferior to “real food”…which is very misleading and inaccurate. Generally speaking, I usually love her advice!)
It’s not that I don’t believe her. I do and acknowledge my kids, too, have always been hungrier at 4 pm than at 6 pm. It’s simply that none of the stories have bothered to mention that the majority of parents are working in the afternoon. Or on their way to daycare pickup or about to shuttle kids to activities. Or dealing with nap schedules, diaper changes, walking the dog, and everything else. And I so badly want to know who is making dinner for Dr. Becky’s kids—I believe she works in an office with her team—when it is made, what the parents eat (and when) and what exactly the kids eat at 7 pm because surely they are hungry again before bed.
All of this is to say: We need more real life tips that are situated directly into the context of work schedules, daycare pickups, naps, and more to make getting dinner onto the table truly possible for more of us.
More than these 15 second meal time “hacks” that leave out the rest of the story on how to actually get it done.
And so, here we go.
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