The Mental Load of Feeding Children
Written by Dr. Colleen Reichmann-Owner and clinical director of Wildflower Therapy
There is a particular heaviness that arrives around 4pm for many of us. It looks like frantically paging through the toddler dinner cookbook. Or starting the process of chopping and boiling while prepping yourself for everyone to say “But mamaaa! I don’t WANT IT” upon first glance of whatever you are cooking. Or trying to start one meal for you and your partner while also flipping through your mental rolodex of which quick, safe meals you can make for your kids. For many mothers- especially those raising highly selective eaters- feeding children is not just a logistical task. It is an emotional and psychological one.
And the mental load can feel enormous.
What Is the Mental Load of Feeding Children?
When we talk about the mental load of parenting, we often mean the invisible planning, anticipating, and emotional labor that happens behind the scenes.
With food, that mental load can include:
Planning meals
Remembering preferences and aversions
Managing grocery lists
Monitoring growth and development
Deciding when to push and when to let go
Worrying about long-term health
Trying not to pass down food anxiety
If your child is a truly selective eater, the load increases ten-fold. And then add in worrying about your own history of dieting, disordered eating, or body image struggles-it can feel exponential.
Meals starts to feel relentless, Sisyphean, and incredibly high stakes.
The Unique Stress of Feeding a Selective Eater
Selective eating is common in childhood. Many children go through phases of preferring “safe” foods (often beige, often predictable.) But I want to make sure I touch on two main points here:
1) Common doesn’t mean easy.
When your child refuses the meal you prepared, it can trigger fear that they are not getting adequate nutrition, anxiety about their growth, frustration about wasted effort, and just general panic about “doing this wrong.”
2) There IS a difference between a child who is in the normative realm of selective eating (ie the vast majority of children, and hence the vast majority that social media posts and influencers are speaking to with their advice) and one who is HIGHLY selective (sometimes to the point of having ARFID).
For parents of the latter, please try to hold this difference in your mind when reading posts from child feeding influencers, or listening to accounts from others about negotiating “picky eating” with their child. Their advice likely isn’t going to land for you child, and that’s ok. It’s not because you’re implementing it wrong, or because your child is doing anything wrong. It’s simply because children who have highly selective eating are a subset with challenges outside of the bell curve, and so they require highly individualized plans and attention.
For mothers who are trying to raise intuitive eaters while also not totally ignoring the role of nutrition, the tension can feel relentless:
Am I being too rigid?
Am I being too permissive?
Should I make a separate meal?
Should I hold the boundary?
But please remember-the internet often presents extremes- total food freedom (ie dessert for breakfast if that’s what kids chose) or strict nutritional control (no sugar at all.) It’s crazy-making, because food is a daily, repeated, ongoing and ever-evolving journey. It is a realm that demands nuance and flexibility by definition. These types of algorithmic-driven black and white takes are letting all of us down.
When You Are Healing Your Own Relationship With Food
If you are working through your own recovery from disordered eating, chronic dieting, or body image distress, feeding children can activate old neural pathways.
You may notice:
Hyper-awareness of portion sizes
Anxiety about weight gain or weight loss (theirs or yours)
Fear of saying the “wrong” thing about food
Guilt for even noticing their body changes
A surge of old food rules resurfacing at the table
Deep breaths. Please hear me when I say that none of this means you are failing. It means your nervous system remembers. If you have a lengthy history of food becoming loaded in your brain as so much more than food-it makes sense that the realm of feeding your children might feel intensified and anxiety-provoking. Many mothers in eating disorder recovery describe dinner as a daily exposure exercise- sitting with uncertainty, tolerating imperfection, and resisting the urge to control too much (or too little).
That is real work. Quiet, invisible, exhausting work. But just the fact that you are thinking about it- wrestling with how not to pass on beliefs and patterns- that means that you are likely doing so much more than you are giving yourself credit for when it comes to protecting your kids’ relationships to food.
NutritionConcerns and Emotional Safety Can Coexist
One of the most painful myths mothers absorb is that caring about nutrition automatically equals diet culture -or that supporting intuitive eating means ignoring structure entirely.
The truth is so much more nuanced.
In general, children tend to benefit from:
Predictable meal and snack structure
Exposure to a variety of foods over time
Neutral language about bodies
Permission to listen to hunger and fullness
Parents who model flexibility rather than rigidity
But, each child is unique. And every family is different. So what is most helpful and needed for YOUR child is going to be different from someone else’s. There is room for all of it- structure, gently suggesting nutrient-dense options, and desserts. There is room for snack foods, pre-packaged foods, and home-cooked meals. Eating disorders are complex biopsychosocial conditions. They are not caused by serving vegetables. They are not caused by asking kids to try a bite. And, unfortunately, they are also not prevented by eliminating all boundaries.
What protects children most is not perfection- it is a pattern of emotional safety.
Why the Pressure Feels So High
Feeding can feel like attachment for a lot of us. From infancy onward, nourishment is intertwined with love, safety, and survival. So when meals repeatedly feels tense, it doesn’t register as a minor inconvenience. It can feel like a referendum on your adequacy as a parent.
Add in all the aforementioned cultural pressure about “healthy eating,” wellness messaging, body ideals, and generational food trauma- and it makes sense that many mothers feel constantly on edge.
If you are exhausted by this, you are not dramatic. It is heavy for a lot of reasons. (And, sometimes if only because it genuinely does feel terrible to put time, effort, and thought into cooking a meal- when you’re already taxed and exhausted no less- only to have another human throw the plate onto the floor and scream at you.)
Gentle Reminders for Parents at the Table
If feeding your children feels like a relentless area of stress in your life, I want you to listen closely and try to internalize the following:
You are allowed to care about nutrition- no, it will not automatically give your child an eating disorder if you do.
You are allowed to try our different versions of reasonable structure- it’s not inherently rigid and loaded to have suggested time ranges for foods and snacks.
You are allowed to feel frustrated when food is rejected- it would actually be weird not to!
You are allowed to still be healing- working on yourself and noticing your own struggles and patterns is the most protective variable here.
You are not ruining your child’s health by allowing them daily desserts and pre-packaged foods.
You are not “doing it wrong” if you notice that even though you have offered desserts alongside of veggies and protein sources for years, your child consistently will always eat the dessert and forgo everything else on their plate. (Your child is likely in the category of a highly selective eater if this is the case, and so will need more help and encouragement from you in terms of trying other food options than another child.)
The fact that you are thinking carefully about food, about language, about impact- that alone tells me your children are growing up in a different environment than you likely did. Your awareness and striving for balance (even while stumbling every day, like most of us are!) is already breaking the cycle.
And that matters.
When to Seek Support
If mealtimes consistently trigger intense anxiety, conflict, or resurfacing eating disorder symptoms, it may be helpful to seek support from a therapist who understands both eating disorders and the complexities of motherhood.
Working with a therapist trained in eating disorder recovery can help you:
Separate your child’s eating from your own history
Reduce food-related anxiety
Build confidence in balanced, flexible feeding approaches
Strengthen your own recovery while parenting
Or, if your child seems to fall under the category mentioned here of a highly selective eater, it may be helpful to seek help from a therapist who understands ARFID-ideally one that understands the overlap between eating, sensory struggles, and anxiety that can occur for many children who would otherwise get written off as “picky eaters.”
At Wildflower Therapy, we specialize in working with children, teens, adults struggling with body image and eating disorders (as well as parents and caregivers navigating children or teens who are struggling with eating disorders, body image concerns, highly selective eating, and the emotional toll of caring for a struggling child).
Our therapists also support children, teens, adults, and families who are navigating things like ADHD, body image concerns, anxiety, depression, infertility, and maternal mental health/infertility.
We provide therapy in Philadelphia (and virtually for anyone in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Florida, South Carolina, Vermont, Virginia, Ohio, and Massechusetts.) We work with children, adolescents, and adults. We are neurodivergent-affirming, queer-celebratory, and feminist-relational in our work.
If you’re looking for therapy for your child or yourself in one of the states mentioned above, or are seeking virtual parent coaching or consultation anywhere in the world, we invite you to reach out for your free consultation call.
If dinner feels triggering and heavy- you are not along. You are not failing. And, you deserve support with this.