When Another Parent’s Feeding Practices Bother You: Should You Say Something Or Stay Out Of It?
Last month’s neighborhood playdate fell on the first warm Saturday after a rainy April. I was wiping melted cherry popsicle juice off my 5-year-old’s forearm when I heard a sharp voice from the gingham blanket two spots over. “You took three bites, you finish every last one. No sliding until this plate is empty.” The kid, Jax, a 4-year-old I’ve seen at library storytime, pushed his mac and cheese away, chin trembling. “I’m full, Mommy. I don’t want any more.” His mom, Sarah, leaned forward, picked up a fork, and held it to his mouth. “You skipped breakfast, you’re going to sit here until it’s gone.” I watched Jax’s eyes well up, and a little bit of half-chewed cracker came up when he gulped back a sob.
The mom sitting next to me rolled her eyes and mouthed “wow” in my direction. I froze. I’ve been there. When my oldest was Jax’s age, I spent a year fighting him to eat anything that wasn’t dry toast. I got lectured by my own mom at every family dinner, side-eyed by other parents at playdates, and I cried in the grocery store parking lot once because I couldn’t get him to eat a single vegetable for two weeks. I know how cruel that judgment feels, even when you’re doing everything you can to get it right. But I also know that forcing a kid to eat when they’re full can mess up their ability to listen to their own bodies, a lesson I learned the hard way after years of my own disordered eating growing up. So what do you do? Walk over and say something, or pretend you don’t see it?
I didn’t do either, at first. I grabbed the extra container of blueberries I’d packed (my kid had decided halfway here that he “didn’t like blue anymore” that day) and walked over slow, like I was just popping by to say hi. “Sorry to interrupt,” I said, smiling at Jax. “I remember you picked these out at the neighborhood farm stand back in March, right? My kid bailed on them, so I’ve got way too many. Want a handful instead?” Sarah sat back, sighed, and wiped a strand of hair off her face. Jax immediately grabbed three blueberries and stuffed them in his mouth.
We stood there chatting for a minute, and I brought up my own struggles first, before I said anything about how she handled feeding. “I used to force my oldest to finish his plate all the time,” I said. “I was so stressed he wasn’t eating enough. My pediatric dietician eventually told me to just let him stop when he’s full, and that he’d make up for it at the next meal. It sounds crazy, but it actually worked. His weight evened out after a couple months.” That’s when Sarah told me why she was pushing so hard: Jax’s last checkup showed he was well below the growth curve for his age, his doctor had put a note in his chart about slow growth and told her she needed to make sure he was eating more at every meal. She was already scared, already getting pressure from everyone, and she was just doing what she’d been told to do.
After that playdate, I thought a lot about this question, because it comes up all the time. Every parent has an opinion on how other people feed their kids, from how much sugar is too much to whether you should force clean plates to what kinds of foods are “acceptable” for toddlers. I’ve come up with a few simple rules that work for me, no fancy jargon required.
First, only speak up immediately if a kid is in immediate danger. If I see a parent giving a whole hot dog to a 1-year-old without cutting it into small pieces, or giving a kid a food I know has their deadly peanut allergy, I’ll say something right away. That’s not judgment, that’s keeping a kid safe. For anything else—soda at a birthday party, only eating chicken nuggets for a week, forcing a kid to finish their meal—it’s almost never an emergency, even if it disagrees with what you’d do.
Second, if you do choose to say something, never lead with judgment. Lead with shared experience, and keep it casual. No one ever thinks “Wow, that random parent at the park just told me I’m raising my kid wrong, I should listen to them.” People only open up when you meet them where they are. Instead of saying “You shouldn’t force Jax to eat,” I shared what I did when I was in the same scary position of being told my kid was too small. A week after the playdate, Sarah texted me out of the blue asking for the name of my dietician. If I’d led with criticism, that never would have happened.
Third, most of the time, it’s better to just stay out of it. Last week I was at a birthday party, and I saw a mom give her 6-year-old a full sugary soda right after cake. I caught myself starting to judge, and then I remembered: that kid has type 1 diabetes, his blood sugar dropped low on the playground, and the soda was intentional to bring it back up fast. I would have looked like a complete idiot if I’d said something. We never know the full story—what the doctor said, what the kid’s therapist recommended, what the family has tried for months that didn’t work, what kind of day they’ve had. Feeding kids is one of the most stressful, personal parts of parenting, and almost everyone is just doing the best they can with what they have.
I still don’t always get it right. Sometimes I bite my tongue when I probably could have said something gentle, and sometimes I catch myself judging before I know the facts. But lately, I’ve been trying to remember that the goal isn’t to be the parent who corrects everyone else. It’s just to look out for the kids, and be kind to the other people who are just as tired and stressed as you are. That’s about all I’ve figured out so far.
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