Our son is a snack addict - he just won’t eat meals

Question: My seven-year-old son won't eat many family meals with us. He has a very limited diet, mainly restricted to pasta and potatoes, eating few vegetables. When we put a family roast in front of him or any special meal my husband prepares, he generally turns his nose up at it or eats very little. He tends to request food and eat throughout the day rather than at mealtimes. We let him snack as he largely has a good healthy snack diet, eating apples, bananas, brown bread and carrots with only occasional treats. What should we do?

Both my husband and I were brought up in families where family dinners were important so we don’t want to give up on these. At the moment they are stressful, with him not eating and us nagging him.

Answer: Establishing happy and healthy family meals is an important goal to have as a parent, but it can take time and patience to achieve it. Reading your question, it sounds like your son is a “grazer”, whereby he is getting most of his daily calories and nutrition via snacks rather than mealtimes.

Fortunately, his snacks are largely nutritious and healthy which means that he probably still has a good healthy diet. However, it is unreasonable to expect him to eat large family meals as well as the different snacks he is having. Indeed, this would be a recipe for childhood obesity. You have a number of different choices in how you might go forward.

Decide what type of family mealtimes you would like Many families adopt a "grazing" approach to mealtimes, whereby the children and parents have much more frequent meals and snacks.

For some families this is the way they organise their lives and once there is a balanced diet consumed during the day this is a valid choice. The main challenge for grazing children is to ensure they don’t over-eat in the course of the day and that their food choices are healthy.

Practically, a grazing diet can be harder as you have to have food available at lots of times during the course of the day.

Alternatively, many families aim for more defined mealtimes and certainly this is the traditional family choice with the aim of having a regular family dinner. Regular family meals have lots of advantages such as establishing a routine time for everyone to talk and connect. They can be less associated with obesity as children are not fed on demand (once portion sizes are small and appropriate for their age).

If you want to move towards a family mealtime culture, you will have to gradually phase out your son’s dependence on extra meal snacks. Below are a number of suggestions.

Agree a mealtime routine Sit down with your son and agree a mealtime routine with him. Explain the importance of family meals to you and your husband as a family tradition and make these attractive to him as fun family times.

Then set up a weekly mealtime schedule that might work for everyone. Don’t be overly ambitious in the first instance. For example, you might aim for one family meal together a week and get this going before making it a more daily occurrence.

Behaviour change Suddenly stopping all snacks might cause a problem. Instead you might want to phase them out gradually. For example, for the first few weeks you might have set mealtimes and allow two defined healthy snack times when your son can choose something else to eat.

Over time you can phase these out. In addition, you might start by offering your son a very small portion size of the family dinner so there is no pressure to over-eat. Certainly, a good meal discipline is to always give children small portions so they have to ask for more rather than finish their plates.

Food choice In addition, it is important to make gradual changes to the food choices available to your son. If your goal is to have family dinners with special meals that you all enjoy, you might move towards this slowly.

First you might allow your son to have a choice of favourite snack such as an apple or carrot as a starter before his meal (certainly this is a great way to ensure he gets his vegetables) and then you would expect him to have only a smaller portion of the dinner.

In making dinners that your son might try, don’t suddenly introduce new exotic food and instead build on his existing preferences. If he likes pasta dishes, what small changes could you make to these dishes that he would still like and your husband would still enjoy cooking?

Involve your son Get your son involved in choosing what meals you might have and learning to help with the cooking. For example, as a family you might do a list of each of your favourite meals and then go through a cookbook together selecting new meals and ideas you might like to try. Get your son involved in making some selections. Set up the expectation that he has to help with cooking and preparation. You might set the goal that he learns to cook one dish so he can take responsibility for a mealtime at some point in the future. Praise him for his efforts and use rewards to get him started. For example, he might get extra pocket money at the end of the week if he sets the table each day or helps prepare the food.

Make mealtimes fun and relaxed Finally, try to take the battle about eating out of mealtimes. Just put the food in front of your son and let him choose how much he eats. Concentrate on chatting and enjoying each other's company as I am sure this is the goal you and your husband have for family dinners together.

Dr John Sharry is a social worker and psychotherapist and co-developer of the Parents Plus programmes. He will be delivering talks on positive self-esteem in Dublin on November 30th. See solutiontalk.ie for details.