Imagine how you would feel if you were unable to make yourself understood by the people who were going to feed you every day. Here comes another lunch; I wonder what it’ll be today? I’d really like some buttered green beans and those little brown crackers. I know they have them; I saw the crackers in the cupboard and we just had green beans last night. Oh, no, it’s apple pieces and rice! Maybe if I point to the cupboard, they’ll get the crackers. Uhnn! Uhnn! No, not the raisins, the crackers! They’re right there! Well, maybe if I clean my plate of the apples and rice, they’ll bring me something else. I’ll sweep all this stuff onto the floor and point to my plate again. There! What next? No, not a rice cake! No! The crackers! The crackers! I’m going to cry if they don’t bring me the crackers!

Every baby experiences a period during which he has opinions and ideas, but can’t make himself understood. Every caring parent experiences a period of struggling to understand their baby while she lacks any method of fluent communication. And during this period, every parent has to feed their baby many times a day, without the benefit of a clear meeting of the minds. Even when the toddler starts speaking, it can be hard to tell the difference between “peas,” “cheese,” and “beans.” During this period, a photographic menu of the foods you usually have in your kitchen for your baby goes a long way toward reducing frustration for everyone.

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When your food really hits the spot, you relish it more. It satisfies not just the taste buds on your tongue, but your stomach and then all the cells in your body. Cold cereal with milk is great for breakfast one day, but then the next, you may want something warm and crunchy and filling, like toast, with melting butter on top. When your baby can tell you what he’s hungry for, each meal is a culinary adventure happily embarked upon. Who knows? Maybe a little more of it will end up in his stomach, before it gets put on his head as a hat.

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Have you ever eaten something you really just did not want, simply because it was all you had in the house? Although at another time you might love that food, when your body isn’t asking for it, it may taste drab in your mouth and leave you full but very unsatisfied. We believe that persistently ignoring your body’s messages will make the messages grow fainter and diminish your connection to your body. This is a feeling we didn’t want our babies to have, which is why we created photo menus for them. Although most babies will eat what’s put in front of them sufficiently to grow well, we wanted our children to keep the strong connection with their bodies that we believe babies are born with. We believe making choices from healthy options about what to eat, as well as whether to eat and how much to eat, encourages babies to listen to their bodies, developing a foundation for lifelong healthy eating habits.

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Kate, 18 months old as of this writing, toddles into the kitchen and stands below her menu saying “up” when she is hungry. We pick her up, and she points to what she wants. Sometimes she knows right away and is reaching toward the photo even as she is lifted, and sometimes she spends a while gazing from picture to picture before deciding. Sometimes now she says the name of the food, too, when she points, though truthfully, without the photo we often wouldn’t know what she was saying. Then she sits back in our arms with such an air of satisfaction and expectancy that we know she utterly trusts us to care what she wants and to listen to her. The fact that sometimes we have to respond by saying we’re all out of curly noodles, what would she like instead? does not diminish her trust that we hear her and respond. Food is a pretty primal need, and we’re glad it’s one of the ways we can help our children feel connected.

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Though it often feels as though the baby runs the whole household, there isn’t much that a baby or toddler knowingly affects. A photo menu provides one way that a one-year-old can express choices and make a difference that they can detect.

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The USDA’s healthy food pyramid has changed a bit since I was in school, and there are more than four food groups in it. Now it includes grains, vegetables, fruits, oils, dairy, and meat & beans. If you lay out your menu pages with these groups in mind, you can have older children make choices with the purpose of balancing the amounts they eat of foods from each group. Older children could be included in meal planning for the family by, for example, having them select one food each from the meat & bean page(s), the vegetable page(s), and the grains page(s) for inclusion in the family dinner.

If you’d like more information from the source, go to http://www.mypyramid.gov/pyramid/index.html.

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