The ‘good enough’ parent, the ‘good enough’ meal…

When my eldest daughter (now on the brink of teenage-dom) was a baby, I was studying for my Masters in counselling. I know – crazy – I enrolled when I was pregnant and had no idea what being a mother would actually be like! In my imagination, I would be serenely writing assignments while my baby played happily at my feet. In reality…. well, let’s just say I made it to the end of the course in one piece, but it was a tough few years.

One of the things that got me through that intense time, was something I came across while I was studying one day: Donald Winnicott’s concept of ‘the good enough mother’. Winnicott was a British Paediatrician and is a huge name in the world of psychoanalytic therapy. He developed his ‘good enough mother’ theory in the 1950s, explaining that children needed their mothers to fail them sometimes, in order to prepare them for life in a less than perfect world.¹

Of course, we’re not talking about a complete failure to meet a child’s needs which would be described as neglectful, more the idea that babies needed to experience a little frustration, a moment’s delay in being responded to… a little imperfection.

This really resonated with me as a new mum because I was feeling guilty. I felt bad that I was studying as well as trying to care for my new daughter. I worried that I wasn’t keeping up with the housework. I felt ashamed that I actually really enjoyed hanging out with adults and having a break from my baby, on my days at university.

Donald Winnicott let me off the hook – I realised that my daughter’s needs were being met, I was doing my best by her and that if I stopped wallowing in my negative feelings about my choices and looked up, I would see that she was a thriving and happy little girl.

Why am I telling you all of this? Well, it occured to me the other day that the concept of being ‘good enough’ is totally applicable to feeding children. We don’t need our children to eat a perfectly balanced meal three times a day, with instagram-worthy snacks to go with it, and bento-box packed lunches with a jungle theme.

If lunch is a bowl of dry cereal and a cracker, that’s okay. If a child chooses to leave EVERYTHING at a meal, that’s okay. If they have not eaten a rainbow that day, that’s okay. I encourage a big-picture approach to nutrition, where you look at balancing foods across a day or even a couple of days, rather than trying to make every single meal the epitome of dietary harmony.

If you are feeling tired and crabby some days, that’s okay too. If you are not 100% consistent in your parenting, give yourself a break, not a hard time. If sometimes, your meal-planning is on point but other times, it’s more of a ‘grab what you can’ kind of a day, that’s fine – you’re still feeding your family even if what you produce doesn’t merit a frantic upload to Pinterest. If you’re at a party and your child only eats crisps (US potato chips) because there is nothing else there they can handle, it doesn’t matter. It’s much more important that they are learning to enjoy a social occasion with their friends, without too much anxiety over food.

I hear parents (especially mothers) telling me – almost on a daily basis – that they blame themselves for their child’s relationship with food: they should have done things differently; the way their child eats is not good enough and that means that they, as a parent, are not good enough.  I hear parents say that they should have tried harder or done more.

 

I invite you to embrace ‘good enough’ and feel great about all of the awesome things that you do for your child instead of focusing on the things you would like to be different.

 

Get your child’s health checked out by their GP (UK) / Pediatrician (US) and/or a dietitian, and the chances are, they will confirm that your child is doing fine. Know that your parenting is good enough – your child’s diet is good enough – and even though you can gradually work to build their eating confidence, accepting where they are and recognising that you are doing your best is so important. It will help you feel at peace with yourself and with your child’s eating.

 

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¹ See Seleni.org