Raising a child is filled with all sorts of conflicting emotions – yours and theirs. When it comes to food and eating, there’s no denying that emotions and eating have a relationship.

In fact, it can be difficult to moderate your own feelings while showing your child positive examples of expressing emotions. However, a crucial part of parenting nowadays is helping them learn how to properly regulate emotions, even with eating.

On this week’s show, I have Melanie Smith, the Training Director of the Renfrew Center specializing in eating disorders, to discuss the importance of teaching emotional regulation in children and how it relates to food. In other words, how to handle emotions and eating.

Join me and Melanie on this episode and learn about your child’s emotions, how they affect eating and how you can help kids cope with all emotions in a healthful way.

"Emotional regulation is the ability to understand the whole range of emotions that I'm having and to be willing to experience the ones that might be more difficult, but in a way that is proportionate to the situation." -Melanie Smith Click To Tweet

What You’ll Learn About Emotions and Eating:

• Why we have an emotional connection to eating and how that affects our food choices.
• The different emotional responses that children can have with food and how those develop.
• Tools for helping your child moderate eating anxiety.
• How to support children after negative experiences with food.
• Steps for identifying anxiety struggles and aiding your child in creating strong emotional regulation.
• The social and developmental benefits of educating children about emotional intelligence.

Listen to the Full Episode:

Featured on the Show:

• Join my The Nourished Child Facebook page
• Subscribe to this show
• The Renfrew Center
• Mom Brain: We Tackle Picky Eaters with Pediatric Nutritionist Jill Castle
• Using Forbidden Food
• Got a Food Obsessed Kid? Don’t Restrict Them
• Food Restriction: What it Really Does to Kids
• TNC 076: 10 Things I’ve Learned from Nourishing Four Kids
• TNC 084: The Emotionally Healthy Child

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