Feeding your kids is a stress-fest
Mealtimes can be a difficult balancing act, between getting your kids to eat healthy foods and lowering everyone’ stress levels (yours included). With the competing pressures, it makes sense to take a step back and explore your options to understand what you really want.
Complex problems are often vague and have many possible solutions. The Meta-Problem Method may lead you far away from the dilemma that started your quest. That’s because the method forces you to clarify what you really want and what you are willing to give up. It enables you to compare objectively the possible pathways and their trade offs. It prevents you locking into solutions mode too early and then doubling down on solving a low-yield problem that does not serve your goals as well as the alternatives. At the end of this process, you will have a better understanding of your priorities and how to achieve them.
Steps in the Meta-Problem Method
Dilemma
The high-level issue you are trying to address
Lower stress levels at mealtimes with your kids.
Goal
The changes you want to make to address the dilemma. There are usually many options.
Supporting goals
- Your kid eats healthy meals.
- Less arguing about food.
Other goals could include identifying any mental or physical health issues, adults and kids eat the same food, and reduced effort to prepare meals.
Problem Space
The set of problems you could chose to solve to advance your goals, plus the constraints that hold you back.
Example problems
- How could we help the child have healthier food? Maybe the problem to solve is “How to get kids to eat enough fruits and vegetables?”
- How could we reduce arguing at mealtimes? Maybe the problem to solve is “What are the specific triggers that cause the conversation to escalate?”
There are many other potential problems to solve related to stress at mealtime. Each goal has many possible problems we could link to it. Are there other problems linked to these first two goals? Which options come to mind for the other goals?
High-Yield Problems
Sometimes solving one problem helps make progress towards several goals. In this step, we identify these “two-for-the-price-of-one” problems.
Which options will advance more than one goal?
- Work with your kid to come up with healthy foods they would like to eat. This can help kids eat healthier and reduce stress during mealtime. However, it only works if the kids are willing to participate and can mean more effort before dinner.
- Follow Ellyn Satter’s Division of responsibility for meals. This strategy helps children develop healthy eating habits for life and reduces arguing about food. However, it takes additional mental energy, and any individual meal may be unhealthy.
There are many potential solutions that will have varying effects on the set of goals. Which alternatives improve the most important goals? How might the unknown change the right path forward? What other possible solutions are there to address the dilemma?
Problem Selection
Which of the many possible options in the high-yield problem step is the best set to address the dilemma?
- Which solutions make the most sense as a parent?
- Which solutions will best address the dilemma?
- Which solutions will deliver the best outcome for the least amount of time, effort and money?
Implement, Learn and Adapt
Check continuously that you are still solving the best problem, as new information emerges.
Observe and learn as you go. As new information reveals itself, check continuously that you’re still solving the right problem.