Food & sleep editor
Naya Mehta
Naya Mehta is a paediatric dietician who writes about feeding and sleeping families for The Cradle Press, and edits both sections.
Beats
Published in The Cradle Press
Outdoor Childhood
Winter Outside With a Three-Year-Old
Across the months of January and February 2026 in Saint John, New Brunswick, one mother kept a record of every outdoor outing with her toddler, and what it took to get him out the door.
Books for Kids
Reading a Long Chapter Book Across a Sick Week
Five days at home with a feverish eight-year-old in Bengaluru, and the small consolation of finishing <em>Heidi</em> together.
Generations
The Grandmother Who Moved In
Vidya Iyer arrived in San Jose from Chennai on a humid Tuesday in September 2024 and has not been back. She is seventy-one. She lives in what was once her daughter's home office. She does not, on most days, regret the decision.
Sleep
Naps: The Quiet Engineering of the Toddler Day
A two-year-old's nap is a structural element, not an afterthought. Naya Mehta on the families who plan around the nap, and the ones who let it plan around them.
Family Rituals
The Saturday Pancake
A Bengaluru father's seven years of Saturday pancakes for his daughter, made the same way each week and never quite mastered.
Early Years
The First Spoon: Introducing Solids at Six Months
On a Saturday morning in May, in a small kitchen in Bengaluru, Aarav Iyer was offered a quarter teaspoon of mashed ripe banana. He pushed it back out with his tongue, and his parents called it a success.
Food
Feeding a Two-Year-Old Who Refuses: Six Approaches, Honestly Tried
Naya Mehta spent a Thursday afternoon at the Patel family kitchen in Mississauga, watching a small girl reject six dinners in a row. What follows is not a method. It is a record.
Sleep
The Eighteen-Month Sleep Regression: A Field Account
Naya Mehta sits with a family in Bengaluru through the second great unraveling of their toddler's nights, and finds that the only thing that helps is naming it.