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Avoiding common mistakes for parents of fussy eaters – 2

Blogs, Family support for picky eating, Picky eating support / By
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Avoiding common mistakes for parents of fussy eaters – 2

Navigating fussy eating is rarely easy. As a parent, feeding a child rolls around three to five times a day, seven days a week. If something is going wrong, it’s something you face over and over again.

Unfortunately, your child does not come with a manual, and there is no one blueprint for either preventing or resolving picky eating.

There are, however, ways you can avoid some of the mistakes that inadvertently get made.

Eating is a complex process and because it is physical, emotional, and social, there are many areas that can go awry.

Avoiding mistakes for fussy eaters

1. Not believing – by the time parents call me, they are normally at the stage where they are out of ideas. Nothing they have tried works, and they often have reached the point where they feel their child is too stubborn, too extreme a picky eater or just can’t try, and add new foods.

Being convinced your child is unable to make progress can be a good thing. What, you ask?! Yes, believing that there is something preventing your child from eating well is a good thing.

If a child appears to have extreme eating challenges, then 99% of the time if a parent has identified this, they are correct. It’s important to acknowledge that for your child, food is really difficult.

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Step one to fixing a problem is identifying there is a problem. Rather than sitting back and waiting for things to get better because “it’s just a phase”, is frequently the wrong thing to do.

Most parents I work with who have a 5-, 10- or 15-year-old, have known their child really struggled around food from an early age, and all wish they had hit the panic button sooner.

If a child really finds food difficult, they are likely to drop foods they have previously eaten rather than adding new ones.

It is also important, to know and to believe that despite current eating challenges, your child can get better. It may not be quick, miraculous, or easy, but they can make progress.

2. Pressuring – when a child doesn’t eat it’s enormously stressful. It also frequently makes you feel you have to do more to fix the problem.

‘Encouraging’ your child can take many forms, and unfortunately, most of them are unhelpful long-term.

i) Pinterest expectations – finding the magic recipe that will suddenly support your child to eat is common. It may also place a lot of pressure on a child to eat something as you’ve put in time, money, and effort to create.

ii) Bribing – you desperately want your child to eat, so you offer desserts or other rewards for them to try a new food or eat more of something.

There are three issues with this. Firstly, you are putting yourself in the middle of the feeding relationship. They are eating for you, not themselves.

Secondly, they are being told that in order to eat they need a reward. Think of the long-term implications.

Thirdly, the message is “eat this which is hard to do” and you get xyz. Again, this is not an ideal message.

iii) Clowning – entertaining your child so they will eat is a normal response when faced with food challenges. However, it’s a short-term fix and one which becomes more exhausting and less effective as time goes on!

Avoiding common mistakes for parents of fussy eaters-2 - Judith Yeabsley|Fussy Eating NZ, Clowning around, #AvoidingCommonMistakesForParentsOfFussyEaters, #AvoidingCommonMistakesForParentsOfPickyEaters, #TryNewFoods, #TheConfidentEater, #FussyEatingNZ, #HelpForFussyEating, #HelpForFussyEaters, #FussyEater, #FussyEating, #PickyEater, #PickyEating, #SupportForFussyEaters, #SupportForPickyEaters, #CreatingConfidentEaters, #TryNewFood #PickyEatingNZ #HelpForPickyEaters, #HelpForPickyEating, #RecipesPickyEatersWillEat, #RecipesFussyEatersWillEat, #WinnerWinnerIEatDinner, #Recipesforpickyeaters, #Foodforpickyeaters, #Wellington, #NZ, #JudithYeabsley, #BookForPickyEaters, #BookForFussyEaters, #ThePickyPack, #FunFoodsForPickyEaters, #FunFoodsForFussyEaters

iv) Begging – any time you beg, you put your child in charge.

v) Negative pressuring – although it’s not something we like to admit, desperation may lead to threats or punishments.

Paradoxically, many studies show that the less you pressure your child to eat, the better the long-term outcomes. This doesn’t mean you only feed them their favourites either, it’s more that you don’t use tactics to force them to eat foods they are less comfortable with.

3. Labelling – it can be really tempting to call your child a fussy or picky eater. However, it is effectively telling them “you’re not very good at eating”. If you (or anyone else) does this repeatedly, it can make it more difficult for your child to make progress.

Negative labels can also be internalised and mean a child believes they are fussy and not able to eat widely and well.

Similarly, for older children it can become a ‘get out of jail-free card’ as they don’t need to try to eat a food as they are ‘fussy’.

And I will apologise for using the terms in my writing. For years I didn’t, but was not rewarded by any reach as they are both the most recognisable words used by parents and the terms adopted by the medical and scientific literature. I ban them with any of the families I work with, and would never use them in front of a child though 😊

4. Old-school tactics – when I post an article on public notice boards, I can almost guarantee there will be at least one “well in my day we just had to eat what we were given” comment.

Avoiding common mistakes for parents of fussy eaters-2 - Judith Yeabsley|Fussy Eating NZ, feeding dog, #AvoidingCommonMistakesForParentsOfFussyEaters, #AvoidingCommonMistakesForParentsOfPickyEaters, #TryNewFoods, #TheConfidentEater, #FussyEatingNZ, #HelpForFussyEating, #HelpForFussyEaters, #FussyEater, #FussyEating, #PickyEater, #PickyEating, #SupportForFussyEaters, #SupportForPickyEaters, #CreatingConfidentEaters, #TryNewFood #PickyEatingNZ #HelpForPickyEaters, #HelpForPickyEating, #RecipesPickyEatersWillEat, #RecipesFussyEatersWillEat, #WinnerWinnerIEatDinner, #Recipesforpickyeaters, #Foodforpickyeaters, #Wellington, #NZ, #JudithYeabsley, #BookForPickyEaters, #BookForFussyEaters, #ThePickyPack, #FunFoodsForPickyEaters, #FunFoodsForFussyEaters

To a degree, that is true. But there are also a LOT of people of my generation who were left with serious hang-ups about food, or who went hungry (while the dog got fat) much of the time.

Old-school tactics are generally about forcing a child to do what you want them to do. This means you are a) pressuring them and b) putting yourself in the middle of the feeding equation.

It also often frequently makes food less comfortable or even miserable.

Having to sit at the table until you have eaten something or having it served again the following morning does not give you a love of food. It can even make mealtimes a miserable place to be, and that is not going to encourage better eating.

There is a definite line between being in charge and not letting a child make all the food decisions, and being a dictator and attempting to force them to eat.

5. Not being in charge – it’s very easy for a child who doesn’t eat well to take charge over feeding. In fact, pretty much every family I work with who has a picky eater, will admit that their child is in the driving seat in at least some of the feeding decisions.

Unfortunately, unless you are in charge, you can’t make changes. It’s important that you therefore do decide when mealtimes are and what will be served (or at least what are the options that are available).

I would also caution against asking a child “what do you want to eat?”. It can be:

Avoiding common mistakes for parents of fussy eaters-2 - Judith Yeabsley|Fussy Eating NZ, child decide, #AvoidingCommonMistakesForParentsOfFussyEaters, #AvoidingCommonMistakesForParentsOfPickyEaters, #TryNewFoods, #TheConfidentEater, #FussyEatingNZ, #HelpForFussyEating, #HelpForFussyEaters, #FussyEater, #FussyEating, #PickyEater, #PickyEating, #SupportForFussyEaters, #SupportForPickyEaters, #CreatingConfidentEaters, #TryNewFood #PickyEatingNZ #HelpForPickyEaters, #HelpForPickyEating, #RecipesPickyEatersWillEat, #RecipesFussyEatersWillEat, #WinnerWinnerIEatDinner, #Recipesforpickyeaters, #Foodforpickyeaters, #Wellington, #NZ, #JudithYeabsley, #BookForPickyEaters, #BookForFussyEaters, #ThePickyPack, #FunFoodsForPickyEaters, #FunFoodsForFussyEaters

i) Difficult for a child to decide. If food is not your thing, then unless everything is perfect it can be difficult to eat and therefore choosing gets challenging.

ii) Putting them in charge. If you ask what they’d like to eat, and they request something you don’t want to give them you either have to battle over why it’s a no or give in and put them in charge.

iii) It frequently narrows down their choices. They are not going to choose something that is even a little outside of their comfort zone.

Avoiding some of the common mistakes can either help you side-step the fussy eating traps or help you get eating back on track.

Judith, MA Cantab (Cambridge University), MSc Psychology (first-class honours), is working on a PhD, an AOTA accredited picky eating advisor and internationally certified nutritional therapist. She works with 100+ families every year resolving fussy eating and returning pleasure and joy to the meal table.

She is also mum to two boys and the author of Creating Confident Eaters and Winner Winner I Eat Dinner. Her dream is that every child can approach food from a place of safety and joy, not fear.

Learn more about Judith here: https://theconfidenteater.com/about/

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