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Are you making this common mistake?

Creating Confident Eaters, Family support for picky eating, Picky eating support / By
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Are you making this common mistake?

Many parents realise that when they go away on holiday it really shines a negative light on their child’s eating. In fact, it may not even be a holiday, it may be a restaurant, or the neighbours, or a relative’s house.

Often, when you’re at home, you make all sorts of accommodations for your child. Unfortunately, this is a common mistake with fussy eaters. Over time you stop even being conscious about how much you are compromising.

Being in a new environment, especially when surrounded by friends or relatives, suddenly shows you how far from “ideal” your child’s eating is.

Turning around that common mistake 

When you do make these compromises, you are inadvertently often hindering rather than helping your picky eater. My advice is always to ask yourself “am I enabling or am I supporting” in any situation regarding your child and their fussy eating?

Is what you’re doing enabling your child to continue being as ‘fussy’ around food? For example, if you have a child who loves Cocopops and you serve that every morning, particularly if they are also able to eat Weetbix but just prefer the Cocopops.

As a parent it’s easy to fall into a routine where you make your child happy, ensure they put something in the tummy and have firm favourites you serve weekly.

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Ways not to continue that pattern

1. Happy is good. Making your child happy is important and in fact, creating comfort around food is a core goal. But there is a big difference between serving them foods that they are able to eat and only serving favourites.

It’s good to take a step back and look at whether you are focused on making them happy, but at the expense of variety. The less foods they tackle on a weekly basis the more narrow their diet can become.

Children tend to self-narrow if they are allowed to.

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2. Eating is good. Putting something in the tummy is really positive. You want your child to get used to coming to the table and eating. Not eating can have all sorts of negative repercussions:

i) If a child doesn’t eat they frequently stop expecting to eat.

ii) Not eating on a regular basis can override internal cues that govern a child’s hunger signals and therefore make them want to eat.

iii) The table is not the place to have arguments over food so making sure they can eat something starts the meal off on the right foot. No one comes to the table happily if there is nothing there they enjoy.

However, it’s important also not to take this to the extreme, only serving those specific, favourite foods. Compromise is king!

3. You are in charge. Make sure you’re not giving in to demands for favourites just to get something eaten. It is absolutely fine to rotate through foods that your child is able to eat, even if it’s not their preference for that day.

If they refuse foods they can eat, it’s a behavioural issue.

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I would though recommend not attempting to get all the good foods in at dinner and then feeling deflated when the broccoli or the chicken gets refused.

In fact, a better plan is  experimenting earlier in the day with foods that are a little different, rather than at night. Everyone is more tired and ‘over everything’ later in the day and you also don’t want hungry tummies before bed.

4. Having the same foods on repeat. It is super common for picky eaters to food ‘jag’. This means they want to eat the same food over and over again. It may go on for days, weeks or even months. Every time they have a choice they pick the nuggets or the pasta, for example.

This is very easy for you as you know what to buy and you know it will get eaten. Unfortunately, it often leads to burn out. Most parents of older children who get into food jags see this play out. They nugget, nugget, nugget and then suddenly don’t eat nuggets again.

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When you do serve your child the same foods over and over, it also reinforces your child’s desire to eat favourites and only those.

Our brain loves routines, loves to know what’s going to happen and feels more comfortable with the familiar.

As adults it’s easy to relate by visualising how dependent we can become on the cup of coffee, the glass of wine, the piece of chocolate to give us the warm fuzzies.

However, I am not suggesting removing these favourite foods, just mixing things up a little.

It’s fine to have the favourite cup of coffee, but for your child it is often the favourite cereal, followed by the favourite sandwich and then the plain pasta or the nuggets, for example.

When the diet is narrow then repeating through those favourites builds a  psychological barrier for accepting other foods.

So what can you do?

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1. New foods. Introducing new foods is really important for your child. However, I appreciate this is not always easy as new foods can be scary.

Therefore, making small changes to accepted food or offering slightly different foods is the way to start. The more food hesitant a child, the smaller changes may have to be.

In fact, with super selective eaters it may just be changing the way foods are presented or served. Or adding something teeny tiny to it.

2. Rotate not repeat. Even if introducing new foods seems impossible and even if your child is on a super limited diet, you can still rotate foods. That means that if they have two choices of cereal you serve one Monday and the other Tuesday.

Similarly, if they will eat crackers or pretzels, serve one for morning snack and one for afternoon snack. Doing this helps a little to guard against the food jag where the same food is eaten over and over.

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You may get some resistance when doing this but it’s a great way to ensure that your child maximises the spread of nutrients, textures and variety in their diet and helps to guard against foods that get dropped as they are ‘burned out’ on eating them.

Hopefully, this has given you a few new ways to look at food for a child who has a restrictive diet. However, if you would like more support please feel free to get in touch or click on the calendar on the website to book in for a no-cost initial appointment.

Judith, MA Cantab (Cambridge University), MSc Psychology (first-class honours), is working on a PhD, is 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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