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Avoiding common mistakes for parents of fussy eaters – 2

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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 that we face over and over again.

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

There are, however, ways that we 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.

Working with 100+ families a year, there are definitely common areas where parents can make small changes that long-term lead to positive changes.

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 not able 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, unfortunately they quite frequently drop foods they have previously eaten rather than adding new ones.

It is also important, however, 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 us feel we have to do more to fix the problem.

Encouraging our child can take many forms, and unfortunately, most of them are unhelpful long-term. Yes, they may help in the short-term, but that is sandpapering over the underlying problem, rather that fixing it:

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

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

There are three issues with this. Firstly, we are putting ourselves in the middle of the feeding relationship. They are eating for us, 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 a positive learning experience.

iii) Clowning – entertaining our 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!

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iv) Begging – any time we beg, we put our 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 we pressure our child to eat, the better the long-term outcomes. This doesn’t mean that we only feed them their favourites either, it’s more that we don’t use tactics to force them to eat foods they are less comfortable with.

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

Negative labels can 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. Honestly, I didn’t use to but I realised they are the recognisable words for most people. 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.

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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 we want them to do. This means we are a) pressuring them and b) putting ourselves 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 eating domain.

Unfortunately, unless we are in charge, we can’t make changes. It’s important that we 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:

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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 we ask what they’d like to eat, and they request something we don’t want to give them we 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 pitfalls can either help us miss the fussy eating traps or help us get eating back on track.

Judith, MA Cantab, Grad Dip Psychology, 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 is able to approach food from a place of safety and joy, not fear.
Learn more about Judith here: https://theconfidenteater.com/about/

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