Totally stuck with your fussy eater?

Find out why a house and a 1,000 piece jigsaw may be important.

Many parents reach the point where they are totally stuck and out of ideas after weeks, months, years living with a child who struggles to eat variety.

Initially, parents use their own experience to try to improve their child’s eating. If they come from a background of ‘old school’ tactics this usually means the parent should be in charge and the child should do what they say. If not, there are consequences.

Sometimes this has short term benefits, and a child may force foods down. Children on the more extreme end of the picky eating spectrum may not be able to do this though, regardless of the carrot or the sticks.

Long term, however, for any child it is rarely helpful. Parents themselves often have traumatic memories of these sorts of methods.

Once a parent exhausts their own ideas they look to friends and relatives. The issue is that what may work for an averagely competent eater is often unhelpful or even worse, exacerbates problems for a more challenged eater.

Dr Google is of course another source of information, however, much of the advice is contradictory or helpful for some children or situations but not others.

Unfortunately, the best advice is also, generally, the least palatable. It is the long-term change, consistency, and ongoing effort kind. When you are in the thick of eating worries what you want are quick and easy fixes.

Or at least ones where after a week or so you know you’re on the right track.

Many longer-term strategies that are actually helpful do not give instantly recognisable results. It’s therefore understandable that parents give up on them.

Similarly, the more strategies you try that fail, the more convinced you become that nothing works for your child. If none of the usual strategies are helpful, maybe your child is just too ‘stubborn’.

You will then probably find yourself at the totally stuck, stubborn stage. Once here, it is often easiest to do nothing. It’s not that you have given up. Far from it, it is often a problem that is constantly on your mind, you just have run out of ideas.

Doing nothing and making compromises to ensure a child is fed is where most parents with a long-term selective eater end up.

So, what can you do if you are totally stuck?

1. Fix the foundations – Start with the family dynamics, the language, and the approach you are using.

Generally, not the first thing you would think of when it comes to your child and food.

Instead, if your child
is not eating well, the first questions are things like:

i) What foods can I serve that will be a win?

ii) How can I get them to try new foods?

iii) Why are they so fearful, anxious, rigid in their tastes, picky?

However, I think of eating as both a house and a 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle.

Let me explain!

House – you can have the world’s nicest curtains and furniture, but if the foundations are not great, or the roof leaks, none of these matter. Which is why the foundational factors that support fussy eaters are generally the most important. The approach you use, the language around food and feeding, the mealtime dynamics and the feeding structure.

For example, if you have a child who is not eating widely and well it is often tempting to give them food on demand. This is particularly true if they are on the slim-side, or don’t seem that interested in food.

However, these are paradoxically the children for whom feeding on demand works against the most.

Similarly, the language you use can inadvertently prevent progress. You often feel you are being supportive if, for example, you are delighted when your child ‘bravely’ eats a piece of broccoli. Unfortunately, this may be working against you as you are putting pressure on them to perform.

Or if you serve something to your child and don’t expect them to eat it, they probably won’t. They are in tune with how you feel about something and can read you easily. If you don’t believe they are going to eat something, why should they believe it?

Or if you are serving their favourite food every night, this can affect progress. Repetition is the thief of change.

Puzzle – if you have a 1,000 piece puzzle and 3 pieces are missing then the whole jigsaw is kind of ruined.

Eating is similar. You have to have everything working well for progress to be made, particularly for children who have more extreme eating challenges.

This is why it’s good to
look to the foundations first and make sure everything is going to support progress.

If one part of this is not doing well, it can derail the progress you do make.

For example, what if your child out of the blue does try something new, but then you say something that inadvertently stops them doing it again. You are doing your best and doing it from a place of love. But that may not be helpful.

Many of the dynamics may also have come about due to necessity. Your first responsibility is of course to feed your child and ensure they have a full tummy.

Unfortunately, this can lead to practices that don’t serve you or them, like separate meals.

Therefore, one of the first things to ensure is that
that everything you do is geared towards progress, there are no handbrakes happening that are stopping the steps forward you so desperately crave.

You often make compromises that end up working against you but don’t even realise it. Or you do realise it, but you’re unsure what to do instead.

2. Make tiny changes – the easiest way to get unstuck is by making teeny tiny changes to your child’s food or diet.

The smaller these are, the better, particularly with children who really struggle around food.

In fact, the changes don’t even have to be to the food per se to begin with. You can just change up how you present things so your child can dip their toes in safely.

For example, you could serve yoghurt in a bowl, not a pottle, or toast in triangles, not squares.

What you don’t want to do though is make food more challenging for a child. This can happen if you spring things on them unexpectedly. Rather than do that, it’s far better to show them change in a low-key way.

Perhaps the changes you make are to someone else’s food to begin with, or perhaps they help to pick a new container or serving item.

Slight variations – you can also vary foods slightly.

This may be adding something tiny to a food already eaten. Perhaps it’s some melted butter on the pasta or rice, for example.

Or perhaps it’s a slightly new version of something. For example, a different flavour of chippie/crisp, or a variation on an accepted cracker.

When you are stuck, the first rule is to do something.

Doing nothing not only keeps you stuck, it also reinforces the patterns your child is comfortable sitting in. If they have the same things for meals and snacks and these never get varied, it becomes harder and harder to even contemplate change.

If you can’t accept change, new is going to be even more difficult. That is why gentle but consistent change is important.

If you can make the change fun, bonus points! This may not be as difficult as you may think. Perhaps it’s putting a drink into a shot glass or cereal into a mug instead of a bowl. Or it could be taking the ice cream into the garden and adding chocolate shavings or sprinkles.

Any change, however small, begins that movement in a new direction. It means you are not stuck, you are moving. Yes, it may be a tiny step, but any long journey begins with the first movement in the right direction.

If you do feel totally stuck and would like an analysis of what’s happening or some help getting unstuck, you can contact me personally for an 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/