Picky Eater? It's the Parents' Fault

Sometimes I hear parents complain about how picky their kids are, and I want to say, "It's your own darn fault--you've trained them that way!" (Sorry.) You, too, are guilty if you do any of the following:

·         If your child doesn't like a meal, you let them get away with eating something else instead

·         You avoid giving your child certain foods because you know they will refuse (and then eat something else--see above)

·         When your child complains of being hungry (which happens regularly), you give them a snack

·         You sometimes say no to a snack, but your child somehow ends up eating before the next scheduled meal anyway

Teaching kids not to be picky is so easy if you can just learn how to avoid interfering with the natural consequences* that come from being a picky eater. Here are the three principles that, if understood and followed religiously, will cure the vast majority of picky eating.

Principle 1: Kids will eat food they don't like before they will starve

If a child refuses to eat a meal you put before them, this is what you do: Explain to them that, if they don't eat, they'll be hungry until the next meal, and then CARRY THROUGH WITH THAT PROMISE, ALWAYS (think of la cadre). If, at the next meal, they again refuse to eat the meal you put before them, no worries. Just explain again that they'll be hungry until the next meal. You can keep going like this, and I promise you that you can't lose--you have 1000s of years of evolutionary physiology on your side. Your child will eventually be driven by hunger to eat food they don't like, and they will not even become malnourished in the meantime. This is not harsh--it’s good parenting.

Kathy thinks that, with the littles who are too young to understand these explanations, you can be a little bit lenient (maybe a very small healthful extra snack before the next meal sometimes if they’re super hungry and cranky from not eating the prior meal), but I believe that even the littles figure out the pattern themselves soon enough if they experience hunger after not eating their meals. You’ll have to decide for yourself on that one.

By the way, this doesn’t mean you should never feed them snacks. One small, healthful snack a day at a scheduled time (maybe in between lunch and dinner) is probably a good thing, but be careful--don’t give them a bigger snack just because they didn’t eat much of their last meal (again, that would be interfering with the natural consequence of not eating a meal).

Principle 2: Food preferences are not fixed

My favorite story that illustrates this is about a food critic who decided that disliking certain foods was unfair of him, so for a whole year he ate nothing but all the foods he disliked the most. By the end of that year, many of those foods had become his favorite foods, and he liked nearly all the rest of them. I've had the same experience with many foods (tomatoes, olives, fermented soybeans). In our house, if someone doesn't like a food, we say they don’t like it YET, which helps ingrain this principle. Kids often have to try a food more than 10 times before they start to appreciate it!

Consider also that they may be reacting to the texture or appearance, not just the flavor. So, let them try various foods that incorporate that same flavor/texture/appearance that they’re balking at, and eventually they’ll start to like it. The key to this, though, is that they have to try at least one bite of everything you put before them, every time! Force the one bite into them if you have to; it's that important. Our kids are not allowed to leave the table until they've eaten at least 1 bite of everything, and we don't push for anything more (as explained above). Same goes for spicy foods, but please do it by degrees lest you completely traumatize them.

Principle 3: You can trust your body to know how much to eat

Kids are, on the whole, really great about eating until their tummies are full. Some days, this may be very little. Other days, it may be more than you. Either way, don't worry about it! Again, 1000s of years of evolutionary physiology. But, many parents kill their child’s natural ability of knowing when to stop eating by requiring them to eat all the food on their plate. The last bite is not the magic bite. Please don’t turn eating into a goal-directed empty-your-plate process for your child, because then eating is disconnected from fullness/satiation, which opens the door to all sorts of eating disorders. Trust that, if you’re putting well-balanced meals in front of your child, they will eat the right amount and be healthy.

If you follow these three principles religiously, not only will you have healthier, happier, less-picky children, but food will cease to be a stressor in your home. Next post, I will share some other tips and tricks we’ve discovered along the way.

* Natural consequences: The negative/positive consequences that automatically come after a bad/good decision. They are inherent in the decision. For example, if you don't eat your dinner, you'll be hungry. The other kind of consequences is artificial consequences, which are extra things that the parents do to a child when they deem the natural consequences of a decision (good or bad) to be too weak or too delayed to sufficiently motivate the child to make the right decision.