Dispelling the myths behind kids’ fussy eating habits…
Kids and food are so often involved in an unrequited union, with a conscientious third party [read: harassed mother who’s just spent three hours painstakingly and lovingly preparing a nutritiously balanced meal for her little love] cheering them on from the side-lines. Why is it that so many children are wont to become fussy eaters?
Even if, like my threenager, they were once open-mouthed to everything, suddenly their choices are limited to three specific food groups and sometimes even they get tossed aside. Wanting to understand how kids differentiate between food friends and foes, I spoke to feeding therapist, Simone Emery.
W is for Why
“The first thing with “fussy eating” is don’t jump to the solution before you understand why it’s actually happening,” says Simone. Referencing of course the modern day Mum’s 24/7 helpline, Simone says, “don’t expect your Facebook post on the mum’s group to yield a miracle answer because what may have worked for one child may not work for yours and that has everything to do with understanding what’s causing the issue to begin with.”
Take vegetables, for instance. What makes a child turn their nose up at the sight of broccoli? Simone explains that unlike the quickly dissolving consistency of a cracker, the eating of a vegetable is a far more complex and exhaustive experience. A child must engage his or her gross and fine motor skills to get the vegetable onto the fork, perhaps cut it into a more manageable mouthful and by the time it reaches their mouth the work has only just begun. It takes time to chew a vegetable enough to swallow it and unlike the sweet taste of a donut, for example, it presents a more bitter flavour. “They don’t have that cost benefit analysis,” explains Simone. “They think why do all this hard work to get this in my mouth to then find out the taste isn’t giving me a lot of good feedback?”
Why a child may refuse their vegetables could be down to a number of things. Children don’t behave or think with the rationale of an adult per se. They’re imaginative beings, constantly learning and always busy and taking them away from whichever activity they’re involved in to eat, presents them with an effort they’d rather avoid. Eating is work and is one of the hardest things they have to do “it involves all the sensory systems, it involves every organ – even just to take one swallow uses 26 muscles and 6 cranial nerves.”
Swallowing also has a lot to do with how a child has progressed through their solids stage as a baby. They need to have developed their oral motor skills, like moving their tongue around their mouth and being able to gag and bring up food on their own. “If Mum’s jumped in too quickly or been anxious about it that’s going to make things harder down the track and you’ll find yourself with a child who only wants things that are easy to eat,” says Simone. Forget giving them steak because they haven’t got the muscle or knowledge of how to use their mouths to eat those types of foods. Taking advantage of those pre-toddler years is key in terms of exposing them to a variety of foods and textures. “When they’re babies they’re what you call sensory motor,” explains Simone, “so they basically just think they’re part of Mum and they’re just doing what we’re doing.”
A Spoonful of Guilt
There can be such an element of guilt attached to feeding our children and as Simone points out, it is the very first relationship we have with our baby and in many cases one of the hardest.
Children are intuitive eaters and this is something we as mothers must remember. How many of you have heard the term, “he or she will eat if or when they’re hungry”? We think we have to go with the manufacturer’s guidelines on a baby’s formula or the portion served in a store bought sachet or jar but just like our appetites fluctuate daily, so do our children’s. “We have to learn early on that they have an intrinsic understanding of what’s going on in their body and we just have to provide the food so they can follow that, keeping in mind that there aren’t any other underlying issues at play,” says Simone. “As they grow up they go through their mind shifts and changes and we have to be there and understand what our role is and what their role is.”
This also relates to our own relationship with food, both as provider and user. “Stop serving up in the kitchen,” says Simone. With so much anxiety surrounding mealtime it’s no wonder kids bring their own reservations to the table. “Serving up in the kitchen also adds pressure when it comes to portion size,” adds Simone, “you present your family with an amount of food they’re expected to eat as opposed to what they can or want to eat and this takes away a lot of the intuitive eating which kids naturally have.”
Why treat mealtimes like an episode of The Voice? Food requires more than just one sense for us to interact with it and in plating up a fait accompli in front of them; you are actually serving it with an extra helping of stress-boiled expectation. Simone suggests placing everything in the middle of the table, alongside foods you know your kids like and giving them the option of trying the family meal at their own discretion. “Even if it’s a spoonful of chilli in a cupcake mould for play,” she says.
Aha! As a self-confessed slave to the mini-dictator I myself bore, this strategy looks to be my salvation. I am that Mum who perches beside my child and aggressively cheer-leads them on to eat every morsel before them. I bribe, I cajole, I plead, I beg, I ignore (and then get angry that didn’t work because now they’re playing instead of eating) and actually isn’t that the point? Shouldn’t they be allowed to play with their food? How else do we expect them to develop a positive relationship with what they’re eating?
“Eating is not pass/fail,” says Simone, “eating is a learning journey and some foods need a lot of learning before they can eat them.”
Divide and Concentrate
How do we bring them to the table in the first place? I’ll admit, my kids are more used to sitting across from Big Bird and Peppa Pig at mealtimes than their own parents.
Simone explains that the act of watching something on the TV or iPad or phone while eating creates three main issues. This has to do with the types of food you’re feeding your kids, their interaction with it and your ultimate goal in terms of their relationship with food. “The types of food you can eat in front of the TV usually require less motor finding, require less fine motor skills, less concentration – so they’ll be eating finger foods or something easy, they don’t learn about a range of family meals,” says Simone. Thus your dream of recreating a scene from The Walton’s will remain just that, something you’re more likely to see on TV than at your dinner table.
“TV also means that sensory wise you’re taking away the learning part of the food,” says Simone, “they’re pretty much eating without recognising what they’re doing.” How we facilitate our kids’ behaviours at a young age will shape their approach in the years to come and the last thing we want is to find our 25 year olds unable to eat a meal without the television on.
So what’s the answer? How do we tempt them away from the activity be it the TV, iPad, book or puzzle that’s giving them their dose of happy dopamine? Simone references the ‘Division of Responsibility’ (DOR) a term coined by feeding specialist Ellyn Satter, “it helps to have a ‘prepare to eat’ routine and having a routine around how often meals are provided and this has to do with the division of responsibility,” says Simone. “It means that parents do the what, when and where of food and children decide whether and how much.”
How disruptive is the TV as a hurdle to our ultimate goal of implementing DOR? “If my children don’t understand that I’m in charge of the what, when and where of the meal because they’ve now dictated that they’re eating in front of the TV, what happens is a redistribution of responsibilities,” says Simone. “They’re having these foods only and they have it whenever they want so you’ve handed your responsibility of the mealtime to them, leaving you back worrying over whether they’re eating it and how much they are eating. That’s where the arguments start.”
Reclaim responsibility of mealtimes. Even if that means removing the dinner table from the equation and taking dinner outside in the garden or the local park; you need to be in charge of the where in order to get your kids back into routine and ultimately back to the table. “Eating is something you have to practice,” says Simone, “just like handwriting or soccer, so even the act of having three family meals a week can make a big difference in your children’s lives.”
About Simone
Simone Emery is a children’s nutritionist, writer, mum of 2 and feeding therapist. Her website www.playwithfood.com.au offers parents of fussy eaters a treasure trove of information, recipes, articles and insights into how to overcome their kids’ feelings about food.