How to make a fussy child eat

Fussy eaters - NHS

It's natural to worry whether your child is getting enough food if they refuse to eat sometimes.

But it's perfectly normal for toddlers to refuse to eat or even taste new foods.

Do not worry about what your child eats in a day or if they do not eat everything at mealtimes. It's more helpful to think about what they eat over a week.

If your child is active and gaining weight, and they seem well, then they're getting enough to eat.

As long as your child eats some food from the 4 main food groups (fruit and vegetables; potatoes, bread, rice, pasta and other starchy carbohydrates; dairy or dairy alternatives; and beans, pulses, fish, eggs, meat and other proteins) you do not need to worry. Find out more about what to feed young children.

Gradually introduce other foods and keep going back to the foods your child did not like before. Children's tastes change. One day they'll hate something, but a month later they may love it.

Keep offering a variety of foods – it may take lots of attempts before your child accepts some foods.

Tips for parents of fussy eaters

Give your child the same food as the rest of the family, but remember not to add salt to your child's food. Check the label of any food product you use to make family meals.
The best way for your child to learn to eat and enjoy new foods is to copy you. Try to eat with them as often as you can.
Give small portions and praise your child for eating, even if they only eat a little.
If your child rejects the food, do not force them to eat it. Just take the food away without saying anything. Try to stay calm, even if it's very frustrating. Try the food again another time.
Do not leave meals until your child is too hungry or tired to eat.
Your child may be a slow eater, so be patient.
Do not give your child too many snacks between meals – 2 healthy snacks a day is plenty.
Do not to use food as a reward. Your child may start to think of sweets as nice and vegetables as nasty. Instead, reward them with a trip to the park or promise to play a game with them.
Make mealtimes enjoyable and not just about eating. Sit down and chat about other things.
If you know any other children of the same age who are good eaters, ask them round for tea. But do not talk too much about how good the other children are.
Ask an adult that your child likes and looks up to to eat with you. Sometimes a child will eat for someone else, such as a grandparent, without any fuss.
Changing how you serve a food may make it more appealing. For example, your child might refuse cooked carrots but enjoy raw grated carrot.

Further information

Baby and toddler meal ideas
Dealing with child behaviour problems

Video: How do I manage a fussy eater? (18 to 30 months)

This video explains how to manage a fussy eater.

Media last reviewed: 2 December 2020
Media review due: 2 December 2023

Page last reviewed: 2 February 2021
Next review due: 2 February 2024

What makes kids picky eaters — and what may help them get over it

Some kids are happy to snack on carrots, raw peppers and hummus, while other kids would be happy to follow a carb-based “white” diet of pasta, rice and bread.

Why are some kids so fussy about food? It turns out there a dizzying number of reasons your child may turn up his nose at mealtimes. A 2015 review of dozens of studies that date back to the 1990s that looked at kids' eating patterns found that fussy, picky or choosy eating habits were linked to and affected by everything from personality traits to parental control at mealtime to social influences to maternal eating patterns. Or it could just be your kid being, well, a kid.

An important point to remember is that fussy or picky eating is normal in young kids, says Lee Gibson, PhD, a reader in biopsychology and director of the Clinical and Health Psychology Research Centre at University of Roehampton in London. And in general, overreacting or trying to apply strict dietary regimes to discourage picky eating tends to be counterproductive.

“Parental anxiety won’t help,” Gibson says. “It’s better to learn by example, always be positive when offering food and show children how much you like a food when you’re asking them to eat it.”

And while the evidence of long-term health outcomes of picking eating following children into adulthood is somewhat scant, the evidence that does exist suggests picky eating tendencies don’t appear to be related to increased risk of becoming overweight or obese (that’s on the population level, looking trends of how picky eating affects most kids), according to a review of several previous studies on the topic that Gibson and his colleagues published earlier this year in the journal Current Obesity Reports.

But pediatrician Tanya Altmann, MD, adds that if a picky eater isn’t getting enough good nutrition because of being too selective, in individual cases, picky eating (especially extreme picky eating) can lead to both short- and long-term nutrient deficiencies and other problems.

It’s better to learn by example, always be positive when offering food and show children how much you like a food when you’re asking them to eat it.

“It is important for kids to develop a healthy relationship with food at a young age,” says Altmann, a Calabasas, California-based private practitioner, spokesperson for the American Academy of Pediatrics, author of What to Feed Your Baby, and mother of three. “When this doesn’t happen, [kids] can have weight problems and disordered eating later on in life.”

To help your kids develop that healthy relationship with what they’re eating (and avoid daily dinnertime rows), here’s what you should know.

Most of the time, it’s probably not about those last two bites of green beans

The battle may start because of the green beans, but most of the time for the picky eaters, it’s not the green beans, the peas or even the elusive dessert, that’s upsetting them, explains Dina Rose, PhD, a sociologist and author of It’s Not About the Broccoli. A lot of the time it’s a control struggle, she says.

Of course there are times when kids have a reaction to a specific taste or the way a food looks, Rose points out. “But even in these instances, the refusal to try that food is an expression of fear or other feelings. Control and being able to control their own food environment is the primary problem.”

As toddlers, it becomes a kid’s job to learn control — how to move and control their body and all of its functions. Choosing what foods to put on their plate and choosing whether or not to swallow that food is another ripe area they can control, Rose says.

But parents want control when it comes to kids’ eating, too (deciding what kids eat, when, and, often, limits), Rose says. There is enormous pressure on parents to feed children adequately and nutritiously, Rose says. “Parents walk into the feeding dynamic already nervous.”

Kids sense the pressure and get that mealtime is something parents really care about, Rose adds. The power struggle begins.

The green beans are the chore that needs to get done, and the gooey brownie is the reward. Even though the kid might learn he or she needs to eat the vegetable, we’re not teaching the kid to prefer it.

Often at the dinner table, good intentions backfire

Power struggles can teach kids the wrong messages about food. When a kid rejects a certain food and we put pressure on the kid to eat that food, it becomes a negative experience, Rose explains. How many of us have been told or told our kids: “Two more bites and you can have dessert”?

“That makes the dessert valuable and the vegetable not valuable,” Rose says. The green beans are the chore that needs to get done, and the gooey brownie is the reward. Even though the kid might learn he or she needs to eat the vegetable, we’re not teaching the kid to prefer it.

Problem two: we give kids the wrong vocabulary when it comes to food, Rose says. Maybe they don’t want to eat a food because they’re cranky, they’re not hungry, they had their hearts set on something else for dinner — whatever the reason — but they say “I don’t like it” so that they don’t have to eat it. “We systematically teach children that the only ‘legal’ way to get out of eating a food is to say, ‘I don’t like it,’” Rose says.

Kids are still learning and developing taste preferences until about age 5, when they become more stable. Kids’ thoughts and evaluations of those foods also start more fluid and become stabilized, she says. “But ‘I don’t like it’ gets reinforced in their own minds and the parents’ minds.”

Tips for defusing the power struggle:

One well-cited theory on discouraging picky eating encourages parents to share responsibility with their kids when it comes to eating. Parents control what food is available and when and where meals and snacks are eaten; kids determine how much they eat and whether to eat. Registered dietitian Ellyn Satter developed the theory — coined the “Division of Responsibility in feeding” model — in the 1980s and 1990s.

Versions of the model are part of nutrition guidelines for children and adolescents that come from The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics and The American Academy of Pediatrics. And it’s influenced a lot of healthy eating strategies for kids that are taught, advocated and followed today, Rose says.

Here are some tips for what to do at mealtime:

1. Set realistic expectations.

More often, if you’re giving a kid a food for the first time, they’re probably going to be a little bit unsure at first. That’s okay, Rose says. Nutrition science research suggests that it takes kids up to 12 exposures to any given food to put it in the category of food they “like,” Rose adds. “Exposure” literally means any time a kid is exposed to the food. (It doesn’t mean they have to eat 12 servings, she explains.)

An exposure might be looking at a food in the serving dish, listening to a parent talk about eating it, helping prepare the food, feeling the food or trying a nibble of the food.

Put too much pressure on a kid to like the food right away and if there’s any reason a kid doesn’t want to eat that food, it gets put into the “don’t like it box” — and it becomes tougher for the next exposure to go well, Rose says.

An exposure might be looking at a food in the serving dish, listening to a parent talk about eating it, helping prepare the food, feeling the food or trying a nibble of the food.

2. Change up the menu.

Variety — meaning trying new foods and rotating the foods and meals you are eating — is a key component of healthy eating. If you eat the same meals every single day (even if those meals are composed of healthy foods), you’re not going to be eating a healthy diet, Rose says. Lots of parents fall into the “peas is the only vegetable my kid eats” trap — and then that parents serves peas every night, she adds. “This teaches children the mindset that monotony is normal.”

Kids need to learn this early and they need to learn not to expect to get the same meal served to them every day. And — when appropriate — give kids options when it comes to eating, Rose says. This helps teach decision-making when it comes to feeding.

3. But don't make separate meals.

Catering to kids’ picky preferences drives the pickiness and never gives them a reason to try new foods, explains Sally Sampson, co-author of The Picky Eater Project and founder of ChopChop, a non-profit that teaches families about cooking together.

When Sampson raised her two kids (now both in their 20s and not picky eaters), if they didn’t like the meal being served, they had the option to get up from the table and get themselves plain yogurt, cottage cheese, or plain Cheerios for that meal instead, she says. They hardly ever chose the alternatives, she says. “My daughter said: ‘It was never worth it to not try what you were serving. You were offering the most boring foods as substitutes.’”

It can be an attention struggle: Mom needing to get up and make a separate dish means more attention on the child, making them feel doted on or special, Sampson adds. What incentive is there then to be the kid who doesn’t require that extra attention?

“[Don’t] give the picky eater a lot of ‘air time,’” Sampson says.

4. Give kids options you want them to eat.

If you don’t want kids to pick macaroni and cheese, don’t make that one of the options, Sampson says. That doesn’t mean you need to have a kitchen full of wheat germ and kale, but it’s important to surround kids with good options — when it comes to what’s being served, what foods you’re talking about, and what kids are eating when they’re outside your kitchen — so they can make good decisions.

For after-school snack, put out raw vegetables, hummus and fruit, Sampson says. Even if they skip the carrots and hummus, and devour the grapes, they’re still making a healthy choice. And don’t make a big deal about what the snack is or how much they need to eat, she adds. “If they’re hungry, they’ll eat it.”

(And just because they don’t eat it one night, don’t stop serving it. It goes back to the exposure theory — eventually after seeing everyone else eat it, they’ll try it, maybe they’ll like it, and eventually it won’t be a problem.)

5. Separate behavior issues from picky eating.

If a child is screaming or throwing a tantrum at the dinner table, that’s a behavior issue, not a picky eating issue, Rose says. And behavior issues need to be dealt with appropriately.

If behavior problems get treated as picky eating problems, they make that entire feeding experience negative — and that negative environment won't allow kids to give any new foods a chance.

6.

Involve kids in meal prep.

Involving kids in meal prep makes them active participants and gives them a sense of control from the very get-go, Sampson explains. Have kids help pick out groceries, prep food and set the table. It keeps kids’ curiosities peeked, so they want to be part of the end result: eating the dinner.

7. Don’t ban sweets, help kids manage when and how they eat them.

Kids should have access to sweets and treats, but parents still need to teach kids how to eat it sparingly, Rose says. Give kids guidelines about what that means — one dessert per day, three meals a day, one afterschool snack, or whatever the eating schedule is, Rose says. "Kids don’t come out of the chute understanding that.”

Forbidding sweets entirely can backfire, potentially leading kids to overindulge or abuse them when those foods are available, she adds.

Give kids a candy drawer that they can reach and talk to your kids about what amount of sweets is appropriate for them to be eating, Rose suggests. Maybe that’s one treat a day. If Johnny decides to eat a piece of candy after lunch as his sweet for the day, he may need to skip having a cookie after dinner (even if his sister decided to have her sweet for the day then). That’s a learning opportunity, Rose says.

“If a parent feels like his or her kid cannot be trusted, that’s a trust issue not a food issue,” Rose adds.

8. Relax, enjoy it and make mealtimes the positive experience they should be.

Not every meal is going to turn out perfect — and even the healthiest eater is going to have a day of eating that’s not as balanced as it could be, Sampson says. “Part of that is relaxing and [as parents] stopping trying to control kids so much.”

Making mealtimes a struggle or battleground sets up both the parent and kids for failure when it comes to trying new foods and eating well. In general, kids want to eat what’s in front of them and eat what everyone else is eating, Rose says. “Nobody chooses to be a picky eater. ”

For a lot of kids, becoming a picky eater is a mechanism that solves some sort of unrelated problem for them — it eliminates pressure or gives them control, Rose says. It’s not about what’s actually on the plate.

It’s important to remember that healthy eating is about happiness, too, Rose says. “Happiness at home matters,” she says. “And when children enjoy meals they tend to eat better.”

NEXT: How Your Brain Changes After Baby

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how to teach a child to eat everything • INMYROOM FOOD

“I don't want to! I won't!" Every mother has heard these words at least once in her life. How to respond to children's whims at the table and help your child build a healthy relationship with food?

Nataliya Makuni

A kid refusing to eat broccoli with tears or dejectedly picking cold porridge with a spoon, and a desperate mother is nearby - this dramatic scene was played out at least once in every kitchen. In some houses it happens all the time. How to teach a child to eat everything? And if you look more broadly, then how to teach him to eat right and varied?

Be patient

Experts say that a child needs to try it seven to 15 times to get used to a new food. A new food is very often not liked by a child the first time, but this does not mean that it should be excluded from the menu forever. Try to cook it differently and serve it at a different time - it may well turn out that this time it will be to your taste.

Change the consistency, mash unwanted vegetables or serve minced meat, use new salad dressings, make a pie filling from the "unloved" product - and the effect will not be long in coming. French baby food experts say that it can take a child several years to get used to certain types of food, and this is completely normal.

Do not turn the kitchen into a battlefield

Any aggressive intervention in the process of feeding a child is unacceptable. About direct pressure ("immediately eat this porridge!") must be forgotten once and for all: apart from hatred of food and distrust of parents, it does not generate anything. It provokes whims and too noticeable concern due to the fact that the child does not eat well. A mother who constantly looks into the baby’s plate, puts pieces of food and complains that he eats “not right”, fixes his attention on the negative emotions associated with food.

Give your child the right to say "no" and find out why he doesn't want to eat. Perhaps the point is not that the baby does not like food. Maybe the portion is too big, he's not hungry enough, he's tired, or he doesn't feel well. Without putting pressure on the child, you teach him to listen to his own body.

Let the baby sometimes feel hungry

One of the main fears of mothers is that the child will remain hungry. However, the experience of many parents proves that single skipping meals will not harm the baby. Therefore, if your baby flatly refused lunch, do not rush to supplement him with something else in an attempt to stick to the regimen. No means no. Wait until the next meal or until the child insistently asks for food. Do not interrupt his appetite with snacks or sugary drinks, and after a while the offspring will "work up" the necessary appetite. Another major plus of hunger: it is the hungry baby who is more willing to try something new.

Turn on your fantasy

Broccoli trees, big-eyed tomatoes, butterflies from pancakes… Of course, it is much more interesting and tastier to eat a dish that is beautifully decorated. In addition, with such a serving, you can easily and conveniently hide or change beyond recognition another "unloved" product. In addition to visual design, create vivid associations with food in your child. Tell us why the beets are this color, which of the cartoon characters love spinach the most, and what the witch from the fairy tale bakes with. Often, "I don't want" in translation from a child means: "I don't know what it is." Help your child acquire new knowledge - and with it, a taste for unusual food.

Give your child a choice

A child's food is his responsibility. Yes, yes, even this baby, who is still barely holding a spoon! The task of a parent is to think over and prepare healthy healthy meals for their family. The task of the child is to choose from this variety. Do not keep unhealthy snacks and fast food in the house: they will always win the "taste battle". But when the choice is not between sausages and nuggets, but between soup or stew, and instead of cookies as a snack on the table, apples or tangerines, any option will be equally good.

Encourage your child to be involved in grocery shopping, food preparation and even menu planning. Ask him about his wishes, about whether this or that is tasty. Start a small garden with greenery on the windowsill and trust the baby to water it. What time and effort have been invested in is always liked much more than served on a "plate with a blue border." By the way, about plates: your own plate, mug and spoon, chosen together with the child, will also help him get more pleasure from food.

Be an example

Yes, this is the hardest piece of advice. If you do not like fish or beans, you are unlikely to be able to accustom your child to them. Children tend to copy the behavior of their parents. Therefore, while chewing a hot dog, it is useless to beg the child to finish eating "this healthy" porridge. Try to cook for everyone, not for the child separately. Yes, you will have to look for recipes that can be eaten by the whole family with children (with minimal changes). Their search will take time, but "at the exit" you will receive a universal tasty and healthy menu.

Experienced parents know that the easiest way to get your child used to food is to enjoy eating it yourself. Sincere family gatherings at the same table and a sincere “mmm, how delicious” sometimes have a greater educational effect than a thousand lectures on the benefits of spinach.

And most importantly - always be prepared for the fact that the child, according to the apt expression of the American pediatrician Eric Ball, will eat one dish, play with the second, and not pay attention to the third at all.

How to teach a child to eat any food with pleasure – Moscow 24, 01/18/2021

January 18, 2021, 10:07

Society

Shared table, turned off TV and personal example. Journalist and mother Evgenia Artamonova shares life hacks on building a healthy relationship with food in a child.

Photo: depositphotos/oksun70

Before the birth of the child and all the 2.5 years that we were together, I thought a lot about food. I listened to authoritative speakers, talked with other mothers and read modern literature.

It was important to me that my son liked to eat. He felt the taste of food, ate intuitively: when he wants and what he wants. So that he would not remember with horror how he was not allowed to leave the table, "until the soup is finished. " So that in adulthood he does not suffer from eating disorders and does not eat sweets.

The second, no less important task that I set for myself (and, to be honest, I have not yet fully solved it) is to reduce the level of parental anxiety and make life easier for myself. Do not calculate the grams eaten by the child, do not worry that he did not want something. Do not "fly" like a seagull around the table, constantly instructing "how it should be."

We are still in the middle of the road. But I'm happy with the results. Most often the child eats. And eat with pleasure. And if I suddenly decide not to eat, I try not to worry, because this is normal. As soon as I catch myself wanting to help my son finish eating, I seem to be transported back to my childhood and automatically turn on some settings that have been recorded in my subcortex. I almost want to distract and spoon-feed, but most often I stop myself in time. I strive for 100% Zen.

Answers to many pressing questions were found in the book "My child does not want to eat!", written by pediatrician, author of several works on nutrition and children's health, Carlos Gonzalez. His modern approach is very close to me: to give the child freedom of choice, to believe in him and not interfere.

Below is a list of tips on how to instill a love of food in your child based on the teachings of Gonzalez and other evidence-based professionals that work.

Don't force me.
As Gonzalez writes, "The truth is that kids don't grow because they eat. They eat because they grow. Those who get tall and big-boned always eat more than those who are short and thin." That is, we cannot know for sure how much a child really needs at a particular moment.

Don't worry if your baby doesn't eat.
Doesn't want to eat now - will come back later. And if not, then he doesn't need it. Therefore, the best solution is to shift your attention to other more important tasks.

Involve your baby in the kitchen, do it together.
When preparing food, invite your child to take part in the process. Trust some simple assignments. From my own experience I will say: what the son had a hand in is eaten with special pleasure.

Make eating a family ritual.
Give your baby a separate seat at the table and eat together at the same time. We have a special children's growing chair. From a month we move to a common large table and simply adjust the seat for height. It is interesting and important for the son to be with us.

Photo: depositphotos/demiurg_100

Less salt and pepper.
Try to limit the use of spices and sweeteners so that the child (and adults will also benefit) learns to recognize the original taste and enjoy, for example, even cauliflower eaten without any additives.

Green light for food games.
Food games within reasonable limits are also an experience! After all, a child learns the world through play. I allow (do not interfere) to scatter the ingredients of the dish around, eat with my hands / spoon / fork, sit on the table, eat from my plate, leave the table in the midst of the meal and return.
And if we talk about restlessness, then up to three years (and sometimes later) this is normal. That's how little kids are. During periods of wandering back and forth, I catch zen.

Don't get distracted.
At each reception, try to keep the process at the forefront. You can chat, joke, listen to music, but if something interferes, you need to remove it. It's better to turn off the TV. Because if adults can still somehow separate watching TV and eating food, then children become little zombies: they automatically put spoons in their mouths or completely forget. And then, already at a more meaningful age, they stop noticing gastronomic desires and needs.

Set an example.
And, probably, the main secret is that significant adults in the family eat the way they would like a child to eat. Children repeat everything after their parents. If you do not eat barley, soups and broccoli, then why should a child love them? He understands: yeah, mom and dad don’t eat it, I don’t want it either!