While I am in reflection mode I thought I would remember the years of dealing with my picky eating second daughter. The things I learned and the parenting fails.
1. Eating is so emotionally powerful. If they couldn't control anything else in their life they could control where and when they opened their mouths. I have (mostly) learned not to take it as a personal rejection if they refuse the meal I had spent ages over. My identity as a mother is not around whether my children praise me for every morsel I feed them. My job is to consistently serve up healthy balanced meals and model how to eat it.
2. I just needed to BACK OFF. I have found that if we had the expectation that she would sit with us at mealtimes, and presented her food, then merrily eat around her and talk about different things, most of the time she might try what is in front of her.
3. Telling her about research helped. I informed her that most of the children around the world, regardless of country and age, take about 20-25 minutes to have a meal. Beyond that it is mucking around and wasting energy. So mealtimes became a 30 minute routine - washing hands (sensory getting ready), eating together, and cleaning up your plate. This completely took the pressure off sitting and waiting for her to finish eating.
4. Having a stable posture really made a difference. My child would spend half of the dinner time upside down, running around the table or swinging on the chair. Giving her a 90-90-90 (feet, knees, hips) sitting position helped unbelievably. I used phone books under her feet and/or the little step Ikea stool. She didn't have to worry that her body was swinging around in space and could concentrate more on the different textures in her food.
5. We changed most of our meals to family style serving - when you put out all of the food and let her choose what she would like to eat and how much. And we included a safe food that we knew she would eat. For example, when I made slow cooker stew (which she hated) I served bread slices with it (which she loved). She gradually started dipping her bread into the stew and trying it. And I didn't say anything or force her too, but just modelled how to do it. We eat a lot of wrap meals - tacos, burritos, lamb wraps, rice paper rolls etc. And I hide some vegies in sauces (eg minced zucchini in spaghetti sauce).
6. She was involved in the cooking - both at home and at school. They have had the Stephanie Alexander program running at school, which has been amazing. The flavour combinations are complex and the things they eat straight out of the garden are so fresh. My daughter has started eating recipes she has done at school that include all sorts of things she had never tried before.
7. We have a meal plan. She can see for the week what I am planning to cook and plan for it in her mind. If it is something she doesn't really like she has a few days to work up to it. I have been cooking my way through a Jamie Oliver cookbook - so some of the flavours are really different for her. But with warning she copes really well.
8. Dessert night - we have dessert once a week on family night. If you finish your meal or not you still get dessert. On other nights if you finish your meal or not you don't get dessert. Finishing her broccoli has not become dependent on whether you get icecream. And we have made pretty good desserts.
9. Having both parents model good eating and be calm about food intake. I have learned this the hard way about not getting emotionally attached.
10. Recognising that sometimes I was getting her to try the most sensorily difficult food at the times when she was the most tired eg stir fry for dinner (all different textures and tastes mixed in together). I give her more veges and meat earlier in the day when it is calmer - leftovers for breakfast, celery and carrot sticks for morning tea, beef burgers for lunch
11. Encouraging her to try something at least 15 times before she knows she doesn't eat it. For example, she never really liked fish/seafood. In fact hates them. I kept offering it, until she threw up some dumplings that had prawn in them. I am fairly certain she may be allergic to seafood (like her grandad). I work around it now. Although I kept offering tomatoes in different formats, and now she eats cherry tomatoes and chopped up tomatoes in a salsa.
12. Letting her pack her own lunchbox and choose what to eat out if it. I made a list of all the options she could have in her lunch box and gave her the control. Of course all of the options I gave her I was happy with her eating (eg fruit, crackers, some home baking). When she was a toddler I used to pack her lunchbox and say to her - 'you can have anything you like out of there, I don't mind'. She controlled what she ate and when. I controlled what went into the lunchbox.
13. Kids learn to eat by eating. All that messy-food everywhere-putting anything and everything in their mouth-experimentation stage is building up their sensory system to try different tastes and textures and get their mouth ready for eating. Some kids, like mine, take a while to get used to new things, so building up their tolerances slowly, carefully and calmly, possibly over years, is really important. Being persistent and consistent pays off. It may be just sitting at the table while the scary despised food is there. It may be being able to take her to someone's house for a BBQ and knowing that I didn't have to bring a separate meal. I needed to celebrate the wins.
Of course, I have only had a picky eater, not a true fussy feeder. I work with some kids who need such support with their eating due to major sensory and physical difficulties. It is a long road for some kids - but I am there to support them. I will never ever say 'they'll eat when they're hungry'. Some kids just don't.
I have learned that stand-offs at mealtimes are no fun for anyone, and we descended into power struggles that nobody won. We have still not got there totally, but our mealtimes are a lot calmer and more enjoyable. And I don't dread cooking, fearing it would be left abandoned on a lonely plate.
Although I have well-fed chickens and a satisfied dog.
NB I have attended a SOS Picky Eaters and Fussy Feeders course with Dr Kay Toomey which is where a lot of this information comes from - it kind of changed my life with eating a bit. I also really recommend the book 'Child of Mine' by Ellyn Satter.
that's awesome advice, love it. Thankfully in our house we don't have too many issues. My kids all know Mum's favourite saying now "You don't have to like it, you just have to eat it" If you don't have sensory issues this has worked very well for us. For my big girl this has resulted in her loving some foods which she would never normally put in her mouth. Nice for a baby that would take 3 meals to eat a tiny tin of vanilla custard.
ReplyDeleteIt's great to see them growing and changing, isn't it!
DeleteAs a child (when I didn't have control over what went onto my plate / what went in the dish) I would pick capsicum out of a dish - couldn't stand the smell, the flavour or the sensation in my mouth. The rest of the family would always say, "Just eat it, Laetitia - stop being so fussy!"
ReplyDeleteFast forward 20+ years; I was talking to Mum about it and I said that I didn't like the way it makes my mouth tingle. She was shocked - "You never told me that! If I'd known it made your mouth tingle I would never have tried to make you eat it!"
I was surprised that she doesn't have that experience when eating it - as children we assume that our experience is the same as everyone else's so we don't understand how others can like something we hate or hate something we love. Then Dad piped up with, "I like the way it makes my mouth tingle." So there you go, I get the tingle from Dad but not the enjoyment.
Just think how much angst could have been saved if the 'minimum number of times' rule had been implemented - the family would have stopped nagging me so much earlier. :)