The feeding paradox

At the heart of my work with the parents of  ‘picky eaters’, is a secret. An idea that is extremely simple and yet can be very hard to accept. I call it ‘The Feeding Paradox‘. Here it is. ‘The harder you try, the worse things will get’.

Or, to put a positive spin on it,

‘The less you try, the more progress you will make’.

[Note – I’m talking about actively trying to get your child to eat – there is a lot of behind the scenes effort involved in making meaningful changes to how you feed your child, but that is for another article! I also want to stress that if your child’s eating is very selective or they have an ARFID diagnosis, you’ll need to work hard (with an appropriate professional or team) to understand their eating and help them learn to accept new foods. What I’m trying to say here is that when we push children to eat or try foods, things get worse not better.] 

The feeding paradox is counter-intuitive because our natural instinct as parents is to look at a problem we are experiencing, summon the strength to tackle it and then try as hard as we can to improve things. When it comes to feeding, I teach people to try not to try.

I believe that parents need to truly understand something before they can make use of it and that’s why I don’t expect anyone to unthinkingly take my advice on board. The thinking behind the feeding paradox is two-pronged:

First, consider for a minute how you feel when you try really hard to achieve something –  something you really care about – and despite your best efforts you just can’t pull it off. How to you feel? Defeated, stressed, self-critical, angry maybe? If you REALLY want your child to eat and you try your hardest to make this happen, their food avoidance will at best, irritate you and at worst, turn you into an emotional wreck. Your emotions have a profound effect on your child’s eating. Your son or daughter will pick up your negative feelings and this will make their eating worse.

Secondly, young children, especially during the toddler years, are all about experimenting with their own autonomy. They are learning about how they can influence the world around them; which boundaries are negotiable and which are solid. They clumsily wield their personal power as they try to make sense of their environment. Each child experiences this differently but it is an important developmental phase.

If young children know that you are desperate for them to eat (because you’re trying so damn hard!) they will immediately absorb this into their boundary-testing, power-seeking repertoire. Mealtimes can easily become a battle ground when children are hyper-conscious of the immense power their decisions about what to eat (or not) have on the big people around them.

Of course, there are lots of reasons why children may find eating hard and it’s not as simple as ‘stop trying to get them to eat and all will be well’ BUT it is worth stepping back and asking yourself if you may be inadvertently creating mealtime pressure.