‘Picky Eating’: what does progress look like?

Have you ever had that sinking feeling that whatever you do, nothing seems to make any difference to your child’s fussy eating? Can you relate to something a dad said to me last week,  “I am sick of trying new ways of getting my son to eat and getting nowhere…” ?

Maybe it’s time to shift the goal posts and redefine success

Take a close look at your goal. Do you want to ‘get more food down your child’? Will that alleviate some of the anxiety* that you are probably feeling about their eating? Maybe it will, but when this is your ultimate aim, picky eating can only get worse.

This is because as long as your child’s eating is externally driven (i.e. by you) not internally (i.e. by their appetite) they are eating for the wrong reasons and food and feelings become tangled and  confused.

If you take the long view and make your goal an improvement in your child’s long-term (indeed, life-long) relationship with food, you will begin to see some changes in what you consider a win.

If you always offer your child some accepted foods alongside giving them plenty of exposures to new and disliked foods, these are the wins you can look forward to:

• Your child plays around with a disliked food with their fork or fingers
• Your child asks questions about a new food
• Your child spontaneously sniffs something that they would never dream of trying
• Your child decides to take a cautious lick of a disliked food and then chooses to leave it

None of these things involve your child actually eating the foods in question! They are all about them learning that it’s safe to explore disliked and unfamiliar foods. They are baby steps towards acceptance.

On of my favourite quotes (by the Chinese philosopher Laozi) is

“A journey of 1000 miles begins with a single step”

They key to progressing on your journey with your picky eater is learning to recognise when those first steps are being taken.

 

* If you are anxious about your child’s eating, get their weight and growth checked by a health professional so that you can find out if you have genuine cause for concern and may need to seek some professional support