“My child left their ENTIRE meal! Should I serve it again later?”
I love our facebook group (Parenting Picky Eaters) because not only is it a great place to find kindness and support from parents who ‘get it’, not to mention advice from two feeding professionals (that’s me and Simone!)… the group also gives me some great insights into what is on parents’ minds. I love to be able to help you by understanding what’s important to you or what you’re wondering about.
Recently, I have seen lots of posts discussing whether it’s appropriate to take that ‘old-school’ approach where, if a child doesn’t eat much – or any – of a meal, you bring that same meal out later, rather than providing something else.
My answer to this question is: “No – don’t do that”. However, as a parent, I don’t find much value in just being told what to do or what not to do. In fact, let me go further – I find being told what to do downright annoying. I want to understand the theory behind any parenting advice I am on the receiving end of, and I expect you are similar? In this article, I’ve decided to unpick some of the reasoning behind my advice that you shouldn’t simply serve up rejected food at the next meal or snack time.
Five reasons why I don’t recommend this approach:
1. It can feel like a punishment
If children feel that they are being judged for their eating decisions, this can contribute to a sense that they should be eating in order to please adults. This is not only super-harsh for children who simply find eating some foods too difficult, it also divorces them from their physical cues (see point 3).
Feeling punished is the last emotion we want children to experience in relation to food. Building eating confidence and reducing food anxiety is partly about replacing negative mealtime associations with positive ones. When a child sees that the only thing available for them to eat is the food they rejected a couple of hours ago, this is not going to make them feel good about being at the table.
2. It means your child is probably not part of a family meal
There is so much great stuff to be gained by sitting down and eating together as a family (even if that’s just you and your child – it’s still a family meal!). If everyone else is eating one thing but your child is not part of that – they are expected to eat the food they rejected earlier – this is both shaming and excludes them socially.
3. It comes with a lot of pressure
Research shows us just how unhelpful pressuring your child to eat can be. You can read more about that here. What says: “you have to eat this” with more force than not giving your child any option besides eating the rejected food?
Pressuring children to eat gets in the way of their ability to self-regulate. Let me explain. Self-regulation is such an important part of a child’s relationship with food. We need to do everything we can to help them learn to eat because they are hungry and stop eating because they are full, and to feel good about eating. As soon as we introduce complex emotional messages into feeding, like “I approve of you when you try that” or “you can make me happy by eating that” we are interrupting a child’s ability to self-regulate as all of these complicated, guilt-inducing and anxiety-provoking messages creep into the picture.
4. Maybe your child didn’t need that food in the first place
Children’s need for food fluctuates as they enter different phases of growth and expend different amounts of energy from one day (or week, or month…) to another. For a healthy child to miss a meal or snack is not going to be catastrophic for them. If a child rejects a food they normally accept, it could simply be that they weren’t as hungry as you expected them to be at that point in time. Read this (from paediatric dietitian, Natalia Stasenko) for some great points about what is normal for young children.
5. This approach can be an unhealthy way of asserting power
As adults, the truth is, we ARE more powerful than our children. We can overpower them physically if we choose to. What we do with that power is so important. If we use it against the child, showing them that we have ultimate control and that we can take away their autonomy if we want to, this will only make them feel more out of control.
The way to help children find eating easier is to give them positive control by respecting their decisions to reject foods – or only eat a little – if this is what feels right to them at that meal. Conversely, the more we take away their power, the more they will feel a need to gain some control. This can often manifest in further food rejection.
Paradoxically, the more we try to control children’s eating decisions, the more they feel the need to control them.
My take on leftovers
I am all about food recycling. Ask my kids, they will tell you that I am the queen of leftovers. However, taking some food that was not eaten at one meal (with food hygiene in mind, of course) and serving it to everyone again at another meal is one thing; simply re-offering a rejected meal to a child until they eat it, is another. I made a huge cauliflower cheese as part of our Sunday roast yesterday. It’s going to be on the table again tonight as part of our meal. Offering everyone everything (even if we know some of the family are highly unlikely to eat it) keeps food emotionally neutral and mealtimes sociable.
Take a walk in your child’s shoes
Empathy is all – imagine you come to my house and I serve you a slice of coffee cake. You don’t like coffee cake or maybe you’re not hungry right now, so you decide to leave it. Then when I serve dinner, we’re all eating pasta but you just have your rejected slice of coffee cake. How would that feel? You may feel shamed and different from everyone else at the table. You may feel that your decision not to eat the cake was not respected and by extension that you, as a person, are not being respected.
So next time your child leaves all or most of a meal, just take the plate away and remember that it’s more important for them to feel positive and in control of their eating than for them to have eaten the food on that plate.