“You don’t know how hard it is to deal with a child who just won’t eat,” my friend Sean has said to me repeatedly. We have kids the same age, toddlers who are different in gender and spirit and are each a product of parents who have their own relationships to food.
Although his disgruntledness, despair and overall exhaustion were apparent, I couldn’t help but wonder: Would things be easier if he just… let go? And how bad was the not eating, really? His son is a sweet, loving, beautiful, perfectly adjusted and well-fed-looking child. Was Sean just being dramatic?
His distress rubbed off on me. Although my daughters fall into what seems to be considered the very prestigious and sought-after “good eater” category of kids, they don’t always eat what I cook for them. They sometimes skip meals as well, and my oldest considers an entire bag of Oreos to be a perfectly suitable form of lunch. As opposed to Sean, was I being too laissez faire? Was I not giving my kids enough attention? Are my daughters actually picky eaters?
I set out on a quest to figure out what, exactly, a good eater is and what sorts of issues even qualify as issues when feeding our children. Plus: how to solve them.
Issue 1: I introduced foods too late… or too soon?
“Introduce solids earlier in order to prevent picky eating,” my friend Alexa, a mother of three, emphatically told me when I asked if she had any tips to dish out. “And don’t be afraid if they don’t like it. Keep trying!”
In my unscientific research mostly consisting of conversations with fellow parents and a few paediatricians and nutritionists, Alexa’s point comes up often as mothers and fathers seem to constantly wrestle with the ideal time to offer real food to an until-then milk-fed baby.
“Waiting too long to introduce textured foods can be an issue,” explains board-certified paediatrician Molly O’Shea. “The window of opportunity is between six and 12 months.”
That being said, as O’Shea acknowledges herself, a lot of paediatricians suggest offering kids food as early as four months old to decrease the risk of allergies. “The idea is not to give a large amount of food during this time but to introduce foods and get your baby accustomed to eating,” she explains.
“Formula or breast milk is the primary source of nutrition and calories for babies up to 12 months,” says registered dietitian and nutritionist Christine Randazzo Kirschner. “It is therefore important to remember that the foods you provide at this age are for exploratory purposes.”
Of course, it’s important to note that kids are not robots. That is to say, they won’t all behave the same way and they are allowed to have preferences, likes and dislikes – just as their parents do.
Case in point: my own daughters. Although I excitedly started giving them solids at four months, respectively, they reacted completely differently to their change in diet. Giordana, my first, was basically eating like an adult by the time she was nine months old, whereas Alessia, who is just about that age now, seems to still prefer purees to baked potatoes, grilled salmon and burgers. My technique left unchanged, their reactions differed and I am constantly reminding myself that, after all, they are two distinct people.
Issue 2: Texture, texture, texture
Conversations surrounding children’s relationship to food undoubtedly leads to talk about texture.
Let’s be clear. It is absolutely normal for your baby to take some time to adjust to different sorts of food textures. Do you remember when you first tried jelly or a tapioca drink? It probably took your adult palate a few bites and tries to get familiar with their fairly odd consistency. Now measure your child’s palate-related discomfort with that in mind.
O’Shea explained that if your kid still only accepts purees and foods that melt in their mouth by the time they’re a year old, you should consider contacting their paediatrician. Before 12 months, she said, just keep trying. She suggests you might want to season the foods you’re offering to encourage eating.
To the dismay of my own mother, who likes to constantly remind me that her kids – unlike my own – never made a mess while eating because she’d spoon-feed us, experts are also adamant about the importance of touching and feeling a food when getting a child acquainted with the simple act of eating.
“Babies handle texture really well when given real food to gnaw away at,” O’Shea says. “Hands are great and important for learning to eat. Continuing purees beyond six to 12 months of age without introducing table foods can make it harder for children to accept a variety of textures.”
The expert also noted something that seems to be directed at my own mother. “Kids use their hands to feel the food and play with it. They look at it and smell it too to take it all in,” she says. “This is messy! Parents who are neatniks find this hard but it is an important process in learning to eat.” See, Mom?
Kirschner mentions the importance of kids handling food as well. “This is a great opportunity for babies to begin associating food and eating with a positive experience,” she says. “Through play and exploration, they are more likely to think positively about the feeding environment, which may lead them to better eating habits in the long run.”
Issue 3: Offering too many options and making the meal last too long
Back to my friend Sean. After discussing potential solutions to his son’s seeming lack of appetite, we landed on a question regarding best practices. Is it better to offer our kids a roster of foods at mealtime, hoping they’ll at least like one of them, or should we put a single option in front of them? Furthermore, should parents be chasing kids with a fork and spoon around the house or leave a dish on the table and let them know it’s theirs for the taking?
“No need to make meals a marathon!” O’Shea says matter-of-factly. “Kids are either hungry or not.”
She suggests leaving out a meal for about 15 minutes and designing a structure around mealtime. (As any parent knows, kids really do thrive on a schedule.) “Don’t offer a ‘rescue meal’ and remember that kids eat what they need,” she says. “By allowing them to eat what their body is telling them and not trumping that by getting something else or prolonging meals to ‘ensure they eat,’ you will encourage them to listen to their body’s cues in the long run.”
“Parents often get worried when they see their child not eating much and will either offer alternatives when the prepared meal isn’t eaten or start offering food that is guaranteed to be a hit. This is how a picky eater is born.”
- Dr. Molly O’Shea
“As the parent, your job is to decide what food you are going to offer your child,” Kirschner says. “Your child’s job is to decide what they are going to eat among the offerings that the parent provides and whether or not they are going to eat at all.” The expert clearly calls for giving kids more agency than the average parents seem inclined to give them.
Snacks, of course, are an important topic to discuss as well. O’Shea suggests only giving kids snacks if they’re going six hours or more between meals or if they are in “big growth phases” – which you would notice if they happen to be eating their food well at mealtime.
And that brings it all back to similarities between kids and adults. If I were to eat a snack at 5pm, I’d undoubtedly be less in the mood to indulge in dinner by 6 or 7pm. – so why do I expect my daughters to be any different?
Issue 4: My child only wants milk
Upon hearing about my upcoming assignment dissecting kids’ eating habits, family members pointed out that some of their own children (usually from ages one to three) simply preferred to have milk over real food. Could that, they wondered, be an issue in and of itself, no matter the nutritional value of dairy?
“It really depends on how much and why they are drinking it,” Kirschner says. “For example, if a child is an extremely selective/picky eater and milk is their main source of nutrient and energy intake and they are refusing to eat much more, this could be a problem that needs to be addressed. The child could be receiving enough calories but they may be missing key nutrients necessary for growth and function.”
O’Shea points out that, as a general statement, having 18 to 24 ounces of milk – about three small sippy cups – a day is a healthy habit. “As long as they’re not getting more than that, it won’t be interfering with their eating,” she noted. If your child is having more than that, consider scaling back – no matter how much he or she cries for milk.
At the end of the day, you have to let go
Of course, feeding issues aren’t clear-cut. Identifying a slew of problems and coming up with a bunch of solutions isn’t necessarily a fool-proof way to guarantee that your child will start eating properly.
Aside from the “techniques” mentioned above, there are other go-to tips that paediatricians and nutritionists always mention, from setting up family mealtimes to offering the same food at least 10 times before deciding your child will never eat it.
Overall, it seems like the topic substantially hinges on the idea of “letting go” (which, at times, as a parent, really feels more like “giving up”) versus more hawk-like parental behaviours. Just as basically anything involving parenthood, there isn’t a right or wrong way to go about anything, just a right way for you (which might be the wrong way for me).
However, a small fact offered by O’Shea might tilt the scale toward a more relaxed approach. “As babies’ growth slows down, usually around 12-18 months, their need to eat whatever you put in front of them decreases too,” she explains. As a result of having less appetite, kids become more choosy about what they eat and when they actually eat it. “Parents often get worried when they see their child not eating much and will either offer alternatives when the prepared meal isn’t eaten or start offering food that is guaranteed to be a hit,” she says. “This is how a picky eater is born.”
So if we’re going to offer you one solid piece of advice, it is this: sometimes, it is best to simply back off.