Encouraging Kids to Eat

Parents sometimes (inadvertently) send kids the message that they're not good enough in the eating department.

• You only ate 1/2 your peas? Not good enough. Eat some more.
• You tasted this food? I wanted you to eat it.
• You have an unusual (or unconventional) idea for breakfast? Forget about it.

That was where I started in my post last week. I went on to say that parents need to create a positive eating environment.  Read the rest of  Nix YOUR Negativity.

In response, I received the following question from Karen:

Could you please elaborate on what you mean by encouragement when it comes to eating? 

This question comes up a lot, Karen, so thanks for asking it.

The answer boils down to creating reasonable expectations for your child.

Choose an achievable goal for your child.  This mild amount of pressure encourages your child to live up to your expectations and goals.  This encouragement, though, isn't enough pressure that your child won't be willing to "play along." 

If you set an expectation that your child rejects you should retreat to a smaller expectation.

A lot of parents think there is no way they are going to win if they retreat, but you don't retreat completely, you just pick a goal your child is willing to work towards.  (Sometimes this means the first goal is infinitesimally close to your starting point.)

Last night in the webinar, "Eat your vegetables. They're good for you." we were talking about The Happy Bite and parents were asking what to do if your child refuses to take a Happy Bite.

The answer is to retreat to a smaller Happy Bite. Maybe your child needs a much smaller taste. Maybe the taste is too much and she's only ready for a touch, a smell or a kiss. (Yes, a kiss is what it sounds like: Kiss the food.)

If you retreat to a small enough step, and only you— and your kids can determine what that small step is—your kids will comply because they'll think it's easy.  Easy is the key.

Don't get discouraged if your Happy Bite request is ignored at first.  

Sometimes kids reject anything you suggest about eating outright because they need some time to struggle with it and decide they're going to engage in it. Read Let Your Kids Sit With Their Own Struggles.

Repeat your request—once per meal—in a calm, cool and casual way. "Oh, maybe tomorrow."

Reward your child for playing the game.

For many children the reward is your praise. For other children you might want to use an actual reward. I know there is a dispute about using rewards for eating, but in this case we aren't really using rewards for eating, per se, we're using rewards to shape behavior.  Read Star Power.

Karen's question continued:

Specifically, how do I encourage my 9 year-old son (who has ADHD and takes medication that suppresses his appetite) to eat? Our whole family is suffering from the negativity that surrounds our mealtime battles with him. I would love to find a way to get him to, first of all, just eat without fussing. And second of all, to eat more. And third of all, to try vegetables and fruits or a protein other than chicken tenders. Every mealtime is so exhausting and stressful.

Well, Karen, I can't give you specifics because I don't have enough information, however:

1. I love that your first goal is to get your son to eat without fussing.  Identify the steps that your son would need to take from where he is to where you want him to be.
2. Be mindful to eliminate the pressure. Don't focus on how much or what your son eats during this time. This will make meals are manageable for him.
3. Reward your son for each little step he takes in the right direction.

It can be scary to back off the pressure.

This is true especially when you are worried about how much (or rather, how little) your son eats.  However, the pressure is producing most of the problem.  

Trust that if you create a more positive eating environment your son will start eating better (and then remind yourself of this as often as possible).  It sometimes helps to decide in advance how much time you're willing to experiment with. "I won't pressure my son to eat more food for two weeks and see how it goes."

Good luck and let me know how it goes.

~Changing the conversation from nutrition to habits.~

What Would Batman Do? Teaching Kids to Eat Right the Superhero Way.

Research likes this drives me crazy because it leads parents down the "garden path."

It makes the solution to a picky eating problem seem easy, like all you've got to do is find the right trick.

Ask your child what Batman—or any superhero of your choosing—would order at a fast food restaurant and you can kiss your kid's bad eating habits goodbye.

Or at least, that's what happened in the study.

• Researchers showed children photos of admirable characters like Batman and asked the kids to say whether they thought this person would order apple "fries" or French fries.
• The children were then offered a choice of eating apple "fries" or french fries.
• The children who thought Batman would order the apple "fries" were more likely to order the apple "fries" themselves.

The conclusion: The right prime helps children make the right choice.

I have a lot of respect for these researchers—Brian Wansink and his colleagues at Cornell's Food & Brand Lab do interesting and important work. Read Mindless Eating and you'll see what I mean.—but these kinds of trick tips don't work.

Let me modify that: These kinds of trick tips don't work unless you already have a child who eats pretty well. If you're stuck in the mud with a real problem eater don't expect too much.

For starters, parents rarely implement trick tips the way researchers do.

This is one of the points I always make about getting kids to try new foods.  Researchers ask kids to taste new foods. Parents ask kids to eat new foods.  There's a big difference.

In this study, the researchers calmly asked the children to reflect on how their favorite superhero might eat and then let the kids choose to eat whatever they wanted, chips fall where they may.

Parents implementing this strategy, however, will inevitably put on the pressure.

• Don't you want to eat like Batman?
• Do you really think Batman would eat french fries? I think Batman would choose apple "fries."
• You better eat your apple "fries" if you want to grow up like Batman.

Trick tips makes parents think that if they could only find the "right" trick tip their children would voluntarily eat right.

Then, when the trick tip doesn't work, these parents think they need to find another, more powerful trick tip.

Or, these parents give up trying because they believe that their child, somehow, has developed a superhuman ability to resist eating right. Teflon Kid. Able to deflect eating solutions in a single stroke.

It's not the parents who have failed, though, it's the trick tips.

Trick tips don't work when they are presented as islands unto themselves—pieces of advice that are disconnected from any kind of cohesive teaching strategy.

Even if trick tips work once or twice, they aren't a strategy you can use for the long haul.

Don't you think the Batman question would get a little old? 

• Would Batman choose cereal & fruit or french toast?
• Would Batman choose pizza or a salad?
• What do you think Batman would do at this buffet? 

Let's face it, trick tips have a pretty short shelf life.

I think of trick tips as icing on the cake. Icing is good, but it's nothing without the cake.

The foundation that supports the trick tips (or icing) has three main componenents: 

1. Make sure that your child is learning the lessons you intend. Read Conscious Parenting.
2. Emphasize a strong (but compassionate) structure that stresses variety.  Read End Picky Eating with The Rotation Rule.
3. Eliminate as much pressure as you can. Read The Pressure-Cooker Problem.

Yes, it's a little more complicated than this, and there are a lot of other points I could make (an entire blog's worth of points actually), but these three components will get you started.

The public discussion about how to teach children to eat right is filled with trick tips.

• Cook with your kids.
• Garden with your kids.
• Go grocery shopping with your kids. 

Implement these trick tips if you want, but don't expect them to solve your problems on their own. Integrate them into a suitable structure, however, and they'll definitely help get your kids where you're going—towards a lifetime of healthy eating.

~Changing the conversation from nutrition to habits.~

Source: Wansink, B., M. Shimizu, and G. Camps. 2012. “What Would Batman Eat?: Priming Children to Make Healthier Fast Food Choices.” Pediatric Obesity 7(2): 121-23.

The Fun Factor: Food For Feeding a Picky Eater

If you don’t have fun feeding your toddler, your toddler isn’t having any fun being fed.

I’m not talking about the “draw some ketchup happy faces on your kid’s plate” kind of fun.  I’m just talking about garden-variety fun. You know, where your child actually enjoys eating.

Recent research from Switzerland shows that eating enjoyment reduces picky eating.  In other words, feed your picky eater some fun, and your picky eater might just stop being so picky.

The more children enjoy eating, the less picky they are.

That’s what the research shows.  It makes sense too.  Many kids simply shut down when they feel stressed about eating.

The research also shows that:

• Fun activities, such as cooking, increase eating enjoyment.
• Parental pressure decreases eating enjoyment.

There is oodles of advice out there on increasing the fun factor—gardening, cooking, grocery shopping, food art, sandwich cutouts, you name it.  But fun added on top of pressure isn't fun at all.  In fact, in my experience, pressure cancels out the fun.

That's why you've got to eliminate the pressure first.  Then, you can add in any kind of fun you like.

Parents rarely consider how putting on the pressure is problematic. 

• Do you think your child should always finish her plate?
• Do you feel you have to be especially careful to make sure your child eats enough?
• If your child says, “I’m not hungry,” do you try to get her to eat anyway?
• Do you feel your child would eat much less food if you didn’t guide or regulate her eating?

These are the kinds of questions researchers ask parents to determine how likely they are to put on the pressure.

Read: The Pressure Cooker Problem , The Dinner Dance: When Is Enough Enough? and A New Approach to Teaching Tot to Try New Foods.

Of course, pressure might not actually cause a picky eating problem; it might be the way parents react to a picky eating problem instead.

This is a case when it doesn’t matter which came first, the chicken or the egg, because there’s no question that pressure reinforces pickiness. 

Remember, picky eating is rarely a real reaction to the food.

I'm sure you intuitively know this because picky eaters are totally erratic in their eating behavior: Loving today what they hated yesterday, and hating today what they loved yesterday.  That’s why you can’t feed your way out of a picky-eating problem.

So back off the pressure and put your energy towards producing a happier eating environment instead.

Read The Road Less Traveled.

~Changing the conversation from nutrition to habits.~

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Source: van der Horst, K. 2012. “Overcoming Picky Eating. Eating Enjoyment as a Central Aspect of Children's Eating Behaviors.” Appetite 58: 567-74