Can you spot ‘pressure’ to eat?
- “Come on, eat now.”
- “Have your broccoli.”
- “Are you going to have your broccoli?”
- “If you have your broccoli, you’ll get ice cream.”
- “Good boy for eating your meat.”
- “If you have 3 bites of the veggies, you get a sticker on your chart!”
- “Yay!!! You ate the broccoli! Well done! See, that wasn’t so bad.”
- “You’re going to get big and strong if you have your meat.”
- “I like it when you eat your broccoli.”
- “If you don’t have your broccoli, you won’t get your milk.”
- “If you don’t have your dinner, go to bed.”
- “How are you going to run fast like Johnny if you don’t have your breakfast?”
- “Please, please, please just take one bite.”
- “You have had enough now, you can’t have another one.”
- “No, you don’t get dessert because you didn’t eat all your dinner.”
Did you spot 15? All examples above are pressure. Positive or negative, it’s still pressure…
You might have heard that you need to offer some foods around 10-15 times before kids will have a go? Well, take a breath…
Mr 4 was was offered broccoli approximately 312 times before he finally had a go.
Mr 4 didn’t touch broccoli for about 3 years.
I won’t lie, there were times when I considered that he would never eat it.
But…he was offered broccoli, every single time I cooked it without pressure.
312 times watching me and his dad eat and enjoy broccoli.
312 times seeing broccoli on the table.
312 times seeing broccoli as a normal part of a meal.
312 times LEARNING about broccoli.
“Would you like some broccoli?”
“No, thanks.”
“Okay.”
No bribes, no rewards, no “but look…it’s yummy and sooo good for you!!”
It’s really easy to get locked into battles about food but keeping mealtimes positive and pressure free is the first step.
There is SO much research about pressure and fussy eating and it all tells us that, in the long term, pressure makes kids eat less of the foods we are pushing.
When it comes to eating, pressure tends to come about because a parent/caregiver wants to GET a child to eat or not eat something.
In fact, 90 percent of parents pressure their children to eat and 50 percent of children have feeding problems*.
According to Ellyn Satter, leading childhood feeding expert, pressure always backfires.
- Trying to get your kid to eat more, results in them eating less
- Trying to get them to eat less, results in them eating more
- Trying to get them to eat certain foods, results in them avoiding it altogether
The thing is, pressure usually feels unpleasant for the child, and for many children extremely stressful!
When a child becomes very stressed, appetite shuts down and they are not able to access their ‘thinking’ brain. Not only do they disconnect from their appetite signals, they are also not going to feel ready to learn something new or work on their eating skills.
When we try to get children to eat through pressure, what do you think they learn from that experience?
Usually, we end up teaching kids to equate eating certain foods for a range of other reasons that do not relate to NATURAL eating consequences in the first place.
What do we really want kids to learn?
*Read more here!: https://www.ellynsatterinstitute.org/positive-or-negative-its-still-pressure/
Eat Happy!
Inés Astudillo
Accredited Practising Dietitian
