5 Ways You May Be Pressuring Your Child To Eat and What To Do Instead
Pressuring children to eat typically has the opposite effect of what we are intending.
Mealtime can be a challenging experience for both parents and children. As a parent, you want to ensure that your child is getting proper nutrition, but sometimes, we may place intentional or unintentional pressure on them to eat. This pressure can lead to negative associations with food, mealtime stress, and even the development of unhealthy eating habits. While pressuring children to eat is often parents’ first instinct when kids aren’t eating, and may get them to eat a small amount of the food in the moment (although, often, children will dig their heels in more firmly with their refusal), in the long run, children can harbor negative feelings around foods they have felt pressured to eat which will lead to long-term consequences. On the other hand, reducing pressure to eat actually helps children feel safe and relaxed enough to consider trying something new, and build a healthy long-term relationship with food.
Keep reading to explore five common ways in which you may be unknowingly pressuring your child to eat, and learn suggestions on how to create a more relaxed mealtime environment that will lead to long-term success.
1. Using Food as a Reward or Punishment:
Rewarding or punishing your child with food can create an unhealthy relationship with eating. Offering dessert only as a reward for finishing their vegetables or denying them a treat for not eating their meal can send the message that certain foods are "good" or "bad." This is especially true when in the moment of our child refusing a food we start negotiating and pleading with them, offering dessert, making the dessert a bribe (e.g. “Okay no dessert if you don’t eat your broccoli,” “No ice cream if you don’t take three more bites,” “I’ll give you a cookie if you try it”). Children may eat the food in the moment when bribed with dessert, but it is likely that they will begin to refuse this food even more in the future, or only eat foods when promised a dessert. They may even start to reject foods they once ate without difficulty, knowing that their parents will offer a dessert if they first refuse to eat.
In general, eating is implicitly rewarding (i.e. eating because food smells and tastes good, and is a shared social experience). When we provide an external reward like dessert, we are teaching our children that food perceived as healthy needs to be rewarded with something, which sets children up for lifelong unhealthy eating habits. At the same time, if we withhold dessert, we may make our children hyper-focused on dessert and sweets.
What to do instead:
Instead, encourage a positive association with a variety of nutritious foods by serving balanced food options at each meal. This typically includes 1 protein, 1 carbohydrate, and 1 vegetable and/or fruit.
You can plan to serve, or not serve, dessert no matter how your child ate their meal. Refrain from commenting on how well or not well your child ate in relation to receiving dessert (e.g. try not to make statements like, “I love how you finished your carrots you earned a cookie”).
You can even try serving a small portion of a sweet treat with their meal, which can help take dessert off that pedestal. It should be noted that bribing and rewarding with other external rewards, such as screen time, can cause similar negative effects.
2. Insisting on Clearing Their Plate or Requiring a Certain Number of Bites:
Encouraging your child to finish everything on their plate or take a certain number of bites may seem like a good way to ensure they are getting proper nutrition or prevent food waste, but it can promote overeating and disrupt their ability to listen to their body's hunger and fullness cues, and even signals that a food doesn’t make their body feel good. Can you imagine being told you have to eat three more bites when you are truly already full? Even with a food you do like, it may turn you off of this food due to the negative feeling of over-filling your stomach. It is not possible for us to know exactly how our child’s body is feeling. We can’t know for sure if they do or don’t feel full, and we can’t know if a food is hurting their tummy or making their body feel bad (e.g. a mild allergy, food intolerance, or reflux increase).
What to do instead:
Instead, allow your child to self-regulate their portions and respect their natural hunger and satiety levels. Young children typically have an innate ability to determine how much food they need*. This innate ability can be altered as the child grows older based on eating habits that have been taught (whether explicitly or implicitly) and modeled.
By giving children the responsibilities of deciding how much they eat at a young age, we can help children learn to trust their body. This helps them develop a healthy relationship with food and promotes intuitive eating. Learn more here about the Division of Responsibilities by Ellyn Satter.
We can also check-in with our child at the end of the meal when they are saying they are all done. We can say something like, “Check-in with your tummy, are you sure you’re full? We aren’t eating again until breakfast/morning snack/etc.” This helps children learn to tune into their body.
Additionally, if we provide consistent meals/snacks every 2.5-3 hours (not access to snacks all day), we know our child will have another eating opportunity in just a few hours, and is not just rejecting their meal to eat snacks instead, or because they’re already full from snacking.
It is important to respond to children’s cues when they are telling or showing us they do not want to try a food, or are all done eating, in order to build a trusting relationship around food.
3. Forcing Them to Try New Foods:
While introducing new foods is important, forcing your child to eat something they dislike can create a negative association with that food. Forcing can be both physically forcing (e.g. putting food on or in a child’s mouth when they are resisting, tricking them into opening their mouth and putting the food in), as well as emotionally forcing (e.g. bribes, threats, yelling). Forcing can also look more subtle, such as the “no thank you bite” rule. Picky eaters typically have underlying reasons they are not eating the food, such as sensory skills (i.e. their ability to tolerate smelling, touching, and tasting a food), oral motor skills (i.e. their ability to chew and manage the food in their mouth to safely eat it), physical reasons (e.g. allergies, food intolerances, reflux, sickness), environmental reasons (e.g. lack of mealtime routines, chaotic environment, distractions, unsupported seated), and behavioral reasons (e.g. they refused a food in the past and got a lot of attention, they refused a food in the past and their parents made them what they wanted to eat instead, they refused a food in the past and were offered dessert to eat it)*. Not understanding or respecting these reasons doesn’t set our child up for success.
What to do instead:
Instead, serve a variety of foods in a relaxed environment, allowing your child to explore and develop their own preferences over time.
It is recommended to serve at least one safe/preferred food at each meal that your child can fill up on.
Serve new and non-preferred foods without the expectation that your child will eat them, and instead, encourage any interaction with the food (e.g. scooping it, poking with their fork, smelling it, giving it a lick, even tasting it and spitting it out into a designated container). Serve small portions (e.g. one small piece of broccoli, 1-3 beans, 1 cube of cheese) to avoid overwhelming your child with the new/non-preferred food. Learn more here about fun ways to encourage food exploration.
Building a trusting relationship with your child around food is extremely important to their success. The more they trust that you will not force them to eat something, the more likely they are to eventually try it.
Reduced pressure at mealtimes will help children feel more comfortable to have the space to explore new foods and consider trying them.
Remember that it can take 10-30+ exposures and tastes of a food on different occasions before a child will accept it regularly, so continue to serve new and non-preferred foods in small portions even when it seems like your child doesn’t like a food. As a feeding therapist I often have parents tell me, “They tried it once but they didn’t like it,” after tasting the food one time, but I always have to remind parents that it’s very important to continue serving it, because one taste is not enough to determine if they will eventually begin to eat it!
4. Commenting About the Effort it Took You to Prepare the Food for Them:
While more subtle, guilting a child into trying a food because of the time, effort, and money you put into making it is also pressure. Saying things like, “I spent all day making this for you,” “Please just take one bite you’re hurting daddy’s feelings,” “You’re not being grateful, mommy spent a lot of time making this for you,” “You’re wasting mommy and daddy’s money if you don’t eat this,” and, “Grandma made this just for you,” are all putting misplaced pressure on your child to eat the food.
What to do instead:
Instead, make sure to provide at least one safe/preferred food along with dinner for your child to fill up on, and serve it alongside the new/non-preferred foods.
Plan to serve the same foods as you cooked for the family, though slightly modified as needed to fit your child’s needs and skill level. For example, serving deconstructed spaghetti and meatballs or tacos, rather than serving it mixed together (e.g. separating the pasta, sauce, and meatballs; separating the meat, cheese, tomatoes, and shell). It is easier for many children to eat foods separately before eating them as a combined dish, which is important to consider when preparing meals.
By keeping a low pressure and positive environment when you serve foods, it will help your child feel relaxed enough to consider trying it, and will also help your child associate the foods with positive memories. (For example, why do so many people in the US like green bean casserole which, according to my French husband, is really a very strange food that doesn’t necessarily taste very good? A large part is because we associate it with our happy memories of Thanksgiving).
5. Comparing Your Child to Others:
Comparing your child's eating habits to those of their siblings, friends, or other children can be detrimental to their self-esteem and relationship with food. Each child has their own unique appetite and preferences. While you can praise other people at the table for desired behaviors (e.g. “I like how you’re is sitting in your chair,” “Thank you for scooping me more potatoes,” “Nice work smelling the chicken”), make sure not to do it in a passive aggressive way towards other children in the family, or in a way that pits siblings against each other (e.g. “Look, your brother ate all of his carrots,” “See, your sister is being a good girl eating all of her asparagus,” “Why can’t you eat it like your sister did?”).
What to do instead:
Instead of making comparisons, you can praise each child for what they are doing well at the meal (e.g. “Thank you for putting the forks on the table,” “Nice work cutting your chicken”).
Additionally, focus on providing a balanced and varied diet that suits each of your child's individual needs. It is recommended to serve at least one preferred or safe food for all children at each meal. This doesn’t mean making separate meals for each person in the family, and rather, foods should be incorporated into the same meal. For example, maybe you serve one child’s preferred protein at dinner, and another child’s preferred carbohydrate. This might seem impossible at first if you are used to making separate meals for each child, but in the long-run, it will be less effort and more rewarding to serve one meal to the family as a whole.
Conclusion:
Different strategies work for different families, because every child and family are unique. When choosing strategies surrounding your child’s eating, consider your goals (i.e. do you want short-term or long-term success), your child’s temperament, family dynamics, and what will make mealtimes more or less stressful for your family. Creating a healthy relationship with food is crucial for your child's long-term well-being. By being mindful of the intentional and unintentional pressures we may place on them, we can promote positive eating habits and a healthy relationship with food.
At the end of the day, it is your child’s responsibility to determine whether or not they eat a food. To reduce pressure to eat, remember to avoid using food as a reward or punishment, allow your child to self-regulate their portions, avoid comparisons, avoid guilt tripping children into tasting foods, respect their food preferences, continue to serve a variety of balanced food options, and create a peaceful mealtime environment. As with any strategy, these take time and effort, but by implementing these changes, you can help your child develop a healthy and balanced relationship with food that will benefit them throughout their lives.
*If you are concerned with your child’s weight gain and growth, speak with your pediatrician and get a referral to a pediatric registered dietitian to get help specific to your child’s needs. There may be other underlying issues contributing to your child’s picky eating. If you are concerned with your child’s feeding and picky eating, speak to your pediatrician and ask for a referral to a feeding therapist (feeding therapists have the title of speech-language pathologist or occupational therapist). Signs your child may benefit from feeding therapy include gagging, vomiting, and/or coughing while eating/drinking, difficulty chewing, rejection of foods, less than 20-30 accepted foods, little to no foods they will eat in certain food groups (e.g. proteins, fruits, vegetables), consistently needing a different meal than the rest of the family, and/or tantrums at the sight or presentation of new or non-preferred foods at the table or on their plate. In some cases, your pediatrician or feeding therapist may also refer you to a gastroenterologist (GI doctor), allergist, otolaryngologist (ENT doctor), or other member of a feeding team.
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This website and information on this blog post is provided for educational purposes only. It is not meant as medical advice, intended to replace a speech-language or feeding assessment, therapy from a speech-language pathologist, or serve as medical or nutritional care for a child. It is recommended that you discuss any concerns or questions you might have with your Speech-Language Pathologist/feeding therapist, pediatrician, and medical team, and develop an individualized team plan specifically for your child.