Kiddipedia
By Children’s Nutritionist, Simone Emery
For some children, it feels like a switch is activated almost overnight. A switch that changes the veggie-loving toddler into a veggie hating one. It’s not uncommon. Yet, understanding it and getting the correct advice is less common. Feeding myths circulate and parents struggling to understand what happened so suddenly are often fed feeding myths subsequently leading to a rabbit warren of smuggled vegetable recipes and stressful mealtime encounters.
At various points in a child’s cognitive development, researchers have found a strong link to increased food refusal[i]. Picky eating has been linked to when a child changes the way they are operating in their world. This happens when they are going from baby days of being sensori-motor beings and become curious toddlers. And again, when they start operating in a world when facts, figures and putting things into categories becomes a way to deal with a new cognitive state (typically between 5 and 7 years of age). If fussy eating has reared its head for your children during these ages in particular, please keep reading, yet note that this article is centred around typical developmental pickiness. There are many root causes for fussy eating!
Related article on the Kiddipedia site by Simone: 4 Feeding Myths We are Sick of Hearing
Some children manage to leap through these cognitive changes unphased, others jump back and forward with accompanying testing behaviour. These cognitive changes can also be coupled with significant routine disruptions including new siblings, day care / schooling or bouts of illness or other events that can leave a vegetable-refusing-child in their wake.
Hence, when the operating conditions of their world change, they can find the “hard work” of eating simply to much. And guess which foods comprise of “harder work”? Yes, vegetables, meat and mixed textures. To focus on vegetables, they have a few properties that contribute to how much work they involve:
- They are visually stimulating, often colourful.
- They are bitter in flavour
- Some are harder to plan to get into their mouths (eg. a baby spinach leaf or slippery diced and cooked carrot)
- They are harder to chew (eg. compare a dissolvable chip to a stalk of celery)
- They can have big smells (especially when cooked into mixed texture foods with aromatics like garlic, onion, herbs and spices)
- Vegetables can be offered disproportionately across the day with the majority of the content at dinner time when a child is less inclined to do the work.
- Vegetables can be presented on a full plate which can be even more visually stimulating.
Although, vegetables inherently have an uphill battle towards “approval” by your child, all is not lost.
Here are a few ideas about joining your child’s team and supporting them when they find it all difficult:
- Have a prepare-to-eat-routine to help your child prepare to learn about their food, this includes activating their muscles and core. We like to jump like kangaroos up to the table after washing our hands.
- Serve children in a way that is less confronting, preferably from a serving plate on the table and onto a blank plate. And provide a bowl with high sides for slippery vegetables like cubes of roast vegetables, cherry tomatoes and peas.
- Serve vegetables in a variety of ways at a variety of times.
- Engage your child in minimal talk about what they are eating and don’t fuss over them. Your role modelling is so important and speaks more than your words.
- Provide your child with ways to learn and opt out at the meal. They can cut, pull, smell, touch and get messy. Without pressure to eat or excessive praise.
- Have your child pack away the food at the end of the meal for a last non-pressured engagement with the food.
Enjoy your child’s new-found world with them! They are still learning. And as Mr A. Einstein said, “Play is the highest form of research”.
[i] Zeinstra, G.G, Koelen, M.A., Kok, F.J., & de Graaf, C. (2007). Cognitive Development and children’s perceptions of fruit and vegetables; a qualitative study. Int J Behav Nutr Phys Act, 4, 30.
You may also like to read:
10 Tips for getting kids to eat more fruit & vegetables
