This post will look at the problem of picky eating and how parents help and hinder the process of getting children to eat better. Unfortunately in most cases of picky eating, the parents are a large part of the problem. Therefore, any attempt to improve the child's eating habits needs to be coupled with a very large amount of parent trainings, parent handouts, and any other method to improve the entire situation.
Is picky eating genetic?
Maybe, but it is definitely a learned behavior. Many times the parents of picky eaters are almost just as picky themselves. This is especially true of parents that are millennials. The peers of my biological children have terrible eating habits for the most part. Generation Xers do not eat much better unless they have learned it in adulthood. My peers growing up were the first really picky generation, and it has escalated exponentially since then with every subsequent generation being pickier than the one before it. We are going in the wrong direction on this one in a big way. Therefore, to break the cycle you must deal with the adults and children in this situation.
Where do you even begin? Cooking Skills
Actually the best place to start with parents are trainings that teach cooking skills. Many of my biological children's peers can barely boil water. It is sad. If something does not have microwave directions, it is probably beyond a great deal of millennials' cooking ability. That means they eat almost 100% processed food, and if they are parents, their children get nearly 100% processed food. Do I need to remind you that processed food makes for hyper children? Many millennials do not even know how to use a knife well enough to peel an apple. Therefore, anything that requires peeling is beyond their ability. One of the greatest gifts you could give many very young parents are cooking lessons. Teach them the proper way to use a knife. Teach them the basics of making simple foods like eggs and browning hamburger meat. Give them the skills necessary to be able to actually prepare nutritious meals for their family. Without these skills all the nutrition training in the world is wasted. I actually think one of the greatest ways to fight obesity in our country today is to require at least one full year of home economics in high school that includes learning to cook and plan nutritious meals. We are sending our children into adulthood these days completely unprepared for domestic duties, and we really need to rectify that.
Bad Habit - Grazing
Once you have established that your parents are capable of preparing nutritious meals, then you can start on the nutrition training. However, before you dive into full-fledged classes on portion sizes and meal planning, there are several very bad habits American parents have that really need to be dealt with first. The first of these bad habits involve letting your children graze all day long. These parents stock mostly junk food in the house in which their children have access, and the children basically snack all day long. They never eat a real meal. Even if the snacks are somewhat healthy, a child will never fulfill all of his/her nutritional needs through this type of snacking. I know that several years ago some pediatricians actually promoted this to get children to eat something. However, now studies have shown this to be a contributing factor to obesity in children. Encourage, coax, plead with parents to have actual meals and cut out the grazing.
Bad Habit - Fixing Separate Meals
The second very bad habit many parents have is fixing a separate meal for every member of the family. Instead of listening to their children complain about meals, many parents simply fix a different meal for each member of the house. Many times this will involve just getting fast food or popping a frozen dinner in the microwave. However, 99% of the time these meals are far from nutritious or well-balanced. This also sets an extremely bad precedent for the children. I am sorry, but children should not be allowed to eat macaroni and cheese or a bowl of cereal every day for supper just because you do not want to deal with a hissy fit. This practice has also been shown to contribute to obesity in children. Study after study has shown the value of families having sit down meals for reasons ranging from learning better eating habits to strengthening communication in a family. Children will eat better if they are expected to sit down at meals and have the exact same thing as everyone else. Will it come with monumental hissy fits? Absolutely, but eventually the hissy fits will subside and something wonderful will develop that is worth every bit of the blood, sweat, and tears it will take to get there.
Bad Habit - Juice in Sippee Cups
The third bad habit I want to deal with here is the practice of giving toddlers and preschoolers sippee cups with juice in it to sip on all day long. There are so many things wrong with this practice it is hard to know where to begin. Number one, a child should only have one small cup of juice a day not sip on juice all day long. Juice is packed with sugar even 100% juice. Study after study is now showing that overconsumption of juice is another contributing factor to obesity in children. Fresh fruit is much, much better for children than juice. Number two, if a child is allowed to consume a great deal of calories from liquids, they will not eat as well. They simply will not be hungry at meal times. Now, you may be thinking what if I substitute milk for juice? Even though milk is better than juice, a child should not sip on anything all day long. It is horrible for their teeth to constantly have something in their mouth. Number three, sippee cups should go away before a child's second birthday. I have already written a post on the problems with sippee cups. To sum up that post, overusage of sippee cups leads to speech problems. A child really needs to drink from a regular cup most of the time after their second birthday if not before. Their mouths will not develop properly without this experience. If you feel your child needs something to sip on throughout the day, have a water dispenser with small cups available.
Bad Habit - Flavored Milk
The last bad habit on my list involves flavored milk. If you really understood how much sugar is in flavored milk, you would never opt to give that to a child except on very rare occasions. This is another one of those seemingly innocent ideas from the 1990s that pediatricians somewhat pushed to get children to drink milk. Their reasoning was that it was better than not drinking milk at all and the parenting style of avoiding hissy fits at all costs was all the rage. Now they understand this is also another one of the contributing factors for childhood obesity. Children need milk but not flavored milk. They will drink white milk eventually after they protest for months. Never ever let a child use a hissy fit to get out of something they need to do. It is an ugly precedent to allow.
If the parents of the children in your care will simply learn not to have these bad habits in their homes, it will be 1000 times easier to get children to eat good food on a regular basis. Actually getting parents to remove these bad habits might take a miracle, but keep after it. When parents are a large part of the problem, the parents will have to be the starting place for correcting our epidemic of picky eaters.
I hope you have enjoyed this post. Goodbye and God bless!!
Check out Natalie's children's books at: https://www.amazon.com/author/nataliewade7457
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