Today’s episode wasn’t supposed to happen; normally, this past Tuesday would’ve been a Just You and Me, but I recorded a great interview which had so much to do with food that I knew I needed a third Guest Interview episode in March. (That was How to Stop The Weeknight Chaos with Brandie Weikle of The New Family Podcast – listen here or go to weturnedoutokay.com/062.)
And I still wasn’t going to do a Your Child Explained – but then the Boston Globe Magazine forced me into it with their outstanding Family Issue from February 28, 2016! The cover article, The Tyranny of The Picky Eater, captivated me with its well-written and non-lectury style; read Alyssa Giacobbe’s fantastic article by clicking here or going to BostonGlobe.com/magazine
Today, I read two key sections of Alyssa’s article, and share the one change that we made here in our home that has really helped alleviate the picky eating!
Click here or go to weturnedoutokay.com/BONUS-picky-eaters to read more about that change, or just click play to listen.
In her article, Alyssa talks about the evolutionary background to kids and selective eating; as our young kids become more mobile, starting at around age 2, they are much more likely to ingest something toxic and as a species we’ve evolved to combat that through picky eating. In the modern family home, for convenience or lack of time, we can easily extend on the years of selective eating by only serving what the kids will eat.
A later section, about the harm we can do by forcing kids to eat foods they don’t want, includes this quote by Doctor David Ludwig of Boston Children’s Hospital: “We don’t have to be afraid of letting the kid get hungry and experience the consequences of the decision not to eat. We need an appropriate division of responsibilities: parents decide what the kid gets; kids decide whether to eat it.”
For me, these two ideas – extending on selective eating and forcing kids to eat foods they may not want to try – combined to point the way toward this one change Ben and I made in our home, five or six years ago, when we decided that Max and Jay would have just the one option: to eat whatever we were eating.
At the same time, we made it clear that it was their choice whether they ate what was on the table – and then we dropped it. We stopped focusing so much on the actual food and started focusing on the enjoyment of sitting around a table together. All these years later, the four of us really look forward to dinner time because it is (relatively) stress-free and just enjoyable to be together!
That is the crux of this bonus episode, the take away for you as you’re trying to stop the picky eating: try to make mealtimes relaxed and enjoyable. Make the emphasis less on the actual food and more on the joy of being together.
I hope this helps!
Key Links
Click here or go to weturnedoutokay.com/062 for my conversation with Brandie Weikle of The New Family Podcast
Click here for Alyssa Giacobbe’s article, The Tyranny of The Picky Eater, for some great insights about why kids become picky eaters – and how we can bring them out of it
To get notified the moment the book I’m writing for you – Positive Discipline Ninja Tactics: Key Tools to Handle Every Temper Tantrum, Keep Your Cool, and Enjoy Life With Your Young child – goes live in Amazon in April, click here or go to positivedisciplineninjatactics.com. By signing up you’ll be able to grab my printable anti-tantrum info graphic, perfect for placing on the fridge where babysitters, grandparents, and older siblings can see it so everybody knows how to handle a temper tantrum in your home, so if the tantrums are getting out of control, you’ll find a great resource to help!
Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed
Subscribe: iTunes | Android | RSS