My Kid Won’t Eat: That Helps Now!

Even if this sentence no longer applies today: at the family dinner table there is often trouble, especially on holidays. What helps now is explained by attachment researcher Fabienne Becker-Stoll.

Now cookies and chocolate are tempting again, and already the shreds are flying: Children often don’t understand that they can’t eat forever. How do parents deal with this?

Prof. Fabienne Becker-Stroll: Christmas is an exceptional time, because the expectations are high on all sides, and this can easily be unloaded at the dining table. Some people are helped by clear rules, such as the announcement that cookies are only eaten together, or the unravelling of expectations. If a festive meal is important to me, I can also enjoy it with my partner when the children are asleep. Or serving the children noodles and the big roast.

Otherwise the family table becomes a battle zone?

Fortunately, our research shows that the majority of parents consider the time spent at the dining table with their children to be valuable. But standards have changed and need to be renegotiated. In my childhood, the rule was: Fabienne, as long as you have not finished your plate, you must not get up! I sat for hours in front of my cold spinach. As a bond researcher I do many interviews, today’s parents tell me about sometimes horrible eating situations in their own childhood. Today children are more likely to listen to their bodies. This also prevents eating disorders.

Restaurant owners are increasingly complaining that children run wild between the tables. Are there too few rules today?

If children behave badly at the dining table, this is almost always an expression of the fact that their needs are not being taken into account. Children want and need attention. For restaurant visits, this means that parents must pay attention to their children in a way that is appropriate to the place; they could read aloud or paint together. Letting your child run around in a restaurant shows disinterest – towards the other guests, but also towards your own child.

And at home?

A smaller child who is rioting at the dining table usually does so for a good reason, but he or she cannot yet articulate that reason. Usually the child is hypoglycaemic, so he or she has been hungry for quite some time, is tired or needs closeness and attention. If it plays with its food and does nonsense, it is usually full. Until about the time a child starts school, he or she is dependent on his or her parents recognizing the reason and reacting sensitively. If parents interpret signals correctly and satisfy the underlying needs, conflicts can often be solved easily.

Do you have an example of this?

If everyone at the family table is stressed, the children are overexcited, parents have to think about it: Why is that? Do the children need a snack between meals? Should we eat earlier because the children belong in bed? Sometimes it also helps not to put the food on the table immediately after coming home, but to cuddle it extensively first.

A study by Harvard University shows that in families where meals are shared, cohesion is stronger, the children have more self-confidence, but less often depression and obesity. Why do shared meals have such enormous power?

Because the everyday life of many families is closely timed. In the to-do sea of daycare and work, flutes, handball and homework, shared meals are islands: moments of togetherness, in which families exchange ideas and enjoy each other in a relaxed atmosphere. Children need these feel-good situations to recharge their batteries and experience security and safety. And they are sounding boards. A healthy eating culture helps to detect problems before they grow up.

What do you mean by healthy eating?

Parents are the responsible moderators. Their behaviour determines whether children feel comfortable and respond to what is on their minds. In addition, parents should never bring up unpleasant topics at the dining table of their own accord, for example a math problem, which spoils their appetite and destroys the relaxed atmosphere. And: Parents must know that children eat differently than adults.

Namely how?

Our kindergarten research shows that children do not like mashed food. Many children don’t eat stews and casseroles, and even more so: the vast majority would like to have all the components separately on their plates, the sauce not on but next to the noodles, for example. If parents take this into account and do not cut bread and pasta into small pieces without being asked and let the children make their own sauce, a lot of explosives are already out.

Children often have very special, sometimes unhealthy eating preferences. What if my child does not eat vegetables?

Parents tend to view family meals in isolation. If a child has already had fruit and vegetables at school or at the children’s ridge, everything is wonderful, and they should eat “naked” noodles. It depends on the total daily turnover. The fact that children don’t eat any vegetables at all is also true, but extremely rare. Parents should then offer vegetables over and over again, without any compulsion, and let the child eat raw vegetables and fruit. If you are very insecure, talk to your pediatrician.

What advice do you have for parents who drive their children’s eating habits mad?

Patience. In preschool, many do not want to experiment. The fact that children like sweets more than slightly bitter vegetables has an evolutionary reason: it protected our ancestors from poisoning. Every meal should provide something for every family member who likes it. At the time when my children tended to disdain vegetables, strawberries or pieces of banana were served instead of cucumbers, and to this day we still believe that no one has to eat something they don’t like. But something else worries me much more.

Like what?

More and more mothers – it is mainly the mothers, but the fathers are catching up – pay extreme attention to healthy eating, and this is harmful to the children. The need to eat healthy food then overlaps everything, the children’s needs are no longer seen, every bite is observed. This is poison for the mood at the table, and it can lead children into eating disorders, because they learn from role models. This applies to table manners – a father who checks his smartphone while chewing or who does not eat properly with knife and fork need not be surprised by unmannerly children – as well as for pathological eating behaviour. If a mother signals: If you eat, you are weak, this will be passed on to the children. These parents should best get help from outside.

More and more parents are working. How does this affect them?

Every family needs common meals, several times a week. It is crucial that the meals are real feel-good situations. Especially the mothers sometimes almost tear themselves apart between job and children. They worry a lot: Is it normal what my child does, am I a good mother? This leads to stress and pressure. You should make it as easy as possible for yourself.

That’s easy to say!

What helps me is that we sit together as a family when it crunches over a long period of time and think: How can we relieve stress? If cooking in the evening gets on your nerves, you put dinner on the table. If a mother first has to come down after coming home, she arranges a mini-break, often ten minutes are enough. Kids can do that from primary school age. Foresighted shopping and meal plans also take away stress. My point is that when mum or dad sit at the dinner table in a hurry, the bad mood spreads to the children. Parents also have to take care of themselves.