How to Get a Child to Eat When They Refuse: Does Encouragement Help?
If you have a child who’s dealing with picky eating or more selective when it comes to food, you might feel like you’re at the end of rope. You might’ve tried every trick in the book to get your child to eat, from persuading to encouraging to bribing - you’ve done it all.
And when your child does take a step toward eating, like trying a new food or eating the dinner you’ve prepared, you might want to celebrate and praise your child for the steps of progress taken. You might encourage your child with showers of praise or compliment what you recognize as a job well done. Positive reinforcement all the way, right?
As a mom of a selective eater myself, I totally get it.
It IS a big deal when you notice your kids making steps of progress on their eating journeys. But here’s the thing: praising your child for eating or trying new foods is a subtle form of pressure. And if your child feels pressure-to-eat, this can potentially create some setbacks on your feeding journey.
Pressure to Eat Tactics Don’t Work
Let me explain further.
For many kids, especially those who might be dealing with picky eating, mealtimes can feel like a performance.
Kids may feel like they have to eat a certain way or amount of food in order to appease their caregivers, and while this might never be our intention, eating a meal can come with a boatload of pressure.
When children feel pressured to eat - whether certain foods or amounts of food - this can unintentionally trigger other mealtime stressors.
For example, a child who feels pressured to eat certain foods, like vegetables, may feel resentful toward both the food and the person pressuring them to eat. In other situations, pressure to eat can make a child feel less safe at the table, which can make eating more challenging and difficult.
As a caregiver, you might not intend to pressure your kids to eat.
You might want to help your child with eating, and encourage them to eat might seem like the solution. Again, these tactics are used with good intentions. Parents just want to raise healthy kids who have a positive relationship with food.
So what about encouraging? What about giving your child recognition and praise for eating behaviors or habits? Does this approach help your child with eating?
Positive Encouragement is Still Pressure
At the end of the day, positive encouragement is a form of pressure, though in a more subtle form that often goes undetected.
What are some forms of positive encouragement that may play out at mealtimes with your child?
Here are some common ones:
Praising your child for trying a new food or a food
Encouraging your child to try a bite
Non-verbal cues, like clapping/cheering when a child eats
Verbal statements like, “Just try one bite, you can do it!”, or, “You ate some, I’m so proud of you!”
If you have or are currently doing these things, I know it comes from a place of good intentions. You just want to help support your child in eating, and positive reinforcement seems like a good approach, right?
I mean, in other aspects of parenting, positive reinforcement usually works! It can help support a child in many different aspects of life.
When it comes to food however, there is a slight difference.
Unlike other behaviors, eating is not a moral thing. There is no right or wrong way for a child to eat. Ultimately, every child is an individual with different eating temperaments and preferences. You might have a child who is a more cautious eater and a child who is more enthusiastic about eating. One is not better than the other. But when we praise certain eating behaviors, we’re communicating the message that some eating behaviors are more desirable than others.
Similarly, praising eating behaviors in children can create an emotional attachment around food that may be unhealthy.
A child may associate eating with recognition, acceptance, etc. and may learn to eat for these reasons. It attaches a moral value to food and creates a dichotomy around eating, where kids may begin to believe that certain foods or ways of eating are bad and others are good.
Children, especially younger kiddos, interpret things in a literal sense. So when they’re told, “You did such a good job eating your food!”, they can interpret this to mean that they are good because they eat. Their worth and value can become attached to food, which can complicate their relationship with food right from the start.
This can also teach kids to ignore their own bodies’ cues in favor of external factors, which over time, can create a dissociation from their natural intuitive eating abilities.
Positive encouragement is still pressure.
And as I alluded to earlier, pressure can create power struggles at mealtimes, making food and eating a lot harder for you and your family.
So how can you offer your child support at mealtimes without creating pressure - either positive or negative?
Here are a few ideas for you below:
4 Tips to Support Your Child at Mealtimes
Focus on your feeding jobs:
First, it’s important to remember what your jobs are when it comes to feeding and to trust your kids to do their part with eating.
As caregivers, we’re responsible for offering our children food consistently in the form of regular meals and snacks.
And it’s our kids’ jobs to decide: 1) Whether or not they want to eat when we do offer food, and 2) How much they want to eat from the food we’ve provided.
At the end of the day, it’s not your job to get your child to eat. When you try to do your child’s eating job by offering pressure or praise, it’s only going to create more conflict and chaos at mealtimes.
Part our feeding jobs involves trusting our children and their appetites when it comes to eating, knowing that they truly can self-regulate what they need to grow and flourish at a rate that’s right for them.
If your child is refusing to eat at mealtimes, just laying off the pressure alone can allow them to feel more open to learning about food and eating. If you have a picky eater, remain steadfast in your consistency with offering a variety of foods in the form of regular meals and snacks without adding any pressure to eat.
This can help alleviate so much pressure at mealtimes, especially for picky eaters, and increase their feelings of safety and comfort at mealtimes.
2. Create a positive eating environment:
Along with the first point, you want to focus on making mealtimes a positive experience and environment for your children.
If your kids feel like they’re under scrutiny or that their food intake is being micromanaged, this can become a trigger for meltdowns at mealtimes.
Instead of worrying about what your kids are eating from the food you’ve served, focus instead on connection and communication.
Bring some light-hearted conversations to the table that can help alleviate the tension and stress many kids are feeling during mealtimes. Instead of wondering about how much your child ate or worrying if they got any veggies in, focus on laughter and connection as a family over a meal.
At the end of the day, this will help your child build positive associations with mealtimes and eating, which can build a strong foundation from which they learn about food and their bodies.
3. Keep language around food neutral:
One way to diffuse any pressure around mealtimes for your kids is to refrain from commenting about how they’re eating.
This includes comments that could be either compliments or criticism. Remember - pressure-to-eat can come in the form of negativity or positivity. Either way, it has the same effect on a child who is learning to eat.
Avoid trying to police your child’s food intake or point out any eating behaviors. I encourage parents to put up the blinders, per say, when it comes to mealtimes, and to really ignore what your child is doing food-wise in order to give the safe space needed to explore.
I also recommend that mealtime discussions revolve around anything BUT the food. In this way, you’re supporting your kids in building an emotionally neutral relationship with food and allowing them to learn in a way about eating and their bodies that isn’t attached to a moral label, either good or bad.
If you do find yourself needing to talk about food, try to ask your child reflective questions rather than commenting or expressing your opinion about how/what they’re eating.
This could be questions like, “How does your tummy feel?”, or, “What colors do you see on the table?”
These can be strategic ways to help your kids interact with food in a way that doesn’t feel overwhelming.
For more support about language you can use to help support your kids at mealtimes, check out this post here: “How to Talk With Your Child Dealing With Picky Eating”.
4. Celebrate Eating Progress Milestones off-table:
If you have a selective eater who is making steps of progress, you undoubtedly want to celebrate these milestones.
Having a picky eater can be hard, even stressful at times. I know for me, it was exciting to see my daughter build her confidence around food and skills with eating. So while we want to celebrate these steps, we don’t want our kids to feel like their worth or value is attached to their eating abilities.
Remember, every child will progress at different paces with food and eating, and there’s not a right or wrong way. At the end of the day and above all else, we want our kids to have positive experiences around food and eating.
So if you’re excited about something your child did at mealtimes, make a mental note and opt to celebrate in a way that feels meaningful to you - outside of mealtimes.
I encourage parents to verbally celebrate other non-food related milestones at mealtimes in support of your children and their efforts - whether it’s for behavior, acts of kindness, achievements in school, etc.
Food related milestones, on the other hand, may be better celebrated on the table. Share with your partner, family members or friends to help your child focus on neutral eating experiences at mealtimes.
Focus on the Big Picture
Feeding kids is a marathon, not a sprint. Sometimes the journey can be marked by unexpected challenges or situations that may cause you to feel uncertain about what to do.
Remember - you are doing the best you can with the information and resources you have. None of us are perfect, but that’s not what parenting is about. You’re the best parent for your child, and at the end of the day, that’s what matters most.
Feeding children is also an extension of parenting, and improving your mealtime experiences with your kids can help you bring more harmony into your home. If you’ve been struggling with a picky eater or child who has a hard time eating, please know you’re not alone.
Consider implementing these tips to bring more positivity into mealtimes and to help decrease any pressure your child may be feeling around food.
It’s not about the bites of broccoli or how much protein your child may have eaten.
It’s about the connection and bond you are building and growing with your child.
Food and family meals can be a beautiful vehicle for deeper connections with our loved ones, and this is possible when we stay focused on the big picture.
In any event that you’re worried about your child’s health and eating habits, please connect with your pediatrician or consider working with a pediatric registered dietitian who can help assess your child’s nutritional intake and eating habits in more depth.
For extra support around feeding your children, consider coming to my upcoming workshop - more details below.
Now I’d love to hear more from you!
What are some ways you’re working toward creating more positive mealtime experiences for you and your family? Where are some areas you're feeling stuck? Reply in the comments below - I’d love to help you!