There is no greater obstacle than a child who refuses to eat almost everything that’s put in front of him. Plate after plate goes into the trash. It happens at home, school, and in restaurants. The parents of picky eaters take all kinds of routes to get kids to eat, and for the most part, the rule of thumb is, you can’t make someone eat. It’s generally a control issue.

Early, somewhere in a picky eater’s life he or she discovered that one thing tasted better than another and decided that that one thing was all he or she was going to eat. Mostly, the one thing has a lot of sugar.

Why is it always sugar? Why don’t children gravitate toward pickles or cheese or whole wheat bread? Because sugar goes down easily, is mostly digested instantly and give a lot of on the spot power better known as instant energy. Rarely do children throw up sugar. Sugar tastes good to children. It mimics breast milk, it’s satisfying; you can eat a lot or a little and it’s always familiar to the taste buds. Sugar is seductive, and for the most part, it doesn’t need to be prepared – it’s just right there in that cereal box or that box of snacks.

There are several models of picky child: there’s the archetype model – “I’ll eat it if it looks like I expect it to look – you know, out of the ‘right package’ – no substitutions, no homemade facsimiles!”

Then there is the limited index model – “I only eat: macaroni and cheese, saltine crackers, cheese pizza from Dominoes, bread sticks, Cinnamon Crunch cereal and sliced deli cheese, but it has to be in the bag from the deli, and I have to see it.”

There is the child who simply never puts the fork into the mouth. He or she eats several foods, but just can’t seem to do it most days.

Then there is the extremest who only eats one thing: Barbie Cereal

There is the child who scoffs at anything that’s not fast food or cereal won’t even try something new because he or she knows that something fast is on the way.

What creates the picky eater? One story I know began with breast feeding. Every time the poor infant nursed, he’d get an upset stomach because mom was not paying attention to her diet. It was only after several months of screaming and putting him on formula that the problem was partially solved. The feeding of this child was always a nightmare. Consequently the child never really enjoyed eating and always found food a suspicious part of his early childhood. He was all of the above picky eaters, but he is not the norm.

The norm begins with simple actions begun by the parent, namely taking food along in the car, packaged instant snacks given to children all day long as infants and toddlers, and finally, doing too much fast food. Parents create the monster, not children. Parents buy the food, not children.

Lots of infants have both an appetite and a desire to try new things and that’s normal. Toddlers will eat mostly anything. One of my grandson’s favorites was anything on his mother’s plate. He would eat Caesar Salad, broccoli, sweet potatoes, sushi, calamari, and lasagna and anything in between. Then suddenly, he stopped about age three. He closed his jaws and bit down hard and hasn’t opened them since.

Convenience makes for bad habits. At home it’s easier to pull a box of crackers out of the closet than to make cookies. It’s easier to pull in at a fast food restaurant than to go home and make hamburgers and French fries. It’s easier to offer cereal than getting up and making a variety of breakfasts. The habit of taste comes early and quickly and takes only weeks to establish, and at three, there is a window of opportunity where a child suddenly understands what he is eating and how there is a choice of foods – his, and he grabs that choice in favor of anything else.

It’s a lot easier to create a monster than to un-create him. Thankfully the monster eater only lasts a couple of years. By six, the calorie need surpasses any pickyness if parents are smart and push the child out the door to play for long hours. Then hunger causes those jaws to once again open.

Creating a monster begins with convenience and the idea that children need to eat all day. They don’t. Never take food in your car to quiet a child. Never take food to church as a toy. Never give a child a full sippy cup to drain again and again. They don’t need it. Food is not something that should placate a human being.

A good schedule for children is eating every four hours with a small snack in between. Treating food like entertainment is not the best idea. In other words we don’t eat all day because we are bored. We don’t drink all day because we are bored.

Waiting for meals is a normal thing and hunger is also normal. The idea that a child is uncomfortable for a short time seems to be the enemy of today’s child rearing. The question is why? Getting good and hungry for a half hour stimulates the desire to eat. Yes, children will cry for snacks, beg, borrow and steal to get that sugar, that special cereal or the no- taste crackers, but this is the ploy to not be hungry at the table. Without those interferences, they will come to the table hungry.

Establishing times to eat is a good thing. Most people eat too early. Most people allow their children to get up early and grab the sugar. Then by breakfast, if there is one, the child is not hungry. Snacking through the morning drives any thought of lunch out the window unless it’s a stop at the drive through at 11:00 a.m., and even then it’s not really eaten. Then we snack all afternoon so that by the time dinner is ready at 6:00, it’s a foregone conclusion, that Mr. Child has taken in all the calories he can, and the table, if there is one, becomes a battle zone.

What to do? Get up before your child. Have one family breakfast at an appropriate time that corresponds to your particular schedule and then close down the kitchen. Hungry at 8:00? Really? Or is the child bored? Crying for food at 9:00? Offer carrot sticks or an apple. If it’s not accepted, the child is not hungry, he’s bored and he’s battling for his own way and his bad habits.
Who established a child’s lunch time between 10:00 and 11:00? Children do better with lunch if it’s offered at Noon. I always serve at 12:30 just so the picky eaters are really hungry. A lunch that’s a compromise between what a child wants and what he should have is a good thing. This gives him sustenance and choices. A good lunch means a parent or provider is offering a child at least 1.5 ounces of protein, two fruits or two vegetables or a fruit and a vegetable, some whole grain product and milk. Too much? It’s not too much if a child is hungry.

Don’t substitute juice drink or soda because children will fill up on drink rather than eat. At home, the best lunches for picky children are at least two things they will eat and two things they might eat.

Snack in the afternoon should be asked for. Ideally it should be something homemade that includes calories and fat but has health elements as well. I think a snack is a treat and not something just thrown at a child. It’s supposed to be a fun thing. This is the ice cream sundae moment, the cake with goo moment, the “How many cookies can I eat moment.”

Many children will not eat after 4:00 p.m. They seem to shut down shop at 4:00- 4:30. If your child is one of these, don’t expect him to sit through an adult dinner. Instead of snack in the afternoon, try feeding a light dinner at 4:00 – cheese, fruits, whole wheat toast with butter not margarine, some raw vegetables, a small pizza, a boiled egg cut in slices, some tuna, chicken chunks, or sliced meat. Then if he chooses your bigger adult dinner, great, but your battle zone has already been won.

Food is a compromise and not a convenience. It’s an important part of life that should be met with as much force from the parent as the child, but not angry force. Remember to offer food as if it’s a fun idea. Then if a child is rude or plays with it, throw it away. The next meal is just around the corner about four hours away.

Next time: quick homemade foods that work.