It’s like a siege. The vegetables sit, gleaming and green, on the plate. Looming over them, the stolid face of a determined toddler.
No matter the tactics, the army of broccoli cannot march across the draw bridge.
Some parents try to convince the tyrant in the castle that what sits on the plate tastes good. It seldom works.
The last-ditch effort usually involves threatening to take something away. It can escalate fast. Before long, a month of screen time could be up for grabs.
Engage in that kind of power struggle, said Christy Little, owner of Easthampton’s Little Bear Learn and Care preschool, and “you’ll usually end up losing.”
Yet parents of picky eaters – and that’s the vast majority of the kid set – don’t want their little ones to suffer from poor nutrition, or bring eating problems or limitations into adolescence or adulthood. So when is it more than a passing issue? And how should an anxious parent try to change a kid’s eating habits?
Nearly all kids have strong opinions about food, as an informal survey of Mary McFarland’s Deerfield Elementary School first-graders recently revealed. Still – the class defied easy expectations of anti-vegetable sentiment.
“What’s your favorite vegetable?” yielded a sea of hands, but also some telling answers, like “kiwi” and “pear.” Kids just don’t gravitate toward, say, the sulfurous undertones of broccoli. The sweetness of fruit is, understandably, a much bigger draw.
Though there was a small contingent in the young crowd who openly embraced a hatred of vegetables, there were at least an equal number of students who claimed to love them.
And the open-ended query “What’s your favorite food,” yielded only, out of a class of 17, three pizzas and one macaroni and cheese. A young girl who couldn’t quite contain her enthusiasm blurted out “Watermelon!” A boy claimed plums, and several others embraced the watermelon, too.
Over and over, a similar dynamic played out: an answer here and there became the standard for most of the class, with several kids echoing the first child who answered.
Little says that social dynamic is often a factor in how kids eat, too. “Peers have a lot to do with it,” she said. “Sometimes they’re more apt to try something new here than at home. Many will even pretend they like it.”
Little has seen it often. “Peer pressure can affect even the youngest,” she said. “If there’s a table full of broccoli eaters and one who doesn’t like it, that kid will probably try it eventually.”
It was particularly telling that 15 of McFarland’s 17 first-graders said that their parents regularly fix them different meals from the rest of the family. Preparing a separate meal for children, it turns out, can be a double-edged sword when it comes to picky eating. A perfectly well-meaning parent can accidentally make it more difficult to convince a child to branch out.
That’s because of how kids acquire tastes, says Dr. Jonathan Schwab of Northampton Area Pediatrics. Kids tend to like what they become familiar with, he says.
Angela Mansolillo is a pediatric speech therapist, a field which, because it incorporates swallowing disorders, puts her in regular contact with children who have troubles with eating. Picky eaters have become an area of particular interest for Mansolillo.
She echoes Schwab, saying it’s largely true that children will eat enough if left to their own devices.
Pickiness, Mansolillo adds, is perfectly normal in some ways. “All kids go through a period in their toddler years where they’re likely to be picky. They go on food jags — like a kid who only eats peanut butter and jelly for lunch, day after day after day.”
But there are signs that parents should note, she adds. “We get concerned for kids who have foods (in their repertoire) and lose them. If a kid stops eating broccoli, stops eating carrots — the more foods drop out, the more concerned we become.”
It’s also worrisome, she says, if kids don’t consistently add at least a little bit to their menus, or reject entire categories. “If they eat no fruits or no vegetables at all, that might be a sign that there’s an underlying issue.”
When it comes to young vegetarians, Mansolillo adds, there’s not the same kind of concern. Meat is, she says, a subcategory of the larger category of protein. It would be far more troubling if all protein sources were rejected.
Schwab says it’s fairly easy to tell that a child is doing at least OK in the diet department. “We can gauge calories on growth. If they’re gaining weight, we can be pretty comfortable that they’re getting enough calories.”
Though a child can have deficiences in essentials like calcium and vitamin D, Schwab says those problems are rare in developed countries.
“We can see a deficiency in certain kinds of nutrients – if it’s grains or fiber, they might have constipation or intestinal symptoms, but there are typically no symptoms.”
If there are underlying issues, says Mansolillo, “sometimes it’s motor skills – the kid hasn’t developed an ability to chew well enough. Sometimes, it’s a sensory processing issue – how the food feels or tastes. What might feel normal to us might feel more overwhelming (to the child) and become something they want to avoid. The patterns in refusal help us to figure out what the problem might be.”
Other issues might be directly related to the gastrointestinal tract, she says, like acid reflux. “If it feels bad, they’re not gonna eat,” she said. “They’ve learned that food makes them feel bad.”
Kids on the autism spectrum, she adds, bypass food for other reasons — they don’t always recognize the sensation of hunger or know what to do about it.
For most children, there’s a fairly standard progression in food acquisition, says Mansolillo. Babies start with nutritionally complete sources, breast milk or formula. Then they enter what she refers to as the “more precarious years,” when they need a wider variety of foods to get sufficient nutrition. They usually progress from pureed fruits and vegetables to softer foods like cooked vegetables and pasta, and lastly, they add foods that are harder to chew, things like meat and raw vegetables.
Parents who get concerned about a child’s progress in food acquisition, says Schwab, shouldn’t be afraid to bring those concerns to a pediatrician. “We can check their status, make some suggestions and see what works. We have ways of objectifying (the issue), and we can look for any deficiencies.”
His aim is to prevent parents’ “being worried and suffering on their own.”
So what can you do if you’re a parent facing the determined visage of a youngster who won’t eat her broccoli?
Here, fortunately, is where all our experts agree.
“The ideal strategy is probably being able to say, ‘This is what’s for dinner,’ ” Mansolillo said. “But if it’s turning into a power struggle, you can say, ‘Eat a little bit of this, but also something you like.’ I counsel parents to insist on at least a trial — a ‘no thank you’ bite.”
Little recommends offering “a combo of what they like and what they can choose.”
Choice is key, particularly with younger children, she says. “There are two things young kids have control over — food and using the bathroom.” That can lead to the “you can’t make me eat it” siege mentality.
“Give choices,” Little said, “Put (what you’d like them to eat) in their lunchbox. Give them the choice, the control — ‘It’s in there if you want it.’ ”
It can be hard to adopt that kind of laissez-faire attitude, but it’s the most likely route to success, says Mansolillo. “Research shows that the key is exposure – the more foods are in the parents’ repertoire, the more in the kids’ repertoire.”
Schwab says he’s heard from nutritionists that 20 times is the magic number of exposures. Other numbers can readily be found. But no matter the exact number, the advice comes out the same way: Offer things over and over. Eventually, without too much forcing of the issue, new foods will enter the repertoire.
“The more, the earlier, the better,” said Mansolillo. “There are two important messages kids need to hear — ‘At least try it before you say no.’ And the other is ‘You’re going to try it again, just to see if you’ve changed your mind.’ ”
The key is to avoid a power struggle.
Little says she often sees parents putting that advice into action. “I see some amazing lunches (at Little Bear). I see lots of fresh fruits and vegetables, finger foods. Parents are giving kids choices so if they choose not to eat something, they still have a balanced lunch.”
Schwab points to the philosophy espoused in Ellyn Slatter’s books about kids, particularly an older work called “How to Get Kids to Eat, But Not Too Much.” In the end, he says, the kids will come around on their own terms. “Our job as parents is to make the food, present the food and give it to them at certain times. We can’t eat it for them.”
James Heflin can be reached at jheflin@gazettenet.com.