Stress Less About Picky Eating in 2 Simple Steps
Excited to welcome my friend and colleague, pediatrician and author Kelly Fradin, MD to Malina Malkani Nutrition as a guest blogger for this post. Check out her helpful, relatable, and evidence-based resources below and on her website.
As a pediatrician, I’ve helped families who have kids with all sorts of challenges. Before spending so many years doing this work and before I was a parent myself, I always thought that “bigger” problems were worse.
Now I understand that it’s much more complex than that - and picky eating is a perfect example.
Maybe your child isn’t so picky that they need nutritional or speech therapy intervention and maybe they are small but not so small that you need to supplement their diet or intervene medically. Even for these kids, who may not carry any diagnosis, their parents face a challenge and have to cope with stress.
Day to day there may be anxiety, meals may be stressful, and cooking and planning becomes more time-consuming and complex. Although it is very common for children to go through a picky eating phase, this can be a challenge where parents need to make a plan and cope with the stress. As a pediatrician parents are often surprised to hear that most of my advice is for them.
When a child is picky or underweight, parents often feel guilty, ashamed, or scared. These feelings are all normal and some amount of stress can even be helpful – it motivates us to find solutions and improve our lives. However, excessive stress about getting your child to eat will do more harm than good.
Children can sense the stress and the charged atmosphere and it can inadvertently worsen their eating. Daily stress is also not good for parents - it can worsen anxiety and depression, lead to difficulty sleeping, affect your blood pressure, and interfere in establishing a positive relationship with your child.
Finding a way to cope with all these feelings is important for helping your child and protecting your well-being as a parent and caregiver. If you need help coping with your feelings, here are two of my favorite tools you can try.
Awareness: Becoming aware of how you’re feeling when you get stressed is the first step. Your body may get tense, you may start to sweat, and your pulse may quicken. Identifying these feelings can allow you to do something to feel better. Shake it off, take a break, ask for help, or do some deep breathing. When we learn about our own feelings and how to cope with them, it can help us model and teach other members of the family too – including our children.
Positive Self-Talk and Mantras: Everyone has an internal monologue as they go about their day. When you catch yourself saying negative statements, see if you can change them into more constructive statements or questions. “My child will not eat this…. yet” Another way to build in positive self-talk is mantras. You can choose a phrase that resonates and helps you feel better. The magic of a short phrase is that once it becomes a habit, it can provide some peaceful continuity to your day. Here are some examples of mantras parents may find helpful when frustrated with their picky eaters.
I’m doing the best I can
Tomorrow is a new day
Progress, not perfection
I provide, they decide
Calm is contagious
If you need more help parenting a child with picky eating or any challenge big or small, you can check out my new book Advanced Parenting coming April 11, 2023 and available now for pre-order. In my book I cover everything, from deciding when your child needs help to accepting the implications of a challenge, learning about the issue, and coming up with a comprehensive plan.
You’ll learn all about the ADVANCED PARENTING skills you need to parent your child through a difficult experience.
