Sticker charts can seem like a really good idea. You see them everywhere in the shops, after all. They’re colourful, fun, visual…they make things concrete. And children like stickers!
So why shouldn’t you use them? Here’s the long(er!) answer…
They don’t work.
Short-term, you may get five slices of carrot or all of your home-made cottage pie inside them during the period of time you use the sticker chart for. But can you imagine a child thinking Hey, I only ate that kale to get a sticker, but you know what, I flippin loved it and I’m going to eat it forever from now on! Fat chance. Once the sticker chart is over, it’s back to square one. In fact, it will have done more harm than good because…
They’re a bribe.
A sticker chart says: If you do that, you’ll get this. The child isn’t eating the food because they choose or want to. They’re eating it because they’ll get a sticker. The motivation is all external. If we want a child who is truly a happy, healthy eater, we have to create the conditions that tap into and build their own internal motivation to eat the food.
They give your child the message that eating is a chore.
Having a sticker chart for doing something tedious or tricky – like learning your times tables – would make sense. But eating food is – or should be – a pleasure! A sticker chart teaches your child that eating is just something you have to endure to get something good.
They’re just another way of putting pressure on your child to eat.
…which, if you’ve read Getting the Little Blighters to Eat, you’ll know means you’re in for trouble! A sticker chart tells your child loud and clear that you really care what they do and don’t eat, simply giving them more to resist and react against in the long term.
Sticker charts for eating…stick em’ in the bin!
Note: A paediatric dietitian will sometimes use a sticker chart in a very specialised way with a child around eating behaviour, rather than directly for eating. This is different to the general use of sticker charts by parents for eating, which is the focus of this article.
Quite a lot of parents tell me that their child eats meals and foods happily at nursery that they won’t touch at home. They are puzzled – and frustrated! What’s the reason?
It’s all about the dynamic between adult and child.Whilst the nursery staff want the children to eat well, there isn’t that same intense parent-child dynamic at the table where your child can tell that you really (really!) care what and how much they eat. Also, there are a lot more children per adult at nursery, so inevitably less focus and pressure on each individual child to eat their food.
This means that at nursery, your child has a lot less attention and power to gain by NOT eating something. So those raw carrot sticks that they ignore at home, or that cottage pie that they push away sulkily when they’re with you, suddenly become rather appealing when they’re hungry anyway.
Which just goes to show that the DISH UP, SHUT UP! approach is definitely the way forward at home. 😉
If you’ve got a fussy eater, eating out at a restaurant or café can be something you dread or avoid. “What’s the point?” you might think. “It’s easier to stay at home and feed them something I know they’ll eat.” Here are some good habits to get into that will help make eating out as a family a more positive experience for everyone!
1. Don’t issue any warnings before you go.
Avoid saying things like “I want you to be good at the restaurant today” or “Promise me you’ll eat your meal this time”. Kids live up to expectations. If you show them you expect trouble, you’re more likely to get it!
2. Let them have their own menuto look at.
It makes them feel grown-up and involved, whether they can read yet or not. Also, encourage them to tell the waiter or waitress their order themselves once they can talk!
3. Don’t order tiny ones their own meal.
With under-twos (or up to four years old, depending on the appetite of your child!), the best thing to do is ask for an extra plate and give them bits and pieces from your own meals. This introduces them to a wide variety of food – and saves money and waste! It may mean they end up with half roast dinner, half mushroom risotto and a bit of cucumber and tomato, but little children don’t know or care about the ‘rules’ of what is and isn’t normally served together.
4. Ask the restaurant if they will do half portions of the adult meals.
Many restaurants and cafes will, even if they don’t say so on their menu. This opens out the choice a whole lot further than the (often very limited and ‘beige’) children’s menu – and doesn’t put the idea in their head that children can’t or shouldn’t eat the same food as adults!
5. Let them choose freely.
Don’t deliberately steer them towards a ‘safe bet’ like chicken nuggets or spag bol – or whatever you think they’re most likely to eat. If we want them to be adventurous and open-minded about food, we mustn’t impose limits! This may sound scary (“There’s no way they’re going to eat prawn linguine in a garlic and white wine sauce!” you might think) but when you give them the freedom and responsibility to choose what they fancy, it creates a kind of unspoken contract: I chose it, so I’m going to eat it.
6. Don’t make any judgement about what they choose.
Don’t undo the effect of letting them choose freely by saying things like “Fish and chips – are you sure? You don’t really like fish” or “But you didn’t eat the lasagne last time”. Keep those thoughts to yourself! Again, if you give them negative expectations to live up to, they’re likely to prove you right! Show trust in their choice instead.
7. Make it as much about togetherness as eating.
Talk together or play speaking games (“Guess which starter/dessert I’d choose off the menu” is a good one for older children!). If you are meeting friends and you know there’s going to be lots of adult chat, then take along pens and paper or activities to occupy them. If the food takes an unexpectedly long time to arrive, don’t expect them to have the patience of an adult. Find a way to engage them.
8. Don’t overly worry about what other people think.
Cut them a little slack when it comes to table manners. Let them enjoy their food in their own way. The customers at the other tables would rather see happy children with food on their face and bits falling on the floor than hear them being nagged to eat like an adult.
9. Remember that children’s meal portions vary hugely.
I’ve seen kids’ meals that would have left a mouse hungry – and kids’ meals that would have satisfied Henry VIII! Don’t judge how much they’ve eaten by the amount left on their plate. Let their appetite dictate how much they eat.
10. Don’t order dessert until after the main course is over.
If you tell the waiter what desserts you want at the start, your child may focus on and hanker after that throughout the main course. “This food is alright…” they might think. “But hey, I’ve got a chocolate ice-cream sundae with sprinkles and sauce coming next!”
NOTE: Of course, the usual Getting the Little Blighters to Eat approach applies in a restaurant or cafe as much as it does at home: No encouraging, pestering, coercing or bribing them to eat. When their food arrives at the table, say nothing more about it! If necessary, you could always ask the waiter to tie a tea towel round your mouth. 😉
Oh no! Am I going to suggest you get your child to dip a spider in chocolate and eat it? No, nothing like that! (Though they are full of protein 😉 )
Let me explain with a little analogy…
Ms. A. Raknofobia is terrified of spiders. She does everything she can to avoid them. She won’t go in the garden shed. She won’t go for a walk in the woods in case there are webs stretched between the trees. She asks her partner to check the bathroom every single morning before she takes a shower. If she does come across a spider, she runs away screaming…
Eventually, she decides to seek therapy. The therapist takes her through a step by step process:
Step 1: She looks at pictures of spiders.
Step 2: She watches videos of spiders scuttling along.
Step 3: She goes into a room with a spider on the far side of it.
Step 4: She inches closer and closer to the spider.
Step 5: She reaches out and touches the spider wearing a glove.
Step 6: Finally, she holds the spider in her bare hands – without feeling any fear at all!
She is cured! What was the secret? EXPOSURE! She needed to be put in closer and closer proximity with the very thing she didn’t want to go anywhere near.
A huge part of turning a fussy eater into a non-fussy eater is also about exposure.
It’s not that the fussy child is scared of the foods they won’t eat (though some children can develop a phobia or have an instinctive aversion to certain foods) but they are likely to have built up lots of negative associations with those foods through being repeatedly pressurised to eat them.
On top of this, when a child becomes fussy, we often stop giving them the foods they don’t eat – or any new foods – because we think it’s a waste of time and effort and they’ll end up in the bin anyway. Those foods then become alien and unfamiliar to them.
The first step is to re-expose them to those foods so they can become familiar and feel comfortable around them. They need to be put into close proximity with them! And just like the spider therapy, I often advise parents – especially those with extremely fussy eaters – to do this gradually over a few weeks.
Step 1: Present a tiny amount of the food they stopped eating – or a new food you’d like to introduce them to – in a ramekin or dipping-sauce bowl to the side of their meal.
Step 2: Put the food into a section of a divided plate with the rest of the meal in the other sections.
Step 3: Put the food onto a normal plate with the rest of the meal.
Initially, your child may ask for the food to be taken away, push it away or throw it on the floor, but if you calmly say, “It’s okay, it’s up to you if you eat it or not” they will soon allow it to ‘to exist’ in their presence. If they throw the food on the floor, don’t tell them off. In fact, ignore that behaviour completely and wait until mealtime is over to clear it up so it seems as if you’re really not bothered. It’ll soon stop if they get no attention for it whatsoever.
There should never be any pressure at all to actually eat the foods (Remember the golden rule: DISH UP, SHUT UP!). And once a food has been introduced, make sure it makes a regular appearance from then on to keep it familiar.
‘But how does this exposure lead to them actually eating the food?’ you may be wondering. Read this real life success story Lessons from a stick of celery to find out!
Exposure, exposure, exposure really is key to turning a fussy eater into a happy, healthy eater. Before you know it, they’ll be eating spiders dipped in chocolate! Okay, maybe not… 😉
If I could hand out magic wands that parents could wave to instantly transform their child from fussy to unfussy eater, I would – and probably be exceedingly rich from it!
But the Getting the Little Blighters to Eat approach is about as close to a magic wand as you’re going to get. It just takes a bit longer (though plenty of parents do report a change from the very first meal!).
“But I just don’t think I’ve got the patience to wait the three or four months for it to work,” said one parent recently.
My response is:
“Have you got the patience to encourage, pester, nag or bribe your child to eat what you want them to eat every single day – possibly for years?!”
The Getting the Little Blighters to Eatapproach makes every single meal less painful and painstaking. It requires less, not more effort from you. You simply ‘Dish up, Shut up!’ and let the approach slowly but surely take effect.
To help you stay motivated through the process and not fall back into old habits at mealtimes, my advice is to focus fully on any positive changes you notice in your child’s eating – however tiny! Even to note them down in a diary every day so that you have a more tangible record of the progress you are making.
Here’s a brilliant ‘real life’ example from a family I am currently working with. For clarity’s sake, I am going to focus on the child’s gradual change in attitude towards just one vegetable: a stick of celery!
Starting point: The only vegetable this almost three-year-old child will eat is the odd bit of cucumber.
Week 1: Mother completely stops putting any pressure on child to eat any of the foods on her plate from now on.
Week 2: She presents child with a stick of celery in a ramekin to the side of her lunch (celery is going to make a regular appearance from now on, about once a week). Child looks at the celery and says, “Take it away mummy, take it away!” and gets upset. Mother says, “It’s okay, you don’t have to eat it.” Child calms down and allows it to be there.
Week 3: Child looks at the stick of celery and says “What’s that?” Mother replies simply “It’s celery”. Child doesn’t comment.
Week 4: Child picks up the stick of celery and puts it in her mouth and says, “Look mummy, look. I’m playing the trumpet! You do it too!” Mother does it too with her own celery.
Week 5: Child picks up the stick of celery and takes a bite and completely finishes that bite (it takes a while – celery is quite hard work! – but the child persists happily). Child then takes a second bite of their own accord, but decides to spit this bit out. Mother makes no comment of course.
Week 6:??? We shall see…but it’s looking good, right?!
You can so clearly see the process and progress in action here:
1. Rejection and assertion of power (“Take it away, mummy!”)
2. Acceptance (The child allows the food to ‘be there’ because they know there is no pressure to actually eat it).
3. Curiosity(“What is it?”. The child’s natural curiosity about food can emerge now that there is no pressure to eat anything.)
4. Touching and playing with the food (“I’m playing the trumpet!”. The child is becoming familiar and comfortable with the food.)
5. Eating the food (of their own accord, because they want to. Even spitting out the second bite is progress – they chose to take that second bite, remember!)
Now imagine this progress with a wide variety of foods all going on at the same time, and bingo! You’re well on the way to undoing fussy eating!
MYTH #1: CHILDREN ARE NATURALLY FUSSY. WE JUST HAVE TO GRIN AND BEAR IT.
Children can have an innate preference for and wariness of certain foods – but it is our behaviour and reaction to our children’s eating that has the most powerful impact of all! That is what determines whether they become a fussy eater or not.
MYTH #2: IT’S JUST A PHASE. THEY’LL GROW OUT OF IT.
Many children do grow out of fussy eating – but often not until they’re in double figures. That’s thousands of stressy mealtimes to get through before then.
MYTH #3: I NEED TO FIND SOME GOOD RECIPES THAT THEY’LL EAT.
Trying new recipes and offering your child different meals is great, but it’s not a case of finding the ‘right’ food. Fussy eating doesn’t start because they don’t like the food. It starts when they realise it gets them huge amounts of power and attention!
MYTH #4: IT’S OKAY TO DO WHATEVER WORKS TO GET THEM TO EAT SOMETHING.
Encouraging, pestering, nagging, praising or bribing your child may get a few more peas or spoonfuls of rice into them – one slow, painful meal at at time – but you’re simply inviting them to an ongoing power battle. One they can win more easily than you!
MYTH #5: I NEED TO BUY CHILD-FRIENDLY FOOD.
Your child may enjoy carrot from a squeezy pouch or be enticed by Peppa Pig pasta, but these type of foods give them the message that children don’t – or can’t – eat the same food as adults. So they encourage, not discourage fussy eating.
MYTH #6: I NEED TO CUT OUT SNACKS SO THEY’RE HUNGRIER AT MEALTIMES.
This can make for one miserable, difficult-to-manage child in the lead-up to lunch or dinner – and therefore make mealtimes worse, not better.
MYTH #7: I NEED TO MAKE FOOD FUN.
A good dose of fun around food is a positive thing but making smiley faces with veg on top of a pizza or shaping mashed potato into a hedgehog won’t solve fussy eating. Kids soon twig that it’s just another way of trying to get them to eat something!
MYTH #8: THERE’S NO POINT IN GIVING MY CHILD A FOOD I KNOW THEY WON’T EAT. IT JUST GETS WASTED.
Quite the contrary. If they don’t even see a food, they can’t become familiar and comfortable with it – which is a vital step towards them actually eating it. The key is exposure, exposure, exposure. Keep giving them a tiny bit of a food whether they eat it or not. (Remember, they can’t eat a food that isn’t even there!)
MYTH #9: HIDING VEG IN A PASTA SAUCE OR SOUP IS THE ONLY WAY FORWARD.
If we don’t give our children the opportunity to see and get used to vegetables ‘in the flesh’, we have no hope of them eating them. Adding veg to recipes for extra goodness is fine, but don’t do it as alternative to presenting vegetables boldly and proudly.
MYTH #10: I JUST NEED SOME REALLY GOOD TIPS.
There is no magic wand you can wave to stop fussy eating overnight. But ‘starting again’ with a fresh new approach at mealtimes, if put into practice with a 100% consistency and commitment, will work – and with a typical fussy eater usually only takes a few months. What’s that in the timescale of a whole childhood?!
Or what to do when your child asks to try a food you think is unsuitable for them!
WARNING: This’ll make your eyes water!
Those of you who have read the introduction to Getting the Little Blighters to Eat will know that my own childhood memories of mealtimes are not pleasant ones!
I’d like to share another story from those times with you here – one with a moral to the tale.
With certain meals, like sausages or liver and onion, my mum and dad liked to have mustard – you know, the classic, strong, yellow Colman’s stuff. Now one dinner time, my little brother, then two years old, became very curious about that little mysterious yellow pot on the table.
“I want some!” he said.
“No!” replied my parents. “It’s not for children. It’s really hot.”
But he pestered and pestered and pestered … until eventually my dad grabbed the pot, opened it, scooped out a whole teaspoonful and offered it to him. My little brother, delighted, opened his mouth wide and eagerly took in the whole lot.
You can imagine what happened next: Red face, spluttering, coughing, nose streaming, eyes streaming…, and tears, real tears with awful, inconsolable sobbing that lasted a long, long time. Not just because of the burning sensation in his mouth, but because of the betrayal of it all.
“That’ll teach you,” said my dad. “We told you!” said my mum.
Was it cruel? Yes. Did it kill his curiosity in new foods? Yes. He was going to be very wary about trying new foods in the future. Did it kill his trust in food? Yes – and almost certainly his trust in my parents too!
So should they have stopped him trying it? No! Should they have done it differently? You bet! Here’s the dos and don’ts of what to do when your child asks to try a new food that you think is unsuitable for them?
DON’T X
Stop them trying anything! We want them to be curious and open-minded and adventurous about food. That’s what non-fussy eating is, right?!
DO √
However, if it’s something strong, spicy, exotic or eye-watering, give them the teeniest, tiniest bit! Say to them in a neutral – not a negative voice – “I’ll just give you a tiny bit because it’s a spicy/strong/etc.”
DON’T X
Say “I don’t think you’ll like it” as you give it to them . Put no negative thoughts in their head whatsoever!
DO √
Let them make their own minds up. They may love it!
DON’T X
Say “It’s only for grown-ups” or “It’s not for children”. We don’t want to teach them that children should eat – or are only capable of eating – bland foods.
DO √
Obliterate the line between “children’s food” and “adults’ food”. This is mostly a modern, marketing idea pushed by food companies so that they can sell us more products like turkey dinosaurs and squeezy tubes of yoghurt!
DON’T X
Make a big thing of it if they reject, spit out or say they don’t like the food – or say “I didn’t think you’d like it”.
DO √
Deal calmly with any mess and say nothing! You want them to be open to trying it again in the future.
Curiosity about food (and the whole world!) is a natural, normal trait in little humans. Let’s do everything we can to keep it alive!
Fussy eaters can be turned into non-fussy eaters if we change our approach to food and mealtimes. But I’ll tell you what’s even better – stopping your child becoming a fussy eater in the first place!
And it really is possible.
Parents so often tell me that their child became fussy somewhere between 18 months and two years old. Before that, they gobbled up everything and anything, from Avocado to Zucchini (to nick an American word). It didn’t matter what it was. Food was food – and food was good! Then the fussiness started to creep in. They refused a vegetable. Asked for a particular type of pasta. Only wanted the same thing spread on their toast every single day…. Before you knew it, you most definitely had a fussy eater on your hands!
It doesn’t have to be like this. It really doesn’t. Just because fussy eating is incredibly common, that doesn’t mean it’s a compulsory part of childhood. As Anna Groom, the paediatric dietitian I worked with on my book says, “Children are not naturally fussy – but they will become so if the conditions are right!”
Unfortunately, we so often – with the very best of intentions – accidentally create the wrong conditions. But if we keep the conditions right, it is possible to sail through their childhood with a happy, healthy eater. That doesn’t mean there won’t be the odd food they really don’t enjoy (we all have one, two or several foods we are instinctively averse to). Neither does it mean they won’t test you when they hit the toddler stage to see what happens when they don’t eat something – BUT HOW YOU REACT TO THIS STAGE IS VITAL.
So if you have a baby – your first child or perhaps the younger sibling to an older, already fussy sibling – I urge you to beg, borrow, buy or steal a copy of Getting the Little Blighters to Eat and put the approach into practice from weaning onwards. It really will make a huge difference.
When it comes to fussy eating, prevention really is better – and a whole lot easier – than cure!
