Every meal ends in yelling. My little guy won't eat anything but chicken nuggets and potatoes, and truthfully, I'm worried sick. Welcome to Toddlers Made Easy. For those of you who don't know me, I'm Dr. Catherine, a pediatrician with 33 years of experience, and I'm the mom of four amazing kids. Now today we're going to be talking about how to avoid picky eating habits. The important word here is avoid. Unfortunately, so many ineffective habits get started innocently enough. For instance, last week a mom told me that if her son doesn't eat his vegetables, he gets sent to his room for a timeout. Now I completely understand the frustration and the worry that leads to these desperate steps, but I'd like to help point you in the right direction so you can avoid inadvertently encouraging habits that you might later come to regret. Food battles and picky eating habits, they cause a great deal of grief and stress and worry. So today we're going to talk about how to avoid these problems. Realistically, it's a lot easier to prevent a problem than it is to fix it. Or put another way, it's much easier to learn a good habit than break a bad one. Now, in a future episode, we'll have a good chat about how to help picky eaters turn around their habits, but for today, I want to focus on how to approach mealtimes in a way that encourages a relaxed and healthy relationship with food. And by the way, I have an online course for parents of kids aged 1 to 6 years about how to calmly and gently handle all those crazy awesome toddler moments. If this interests you, take a look at the link in the show notes. Now let's get started by considering normal toddler eating habits. When you know what's normal and expected, it's much easier to respond in ways that avoid problems. So let's get down to it. Kids have really tiny tummies, and so they need more eating opportunities throughout the day. Many toddlers need to eat around every two to three hours, in other words, three meals and two to three snacks. A toddler may love a particular food one day and absolutely hate it the next. Does that sound familiar? A toddler may also love to eat the same food over and over, just like they like to read the same book a gazillion times. Toddlers often won't eat unless they're hungry, and that's a really good thing. Toddlers refuse to eat certain foods, especially if you're pushing them to eat it, because they crave power. And they may not eat the same amount each day. They eat based on their body cues. And lastly, some toddlers are just more hesitant about texture and newness than others. From a developmental perspective, toddlers need to feel in control, and this is a theme we've talked about, and this is a theme we've talked about over and over. One way a toddler will assert their need for independence is by choosing what they will or what they won't eat. In other words, they may refuse to eat certain foods just to feel powerful. So a no pressure approach to eating will sidestep unnecessary power struggles. And really, parents rarely win these food wars. Now research shows about 50% of kids are picky eaters at some time in their life, and most often this time is around two years of age. So think of picky eating as a natural stage as opposed to a problem, and trust in your baby's eating journey. Now I want to share three strategies with you that will help you avoid these picky eating habits and food battles. The first strategy is to let your child choose how much they eat. Studies have shown that kids eat better and more when they're not pressured or bribed to eat. Pressure comes in lots of forms. Let me give you some examples. Make mummy happy and eat your pea, sweetheart. You can't leave the table till you finish what's on your plate. Just two more bites and then you can get up. Take one more bite and you can have a cookie for dessert. Pressuring our kids teaches them to eat to make us happy, and you know what? That leads to obesity. Instead of that, we want to teach a child to listen to their body, which is what comes naturally to them anyways. We want them to eat when they're hungry and stop when they're full or comfortable. Now I know this isn't easy, but it's important to respect your child's appetite or even lack of appetite. In other words, if she doesn't want to eat, don't push it. Allowing your child to choose how much to eat is a great way to avoid picky eating habits altogether. And it teaches children to trust themselves because really they know their body better than anyone else. And just remember, kids are eating every few hours, so if they don't eat well at one meal, well the next opportunity it isn't far behind. Our next strategy is to allow your child to be in charge of what they eat from the meals served. So the first strategy was to look at how much they eat, and this strategy is looking at what they eat. Putting your child in charge of what they eat satisfies their need to feel in charge. Now your job is to provide healthy meals, and your child's job is to choose what they'll eat from what's provided. Here's some things to avoid saying. If you don't eat your vegetables, you're going to get sick. You love carrots, you ate them yesterday. Try them, you'll love them. Finish what's on your plate. You're lucky to have food because kids in other countries are starving. Avoid talking about food as a good food or a bad food, otherwise sometimes kids assume they're good or bad based on what they're eating. I'd suggest you make one healthy family meal and provide at least one food you know your child will eat, also known as a safe food, and you provide that at each meal. Kids eat frequently, and even if they don't eat what you hoped they would at one meal, well a healthy snack is not far away. I typically encourage my patients to consider what a child has eaten week by week, not meal by meal. Most kids will have eaten at least a little of each food group by the end of the week. You'll avoid picky eating habits before they begin when your child is put in charge of making choices about what they eat. Of course, you're providing the healthy meal and your child chooses from that healthy meal what to eat. Don't start making multiple meals, as this just encourages picky eating habits down the road. Provide a healthy family meal and always include a safe food. And then remember what research tells us. Pushing a kid to eat actually results in less intake. Now our third point or strategy has to do with the eating environment. Instead of focusing on how much or what your toddler eats, make happy and relaxed mealtimes your goal. The benefits are enormous, not only from a nutritional point of view, but also emotionally. Happy mealtimes strengthen family bonds and encourages a healthy relationship with food. Also, we can teach by just being a good example. And lastly, sharing family meals, it helps with self-esteem and even communication skills. Allow kids to explore the food with their hands when you can tolerate a mess, and don't beat yourself up, you're not going to feel like that very often, but when you do, it's a good thing in terms of encouraging healthy eating habits. Repetition, without pressure, encourages a child to try new foods, and that means you offer a new food many times, but you don't ask or pressure your kid to eat it. Just offer it in small portions, try to provide it in different ways if you can. You can talk about the color and the texture and the aroma of food. It's a good idea to involve your kids in food preparation, making shopping lists, cleaning, and even preparing foods on a regular basis. Also, kids learn a huge amount by example, so we want to be a good example and eat the foods we want our kids to eat. If your child refuses to eat something, just say something like okay, maybe you'll enjoy it next time. Also, we need to have realistic expectations about how long a toddler is likely to sit at the table. In general, although this can really vary, but a child less than two years will last four minutes or less at the table. A two year old may last four to six minutes, a four year old eight to twelve minutes, and a six year old twelve to twenty minutes. Now there's a lot of variation in this, but I just wanted to give you some sense of what's normal. The next point is to offer a wide variety of foods, different portion sizes, use different brands of food, and try to give food in different shapes. Also mix up what you serve at different times of the day, so for instance, give soup for breakfast. Screen time is a very important point for us to talk about, and I would suggest you avoid screen time while eating. When we eat in front of a screen, we eat on autopilot. Have you ever sat down in front of the TV with a bowl of popcorn and the next thing you know it's gone? You don't even remember eating it? That's what it means to eat on autopilot. And a toddler's exactly the same way. Plus, if your child's watching a screen, then he's not listening to his body or noticing what you're eating and other family members are eating, or even engaging with family members. Screen time eating in front of a screen is associated with obesity. Now yes, it may help food get consumed in the short term, but it really doesn't promote a healthy relationship with food down the road. Kids do really well with structure, and so I would provide regular mealtimes and sit-down snacks. Our responsibility again is to create the structure, and our kids' job is to eat, to do the eating. Now children benefit from structure in all aspects of their life, including eating. So eating at set times helps kids become hungry between meals, which then helps with them learning to listen to their body. And along the same lines, I would suggest you avoid grazing. It's a really common habit, especially if you're worried about your child's intake. But it leads to picky eating and power struggles, and it can just get right out of control, and it can easily spin out of control. Kids eat better at mealtimes when they come to the table hungry. Now, of course, please speak with your healthcare provider if you're concerned about your child's eating habits or their growth. Sometimes, very rarely, but sometimes a child is a picky eater because of sensory or developmental or health issues. Your physician will tease out normal and expected picky eating habits from those related to an underlying problem. So it's time now we throw out the old habits of pushing and bribing and coaxing our kids to eat, and instead encourage a child to listen to his or her body. Trust is the new keyword. Trust your toddler to eat the right amount for him or her. Now I hope you found this episode helpful. Actually, if you have a friend who you think might benefit from this chat, please share this episode with them. I want to be able to help as many families as possible to avoid this hugely stressful problem. So have a great week, and we'll talk again soon.