Nutritious Endeavours
Going Bananas; Our family journey into child nutrition
When our son first asked for ‘banana porridge’, we embraced this innocuous request. Banana porridge is healthy! However, seemingly overnight it was all he would eat (interspersed with Weetabix and fruit). This wasn’t the boy who had recently won a coveted Best Snack Fiend award and cooked with us daily. What was going on?
We still are not sure what the trigger was. We had read that during big changes, like the arrival of a new baby sister, children often exert their autonomy in areas they have control; such as with their bedtime routine or toilet awareness. We also knew that stringent food restrictions could cause children to want forbidden food even more so that was never a route we went down.
Whatever the cause could be, every aspect of Playhood gave us many routes to support our son. Initially I went in to talk to the children about being a doctor (what an honour!). I explained how certain foods make parts of your body stronger. Carrots help you see in the dark; red foods make your heart stronger. Although this had a good impact on some of the children, our son was still adamant that many of these foods were ‘yucky’.
We then sat down for a one-on-one session with our teachers. Because of the small group size, they had been following his changing eating habits closely. Where he had usually been more adventurous with his eating at Playhood than home, he was becoming more hesitant to try many foods. As well as our teachers kindly and thoughtfully making changes in the nursery around snacks, we were able to get on the same page: we used the same language to describe food, put liked food with disliked food and kept each other informed on the small wins.
Our parent WhatsApp group was invaluable. Others shared details of their children’s eating habits, both current and forgotten. This helped us to see how common and temporary these behaviours were; a font of helpful ideas like usual. Our parent Lunch and Learn sessions supported us further. Illustrating the importance of eating together as a way of building trust within a family both at Playhood and home.
Sarah Ockwell-Smith has a free Gentle Eating webinar which I found useful. Some of her advice included:
Children have likes and dislikes, similar to adults. That’s normal and shouldn’t be dismissed.
Make sure food is not being used as a reward and there aren’t punishments if food is left. This can lead to emotional eating where children eat food they don’t need or want in order to feel good. Punishments can lead to lack of self regulation and a need to rebel with forbidden foods. In a similar way, don’t put food into categories such as healthy and unhealthy.
We need to understand why children are behaving a certain way. Eating is one of the few times they can express themselves independently.
We also need to look at our own subconscious behaviour towards food. Be careful of the language you use to describe your body image and don’t let them see you restrict food for yourself.
Get them involved. You don’t need outdoor space to grow food, you could even grow a seed in a mug. Or could you offer them foods that their characters in their favourite books eat?
Being scared of new foods is also innate. In hunter gatherer times it was natures way of protecting children from eating anything they see and being poisoned.
Also our taste buds get damaged and duller as we get older - toddlers are ‘super tasters’ who taste bitterness more. Remember that when you urge them to “eat your greens”.
Conclusion:
The emotional relationship we form with food is forged from the early years, and examining your own habits and food hang ups earlier on will help your whole family model healthy relationships with food.
With Playhood’s support and understanding, our son is back eating a wider range of foods again, although he is still very much attached to his banana porridge - sowing his not so wild oats!
We’ve learned a lot, from adding spinach to a banana smoothie (he loves his ‘super green juice’!) to making parsnip bread together. But we’ve also learned to give it time: children change. He’s growing up.
So if a little one that you know is going through a phase of thinking differently about food, try to listen and support without judgement. The best approach is to eat and cook together, and to have fun with food! It’s our responsibility to make sure we provide nutritious meals, but we must respect our children’s independence in whether they choose to eat it.
Please feel free to contact me if this is something that has affected you too.
Dr Anita Coutinho, Playhood Mum
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