Picky Eaters Need Structure

with Barbara Kolp-Jurss, M.D., Pediatrician, Advanced Healthcare

Posted: July 1, 2004

She’ll only drink milk if it’s chocolate. He’ll only eat a sandwich if it’s on white bread, with crusts removed.

In a society where food is plentiful and convenient to obtain, many parents today face a problem their ancestors could have only dreamed of — children who can be picky about what they eat.

Barbara Kolp-Jurss, M.D., Pediatrician, Advanced Healthcare "The most successful parents I know are the ones who said from the beginning, ‘This is what’s for supper.’ They didn’t make an issue out of it by substituting food."

Prevention most important
Barbara Kolp-Jurss, M.D., a pediatrician with Advanced Healthcare who was a dietitian before becoming a doctor, said the problem of picking eating seems to be on the rise. Dr. Kolp-Jurss noted that in babies and toddlers, some pickiness is normal, as very young children need to become accustomed to new tastes and textures.

On average, a child needs to taste a new food eight times before he or she accepts it. Often, Dr. Kolp-Jurss said, a parent will make the mistake of giving a toddler a new food just two or three times, and then, when he or she doesn’t like it, the parent will not present it again. This doesn’t allow the child the opportunity to grow to like the new food.

Dr. Kolp-Jurss said that between the ages of 1 and 2, parents should present children with a wide variety of healthy food. Doing this without making an issue of whether the food is eaten or not will lay the groundwork for eating habits throughout childhood.

If a toddler seems to be leaning toward one type of food while avoiding another, she suggests giving the child the more “undesirable” food first, when he or she is hungriest.

Preschool years
If picky eating isn’t nipped in the toddler years, it is likely to get worse when a child is between the ages of 2 and 5. Parents of very thin, picky eaters need to rule out “failure to thrive” with their pediatrician, but even these children need limits.

Preschoolers need to eat about five times a day — three meals and two small snacks. She cautioned that all snacks should be finished at least an hour before the meal and said that too much juice can cause children to eat poorly.

“Kids shouldn’t have more than six ounces of juice a day,” she said. “Juice keeps just enough sugar in the bloodstream to keep them from being hungry.”

A preschool child should be expected to eat what the family is having for that meal — at least trying one bite. Parents should not make them something else if the child claims not to like the meal.

“Your role as a parent is to give them healthy food,” she said. “If they don’t want to eat, that’s fine, but you’re not a short-order cook.”

If a child doesn’t eat that night’s meal, it can be wrapped and put in the refrigerator. When the child is hungry an hour later, the meal is brought out.

If a parent throws out the child’s unfinished food and then lets him have another snack later — even a healthy snack — it sends the message that if the child holds out, he or she will get something better.

Re-training a picky eater
While some children grow out of finicky eating patterns, others do not, and Dr. Kolp-Jurss said the older the child, the more difficult it is to change habits. Parents who have unwittingly supported their picky eaters in the past and now want to change should know that it will take at least 20 “undesirable” meals to change the behavior.

During a relatively stress-free time in the family’s life, parents should let the child know that from now on, she is expected to eat the same foods as the rest of the family. During this time, there should be very little junk food in the house, so the child’s eating can be refocused on healthy food. If the parent holds to not substituting another food for the meal the child doesn’t like, by the end of the 20 meals, their child should be a much more flexible eater.

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