Why Won’t My Toddler Eat?
A commonly asked question is why does my toddler refuse to eat when he or she ate so much as a baby? The answer to this can be due to several factors. Haig and Haig (1953) state that the toddler stage is a time when the rate of growth is much slower than a child’s first year of life. This means the toddler may not want or need as much food as the younger baby. A child may also enter daycare for the first time as their primary caregiver goes back to work. This often means that there are bouts of sickness as a child builds up immunity to new sicknesses or they become overtired from long days. These factors do not encourage a healthy appetite and often parents can become quite anxious about their toddler’s lack of food intake (Haig & Haig 1953, p.16).
Johnson et al (2024, p.287) assert that the toddler stage is often a difficult and frustrating time for parents when it comes feeding. They state this is because toddlers are developing their own independence and this includes the act of feeding themselves. However, this is marred with the fact that they are unable to successfully do this themselves and stressed parents are often cleaning up messes with limited time to do so. Parents are often battling with a toddler over this surge of independence while at the same time trying to feed their crying toddler, so that dinnertime can be a quicker, less messy event. Johnson et al (2024, p.287) reinforce that this battle of wills is not the optimal scenario for the toddler to try new foods and flavours.
How then can a parent of a toddler encourage them to try new foods and flavours and create a positive eating environment for the whole family?
https://emergepediatrictherapy.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/When-Children-Wont-Eat.pdf
https://perthspeechtherapy.com.au/does-your-child-have-sensory-processing-disorder/
Family Meals
The idea of joint family meals is important for the developing child. Chatoor (2012, p. 9) state that family mealtimes have “important developmental and social implications” and that with exposure to other members of the family eating and enjoying food can have a positive effect on the developing toddler. Toomey (2010) asserts that the structure of family meals helps children learn the routine especially if the environment and utensils etc are the same and that the toddler becomes “primed and ready to eat”.
Repeated Exposure
Many parents know that children need to try food several times before deciding that they like that food. Birch (1990) stated that it takes a least 10 tries of a food before a child decides that they do like that food. He asserted that this repeated exposure should be paired with positive reinforcement. Johnson et al (2024) found that a lot of caregivers would offer children food several times if they thought that their child liked the food in question. That is that if the child displayed certain behaviours when presented with a food, they were more likely to present this food to their child on multiple occasions. Johnson et al (2024) stated that when a child displayed negative behaviours towards a food parents were more likely to stop giving their child this food for a prolonged period of time.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jneb.2024.01.007
https://www.jstor.org/stable/41980398
Making Food Manageable
It is also advisable when feeding the growing toddler to note that the food needs to be something that the child can digest and manage to eat. Toomey (2010) state that the average toddler cannot manage large food items or large quantities of food. This scenario may become “frustrating and overwhelming”. Toomey (2010) asserts food needs to be chewable and should be limited to only 3 items with 1 Tablespoon for each year of a child’s life being their limit.
Creating a calm environment
While dinnertime with a toddler can be a stressful it is important to allow the toddler to feed themselves small manageable bite-sized meals. Try as much as you can to tolerate the mess. Anxiety about how much food your toddler is eating can lead to negative mealtime experiences for your child.
https://emergepediatrictherapy.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/When-Children-Wont-Eat.pdf
References
Birch, L. (1990). Development of food acceptance patterns. Developmental Psychology, 26, 515-519.
Chatoor, I. (2012) When your child won’t eat or eats too much: A parents guide for the prevention and treatment of feeding problems in young children. iUniverse.