Handling Your Picky Eater
By Abigail Natenshon

Question: “Should I offer my child an alternative dinner if she doesn’t like what the family is eating?”


Answer: There are no hard and fast rules when it comes to parents and kids; parents need to assess each situation for its unique quality, and to trust their instincts in response. It also helps if both parents give the child the same message by providing a “united front.”

Here are a few guidelines to keep in mind in approaching this issue:

What does your child’s request signify?

The child who is generally a healthy, flexible eater who sits with a plateful of healthy course items but who has a particular dislike for one particular food served, may occasionally substitute a protein for a protein, a complex carbohydrate for a complex carbohydrate, if only now and then. The exchange should be simple, easy and facilitated by the child (substituting a scoop of cottage cheese or tuna salad for the protein course.)

If this request resounds consistently during most mealtimes, it probably has less to do with the child not enjoying the particular food choice and more to do with his or her need to establish control of the situation and to draw attention to herself.

If the child is refusing foods that contain certain fats or sugars that could be calorie dense, that might lead a parent to consider whether this might be an early warning sign of the onset of food restriction or an eating dysfunction. It might be helpful to discuss with the child what he or she may have in mind in demanding such a compromise.

If the child is not hungry at dinner because he or she has eaten a snack too close to dinner time, this is something that must be noted and avoided in future situations.

Beware that by enabling or encouraging the child to eat only a few food items, the parent may be missing a prime opportunity to expand the diversity of the child’s palate, taste preferences and food repertoire, all of which will have consequences later in life.

Parents might look to themselves in the face of a picky eater. Where might the child have picked up the idea that special accommodations around food represent acceptable behavior? Might the parent inadvertently be modeling such behaviors or eating attitudes at restaurants by asking for salads without dressing, fish hold- the-oil? Kids learn from what parents do, and do not do. They learn intentionally and unintentionally. They never stop watching and learning.

I would always investigate whether or not this behavior at dinner might be representative of behaviors in other spheres of the child’s existence; is the child generally unable to easily adjust to and accommodate change, discomfort? Is the child generally inflexible and obstinate? Typically, eating behaviors are the tip of a behavioral iceberg, a metaphor for how a child thinks and acts in other spheres.

Inflexible or immoderate behaviors are always suspect, never healthy. Any behaviors that take on the quality of being ritualistic or compulsive is rooted in anxiety.


Abigail Natenshon, MA LCSW