James Barry and a co-speaker discuss why parents panic when kids refuse food. One meal is just one of thousands in a child's life. Adults should set consistent family eating habits instead of letting a child's refusal dictate what happens next.
That fear that comes over parents, oh, my kid's not gonna get enough, or they didn't eat their vegetable at lunch, or they didn't do this or that. So what would you tell your younger self on how to cope with those fears?
First, when we become clenched with fear, we have got to remind ourselves that this is one meal out of thousands of meals our kids will eat. This is one moment in 18 years of parenting. For a child to refuse a meal or refuse a food, it absolutely cannot be a crisis that dictates what our next actions will be. We are the adult with the fully formed brain, and when we decide this is how our family's going to eat. But your kids and their actions and their emotions and their not fully formed brains should not be dictating changes. And so consistency is king.
