Today I want to talk about Food.
As adults, we get to go to a supermarket and select foods we know we like, we bypass everything we don’t like because in our heads we know we don’t like it, we have learnt what we enjoy and what we don’t so we leave foods that do not tick our satisfaction boxes.
Children, do not always have this experience or in a lot of circumstances the luxury to stay no, they might know they like a particular food category, but when they get the selected item back home it doesn’t look or taste as they expect which can create a great amount of anxiety, maybe it has been prepared differently, or presented in a different way, the brand selected is a different colour or has a different texture, there are so many reasons why someone might not like a food they did yesterday.
It is not just children who feel this either, adults can too, but adults are given the autonomy to say they are finished. To anyone looking in on the situation from the outside this behaviour might be extremely frustrating, money and food has now been wasted.
Scolding people over food creates trauma, forcing people to stay at the table to eat food they don’t like creates trauma, what doesn’t create trauma is creating an accepting space where mistakes are allowed.
Don’t scold the person (children just because they are not adults are still people) for making a mistake, instead reframe it into a learning experience, what can you do in the future to make the experience better.
If you wouldn’t eat something you didn’t like just because you picked it out, why should anyone else, child or not.