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Hey everybody. Today’s video is going to be about ways to decrease mealtime stress, especially for our hesitant eaters. This video is for you if your child maybe has a more limited number of foods that they feel comfortable with. Maybe they’re easily overwhelmed with new foods. This video is especially for you if you find yourself dreading putting food on the table. Not because you don’t like cooking, but because you’re not sure how your child’s going to react. You don’t know if they’re going to eat what you made for them, if they’re going to eat anything at all, or are they going to have a meltdown? Are they going to throw food? Is it going to ruin the mealtime for the entire family? So, if this has become a sort of daily stressor for you, I am hopeful that this video will give you some ways to help make that, at least make that an easier part of your day.
So first we’re going to talk a little bit about stress and why specifically I focus on decreasing stress for mealtime success. And then we’ll talk about some [00:01:00] practical changes that we can make today to help make mealtime more pleasant and relaxing for your whole family.
So when we talk about stress, we have to talk about the nervous system. So you’ve probably heard of the fight or flight response. That’s what’s called our sympathetic nervous system. It’s a protective mechanism. It’s designed to keep us safe in the face of an acute threat. So an example that a lot of people use is a bear chasing us.
If there’s a bear chasing us, we need to be able to use our muscles to our greatest ability, to run faster than we’ve ever run before, to fight stronger than we’ve ever fought before. We also need to be able to tune into our environment a little bit better so we become more sensitive to sight, to sounds, to smells, because the slightest leaf rustle could be the difference between survival or not. So at the extreme level, that fight or flight response [00:02:00] is critical in keeping us alive in these situations. So that’s why we have it. Unfortunately, that fight or flight system can sometimes become a little bit oversensitive. It can, it can go off at times when we wouldn’t think that it would need to.
For example, your child’s fight or flight system might go off because there’s a different brand of chicken nuggets on the table, or because their sibling has a piece of apple, and it smells funny, and, and that’s overwhelming to them. And when that happens, the body’s energy is all devoted towards those, again, muscles, heart, lungs, senses.
So you can see how, if you’re following this concept a little bit, how this can get in the way of a successful mealtime. If our body is taking all of our energy and putting it towards running, fighting, staying extra sensitive to our senses, that means it’s not putting any energy into digestion. In fact, the [00:03:00] opposite of the sympathetic nervous system is called the parasympathetic nervous system, which is coined as the “rest and digest” side of our nervous system.
So if we’re not putting energy into digestion, we’re likely not feeling hunger, and we could even feel nauseous. So in the context of mealtime being very stressful to some degree, some of that fight or flight response or that stress response is happening, even if it’s not to the extreme life or death, bear chasing us in the woods, degree. So, if that’s happening, again, we’re more sensitive to our senses, which means our children who are already more likely to be sensitive to the smell of food or the sight of food are now going to be extra sensitive if they’re feeling a lot of stress about mealtime. And they’re also less likely to feel hungry.
So I hope that helps put this into context a little bit about why so much of the focus is on decreasing stress [00:04:00] rather than just “getting them” to try new foods.
So what can we do? How can we actually help shift their nervous system out of that stress response at mealtime? The first practical tip I want to give you today is to take the focus away from food while at mealtime. And I know that sounds a little bit counterintuitive and confusing, but let’s zoom out for a minute.
Think about how most adults experience mealtimes and how much of a social experience it is for most of us. Food is something that we enjoy together with friends when we go out to catch up, it’s something that we do with our spouses on a date night. It’s something that, you know, it’s always central to our holidays and our celebrations and our family gatherings. And most of the time when we’re engaging in meals that are social in nature like that, we are not talking about how many [00:05:00] bites the other person took, and did they finish their steak, or did they leave a lot of it? Did they order something different this time or did they always order the exact same things? And sure, some of those comments come up in a, in a joking or in a harmless social manner, but it’s not the focus of the interaction.
The entire meal is not spent on how many bites of your broccoli did you have? Right? And if it does happen, and we’re on the receiving end of a lot of comments like that, it doesn’t make us feel good. If other people that we’re with are talking about how many bites we’ve had, or how much did we eat, or making fun of us because we only eat the same thing all the time, that doesn’t make us want to go back to mealtime with those people. Right? I think that zooming out, that’s a fairly shared experience, with a lot of adults. So for the children, you know, of course they, they do get those comments a lot and it’s coming from a place of concern, a valid concern, and from the [00:06:00] place of the best intentions.
However, the impact is very similar. If we’re always being told that we need to eat more bites or we’re not allowed to have the food that we want, we have to eat something else first. Or you know, if that’s our experience, we’re not looking forward to mealtime. It becomes a chore. It becomes stressful, especially if we’re already prone to being overwhelmed by food.
So how can we shift the focus? How can we prevent that from happening? How can we make mealtime fun again? Let’s think of some ways as a family that if you are doing a family mealtime, we can do that. So instead of talking about the food, let’s play a game. Let’s play, “I Spy”, let’s play a, you know, “20 questions” guessing game. You know, you can do almost any type of family game like that according to the age of your child, or your children. Make it something fun. Maybe we tell a story, but we only tell a part of it today. And you have to wait until tomorrow to find [00:07:00] out what section’s going to come next in the story or, you know, and anything at all that’s not about the food.
And yes, you’re still eating while you’re doing these activities. They’re, they’re not, you know, getting up and running around and, and taking the physical body away from the table. But there are ways that make it more engaging to stay at the table and to help them feel safe rather than stressed. So that’s going to be my first practical tip.
There’s a million ways we can do this . The joy of this is that you can find what works for your family. It doesn’t have to be a one size fits all. It can be anything from watching a show together to reading stories, to playing games, but the key feature that’s running through it is that we’re not focusing on talking about the food, especially the food that our more hesitant eater is eating or not eating at that mealtime.
Our second tip today is going to be about how we actually present [00:08:00] the food for our hesitant eater to make their plate welcoming and not overwhelming. So a lot of us have heard the advice to continue exposing them to new foods and and I agree with that. However, we have to be careful with how we expose hesitant eaters that are prone to strong stress responses to new food. Because we don’t want, again, we don’t want to trigger that fight or flight system by overwhelming them. So what I always recommend is that on their plate, we have foods that are comfortable, familiar, and safe for them. We know, you all know which foods those are, and sometimes yes, there’s some variation day to day, but in general, we know that these foods are fairly reliable and that they’re going to feel comfortable with them, even if they’re not in the mood for those specific foods those days.
Then, I recommend a small amount, you know, just a, a little tiny piece of whatever somebody else in the [00:09:00] family is eating, whether that’s what you are having or a sibling or whatever your specific family’s mealtime looks like. And then how we present that is going to vary based on your child’s comfort level.
It might be that they’re okay with having a bite of that on their plate, and they may or may not interact with it, but it’s okay to be on the plate. Other children are more sensitive and having it on their plate is too overwhelming for them. So instead of putting it on their plate, we put it in a little bowl separate right next to their plate.
It can be as small, and then you can, it can be as small as a little pea size portion, and then we can always build that up. The idea is giving them the opportunity to become more familiar with that food without being overwhelming. We want very small, underwhelming portions, to help them continue to feel safe and confident as they start to explore.
I would also caution you to not, again, don’t draw attention to that new food and talk about it to the point of the [00:10:00] child thinks that they’re expected to eat it, even if they’re overwhelmed by it. So instead of focusing on, “Oh look, you have a piece of broccoli on your plate. What are you going to do with that?
Are you going to lick it? Are you going to bite it? Why don’t you try a bite? Why don’t you try a nibble? You don’t know if you like it.” Instead of going down that path, just have it there. A small portion that feels underwhelming and then allow the mealtime to continue. Continue to do your other activities that we’ve talked about in our last portion.
Continue to play your game, continue to tell your stories, whatever it is. And when the end of the mealtime comes, if they haven’t touched that piece of broccoli, that’s okay. It was still an exposure. It was something, and that, and that positive exposure without it becoming a, a negative or a stressful experience is what’s going to build their confidence over time.
So again, to recap, we want as much safe, comfortable, familiar food on their plate as possible, and then we want the new food that we are exposing to be as underwhelming as possible so that we don’t cause their [00:11:00] nervous system to go into that stress response.
Finally, I’m gonna talk a little bit about ways to create a relaxing sensory environment to help, again, decrease overwhelm that can happen and can cause a lot of stress at mealtime. So if we remember from the beginning, when we are experiencing a stress response in our bodies, we tend to become more sensitive to things like sights and sounds and smells.
And with some of our neurodivergent children, especially, or our autistic children, they’re already more sensitive to some of those things at baseline, not always, of course, but some people are. And so if we’re already a little bit more sensitive and then we’re stressed, it becomes overstimulating and overwhelming very quickly, which is again going to activate that stress response even stronger.
So how can we limit that? And this is of course, going to be very specific to every child’s sensory profile and experience as well as your [00:12:00] family’s environment and set up. But some general principles is going to be to decrease as much external stimulation as possible because the food itself is already going to be a lot of sensory input. So maybe we dim the lights or turn some of the lights off. Maybe for some children, they do well with background music or background noise because it can help provide a soothing, steady level of input rather than sort of the, the clanging of silverware and the sounds of chewing, that can be a little bit dysregulating for some children.
So having background music gives their brain something to focus on that’s not some of those other sounds. And that can also help be relaxing. Maybe, for example, we eat in a different room than the kitchen. Maybe, maybe it’s easier and more pleasant for your family to have picnics in the, on the living room floor than it is to eat in the kitchen because of [00:13:00] the stronger smells out there from cooking and because of, excuse me,
because of the harsher lighting. Maybe, maybe we go non-traditional. Maybe you go to a different room in the house, where everybody’s a little bit more comfortable. Seating does not have to be always at a traditional chair at the table. You know, sometimes allowing us to sort of break out of our box of our standard typical expectation of the entire family sitting at the kitchen table, in the kitchen for a meal. Sometimes if we break out of that even temporarily, we can help again, make mealtime more fun and less stressful again. And we can always return to the table once everybody’s feeling more regulated, in the future. But some of those things or, you know, having, maybe we have, maybe we have a blanket, maybe a child’s wrapped in a blanket at, at the mealtime, and that helps them to feel regulated.
Maybe they have their favorite toy with them. Not as a distraction to prevent them from eating, but as a comfort item that helps them to [00:14:00] feel more regulated. So those are all some of these sort of environmental things that can be really helpful. And I just want to encourage you all to try what works for your family.
Don’t be afraid to experiment a little bit. Don’t be afraid to have, you know, have, have a dinner, like I said, on the floor, in the living room or outside if the weather is nice enough or, you know, change it up a little bit and don’t be afraid to experiment in the sense of an adventure, to help your child find the fun in mealtime again.
So I hope some of these things have been helpful for you. I do encourage you that if, you know, if you really are having a hard time every day and if your child is becoming increasingly limited in what they’re eating, I do encourage you to reach out to a feeding therapist, for more individualized assistance.
But I do hope that some of these general principles can help you find [00:15:00] a peaceful mealtime. Again, I will also link some additional resources below. There is a great free video for parents, put out by the Get Permission Institute by Marsha Dunn Klein. I encourage everybody to check that out. Like I said, I’ll put the link below.
She also really focuses on keeping mealtime peaceful and, and fun for everybody. So thanks again for watching and I hope this was helpful for you.