In the second part ofthis series, registered dietician and nutritionist Katherine Zavodni answers even more questions (including ones about picky eaters) from our Facebook group,Small Plates: For Parents Who Cook. Check out Part Oneright here.
I often struggle with questions about the right way to feed my kids. So I reached out to registered dietician Katherine Zavodni, a nutritionist who specializes in child- and family-feeding concerns, including non-diet, intuitive-eating nutrition therapy and eating-disorder treatments. Zavodni, who has had a private practice for over 10 years, works with kids and families every day not only on nutrition issues but also on the emotional and social factors that so frequently overlap with food. Read: she's the kind of nutritionist who isn't just focused on grams of fiber and phytonutrients—she delves into family attitudes about food, too.
In this second round of questions from the Epicurious Facebook group,Small Plates: For Parents Who Cook, Zavodni had plenty of insights to share about picky eaters, appetite levels, control issues, and more.
Note: This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
Is it okay to keep feeding my four-year-old? Because if we do, he eats great. If we don't, he just doesn't eat. [NOTE: By "feeding," she means actually putting food on a fork or spoon and feeding it to him.]
The actual development of self-feeding skills is as important as the actual physical nutrition that they're consuming. At four years old, they should have some self-feeding skills to the extent that they don't need to be literally spoon-fed. I'm actually not in favor ofspoon-feeding infants, necessarily.
Yeah. I think they can do it.
Yes, if you can facilitate them learning to use a spoon for things like yogurt and whatnot. Fine motor skills and appropriate meal behavior can really be built by giving them opportunities to self-feed. If this child is kind of behind on some of those skills because of this pattern of being spoon-fed for so long, then he's maybe got some catching up to do. In terms of whether or not enough nutrition gets in him, it comes back to this idea that you can trust your child to eat enough for his or her body.
Now there may be a lag period if the child is used to be spoon-fed at every meal. But you can have family meals with him, and give lots of finger foods that he can grab, keeping in mind safety from choking, then sit down and have that eating experience where you're feeding yourself, he sees what you're doing, and he picks it up. Assuming he's verbal and doesn't have any other communication challenges, we can communicate that this is how we eat now and we use our fingers and our thumbs. But if it's clear that he can't grasp a spoon or put small pieces of food in his mouth, then you would need probably an OT [Occupational Therapy] evaluation.
Right. What if it's not physical but more like he has no problem using a spoon or a fork, it's just that when he's sitting at the table, he just is not interested in the food and he's just not eating? Can you talk a little bit more about what you meant by trusting the child?
So more than likely, this is a habitual behavior situation. It's not that he's just not interested in the food. It's more that this is just how he's used to experiencing food. Our bodies ask us for food every day, several times a day. If she were to stop that behavior of spoon-feeding him, he might have a few times that he just doesn't want to eat anything because maybe there's some rebellion there or he's not comfortable with the new plan. But at some point, unless there's some other kind of sensory challenge, the child will start to feed himself, because our bodies drive us toward doing that.
If mom stops with the spoon and he literally just wasn't eating, I would be really, really surprised, but at that point they would need to reach out to a dietician or a physician to assess what that issue is. But in terms of getting enough food, a lot of times we limit our children inadvertently by assuming that they won'ttry new foods. You'll hear from parents "oh, you don't like that" or "I'm not going to get that, you don't like that." When you think about it, you might not have offered that food in two years because you didn't think your child likes it, right? We make assumptions about these limitations that they have, when really we're just not giving them opportunities to develop those skills.
In terms of also just trusting them to know how much food they need, can you talk a little bit about what you meant by that?
Sure. At that age, they may not need a whole lot of food. Another trap that parents fall into is assuming that their toddler/young child should be eating a certain amount of food. In reality, they might need just a few bites of something. Their needs don't necessarily match our expectations of their needs. If we approach feeding from a trust perspective, then we do sometimes have to sit with our discomfort. Like what if this isn't enough, what if this is too much, what if this is the wrong amount? What if this is not how this is supposed to go?
But if we proceed from that perspective of trust, then we can just keep an eye on growth. You can always go see your pediatrician and make sure growth is proceeding. But it's important to let go of how much we think they should be eating, because inevitably, there are times in a child's growth trajectory where we're concerned that they're not eating enough or too much. There are higher metabolic-need times when growth is rapid, then there are other times when growth isn't as rapid and they just don't need as much. We're led to believe that there's a right amount for a certain age—not only daily, but at each meal—when children are actually really good at letting their bodies guide them in that way.
Do you have advice for parents about sitting with that anxiety? Like how do they deal with that if they're recognizing, okay I'm worrying about this, but this might not be an actual valid concern yet.
I think depending on the degree of distress that a parent is in, it makes a lot of sense for parents to seek their own support from a dietician who can be a sounding board. But I think the key point is that it's never helpful to pass that anxiety onto the child and pressure the child to eat in a way that matches your expectations. That's not the response that will help the child grow into a confident eater.
Yeah, I saw this just the other day. A reader posted a question. They were like, my son has lost his appetite, he's not eating anything at dinner, he doesn't want his usual food. He's eating at breakfast and lunch, but he's not interested in dinner.
Very, very common.
Is it?
That is extremely common. Young kids often eat earlier in the day—especially preschool and elementary school-age kids. They're starving mid-afternoon, so they'll eat a huge after-school snack as big as a meal. Then they're not hungry at dinner time. As long as we're offering those eating occasions at those regular intervals and not really allowing grazing all day, it's really fine. If they're really not super-motivated to eat at dinnertime, we can reinforce their body trust by just allowing that to just be. I
If they're hungrier after school, then we feed them after school and we offer dinner, of course. But if they're just not interested in dinner, that's a very common pattern for young kids. We can honor that and we can reinforce that trust that they have in their bodies. Kids will also get hungry again before bedtime if it's a couple hours after dinnertime. Then of course, the temptation is for parents to get upset, "well you didn't eat your dinner, of course you're hungry." But if we really ground ourselves in the trust that their appetite is guiding them, you can plan for a little bedtime snack. It's not just a free-for-all—we're just allowing for those natural ebbs and flows in appetite.
