Dinner Table Struggles

Are dinner table struggles over eating this or that food related more to a power struggle rather than what is necessary for a healthy child?
Dear Layla
My five-year-old daughter Laura does not want to eat any vegetables. I am used to eating a healthy diet. Meal times have become a major stress situation. Laura’s paediatrician confirms that her physical and mental development is fine. I just cannot believe that she can stay healthy on tofu wieners, noodles and ice-cream alone.
Roberta

Dear Roberta, I do not know of any family where eating dinner together is entirely stress free. Why is there so much stress around food in a society where we are fortunate enough to have the basic need to have enough food on a daily basis met? You know that your daughter is healthy from a medical point of view. Yet I can understand that your stress around the subject has not vanished. There are biological behaviour patterns that secure that parents will feed their children. For example when a baby cries, certain hormones are released in the mother that stimulate her milk production.*

On top of that most of us have deeply rooted beliefs around food. Many of us have strong ideas of what is needed for a healthy diet. Yet when we look around at how many    different nutritional systems there are, we must admit, that there most likely is no one right way of eating healthy. It is also a proven fact that food needs vary greatly from child to child.*

This is the same for adults. So rather than believing this or that theory about nutrition, we have to trust our own inner knowing. It is that inner knowing, we need to develop more in ourselves and pass on to our kids. Most of us have not been taught how to trust ourselves in that way. Instead we were told to trust our doctors and were fed ideas around food. ‘Eat what is on your plate’; ‘Many a child would be happy if it had a piece of broccoli to eat, how can you be so ungrateful!’; ‘If you eat this carrot your grandmother in England will be very happy’; ‘If you don’t finish this steak you will never be a strong boy’. Even if you have decided not to use your lot of imbedded ideas with Laura, you still pass on your internal stress.

Now rather than focusing on Laura’s strange eating habits, let’s focus on your stress level. Take a few moments and think about sentences that you often tell yourself around food. Include the ones you are certain are right. Write them down. Now as if it was a fun game enquire if these ideas are really true. You will probably notice that much of it you do not really know, you just assume. Then ask yourself if these ideas strengthen or weaken you. This little exercise will increase your inner freedom and flexibility.

Your daughter has long felt that food, and ideas around health hold a certain stress level for you. Her denial to eat vegetables gives her power. She can delight you if she does eat a piece of cauliflower and she can make you feel like a failure as a mother if she categorically refuses. It is a power she does not really appreciate, because she too gets stressed with it.

Here is my suggestion: simply do not feed into that power game anymore. Just trust her! Somehow she is in tune with what she needs. So far she has managed to stay healthy. Trust that she too has very strong survival instincts. Rather than focusing on her, fine tune your own inner knowing. Notice when you just repeat an ‘inner mother’ sentence. Prepare what YOU want to eat. If she protests and asks for ice cream instead, just give it to her. Sit down and enjoy the food you have prepared for yourself without worrying about her. Let her really enjoy the ice cream. Notice your own imbalances, notice your judgements and treat the whole subject as a fun personal study, rather than a problem that Laura has. Laura will notice the shift in energy immediately. If staying out of control completely does not feel right to you, just control it by what you have available at home.

The power struggles will not be over immediately, but they will have a different feel to them. Laura will keep noticing how different you are and probably will test you a few times to see if it is for real.

It may take her a while to become more curious and open about experimenting with other foods than she is used to. What you eat will become more interesting, because the power struggle is gone. Maybe she will stick with the tofu sausages, but at least you will enjoy the precious moments at the dinner table together. She will start to feel trusted and appreciated, like she probably already feels in many other areas of her life. Maybe she will start seeing you as a source of knowledge and information rather than someone she has to fight. In any case it is a wonderful opportunity for her to develop more self-esteem and inner wisdom. Not just for her, for you too!