In our FEAST Program, it is very common to see children with strong and very rigid eating rituals – meaning they often demand the same foods each meal, on the same plate, with the same eating utensils, and cut the same way each time. Unfortunately, parents are often never told this – inflexibility, of any kind – is a very big, bight-red, anxiety flag.  Understanding anxiety is the first step in helping our children overcome food anxiety, and seeing inflexibility as anxiety is an important behaviour-code-breaking trick.  So, when you see kids with big and unbreakable food rituals, we have a pretty good indication that we are seeing food anxiety.  Food anxiety is a very challenging thing, and the older the child, the more complex it can be for families. (To learn why food anxiety develops  so strongly in some children have a read of  Food Fear & The Food Avoidance Train).

Often increasing new foods requires a special type of therapy, and to begin successful food therapies,  we begin with getting an accurate observation of food flexibility.  Within our FEAST Program we ask parents to do a little activity we call Shape Shifter.  When parents try this simple activity we can learn a great deal about individual children’s food flexibility or lack thereof. This is a powerful tool  because once it is successful, it can continue as a type of real world flexibility therapy.

Here is how we roll out our Shape Shifter activity. But before we start, there is some prep and thinking to do.  We never suggest a caregiver run off trying any assessment without lots of chatting first. Most importantly, we want to set the stage for success, therefore we need to ensure the child is having what we call a green light day, before we start. This means that your child is happy and is having a great  and emotionally regulated day.

So, here is the 101 of how to roll-out Shape Shifter – we ask caregivers to change one sensory property of one of their child’s preferred foods. We always begin with changes in visual aspects first. Here is what we know, if the child can tolerate the single visual change, we know they are set up well for some further food adjustments: maybe more shapes, maybe a colour change, all with the hopes of getting to a texture change. A child who can tolerate changes will likely have an easier time learning to like new foods.

However, if your child cannot tolerate the shape change, we know we have more flexibility work to do, and I advise caregivers to pump the breaks. We do not see this exercise as a failure; it is an informal assessment of a child’s level of food flexibility and helps provide therapy goals to move towards. I am constantly telling caregivers, ‘there are no failures, just feedback’.

A Success Story

This is how I helped a family preform the Shape Shifter activity with a little boy I will call BB. BB eats toast each day for breakfast and it must be cut into equal strips each time it is served. I suggested to mom that she buy some fun cookie cutters, maybe she can find cookie cutters in the shapes of BB’s favourite TV characters, or a shape that BB really likes . I suggest Mom expose BB to the cookie cutters in a very casual way, maybe leave them in a place where BB can see them and naturally experiment with them. I tell Mom to see which shape BB seems to be most attracted to and use it to cut his toast into shapes.

On a green light morning, Mom cuts the toast into a star and gives it to BB.  To her surprise, BB was not upset by the shape of his toast. In the following days, Mom used other shapes, to the point that now each piece of toast can be a different shape. In a few weeks, BB’s morning toast plate is now filled with circles, strips, and squares of all sizes. Each morning is now a fun game where BB builds a different toast structure with all of his shapes and now calls himself “a toast builder”. Mom is now able to add BB’s favourite fruit to the plate with the toast. This is advanced visual food flexibility for BB.

How Shape Shifter Can Help With Long Term Food Success

This informal assessment led to Mom being able to make other mealtime adjustments. For example, BB was once very rigid in his need for the same brand name of chicken nuggets for his lunchtime meal. Since the Shape Shifter toast success, BB can now eat real chicken breast. This has been a glorious diet change for this child: he is now eating real protein at mid day which is helping with brain development, balancing mood, and increasing overall flexibility. We are slowly seeing the positives of this food flexibility therapy branching out into other areas of BB’s life. While he is still a very ritualized child, with great generalized anxiety, there are movements in his overall flexibility.

Each day we see successful families, none of these would happen without the perseverance of powerful parents.  We love helping parents become the leaders in their children’s therapies. If you want to learn more about Feeding Futures and their special approach to food therapies please check out our programs at www.feedingfuturesnutrition.com 

At Feeding Futures we talk a lot about food exposures. One day, my business partner (and sister) Laurie lovingly said to me, “Do people even know what food exposure means?” She went on to say, “Sometimes you talk too much like a therapist, clients need a list of food exposure examples”. And she was right….so I went to work on this article.

Good food therapy should address the fear and anxiety kids have with food. In our 12 Week FEAST Picky Eater Program we start by helping parents remove all the food pressure so that kids can begin a new relationship with food.  When we take care of the food anxiety, we see improvements in eating.

We tell parents to stop using the Killer B’s – Begging and Bribing kids to eat. So the next question is understandable – “If I’m not putting new foods in front of them and pushing them to try it, what do I do to help my kid eat?”  It is a very good question and the answer requires parents to take a shift in thinking.  We are comfortable pushing our kids to eat, it is how many of us were taught to eat.  But it doesn’t work for all kids. I say this everyday  – “If it was that easy, we would not have any picky eaters”.

Part of our solution is giving parents food therapy tools through a ‘prescription to play’ and fully explore food. The message to our clients is this: no matter the age or functioning ability of your child, food-themed play is the pipeline for successful real food experiences.

The fun food activities you can do are literally endless, here are just a few.

Imaginary Food Play

We love play food and there are lots of great kinds to choose from. There is plastic, cloth, felt or wooden. Because of children’s wonderful imaginations, play foods can be very powerful food therapy tools. Get your kid some play food and encourage food play. One week your playroom can become a restaurant, the next week a supermarket. The opportunities to help re-build your child’s relationship with food through imaginary play are limitless. Want your kid to eat eggs? Make sure there are eggs on the menu at the pretend restaurant and order them. Then ham it up and rave about how delicious they are.

Cooking and Baking

Kids love to help in the kitchen, even kids with food issues. The wonderful thing about cooking and baking is that it can also be a sensory activity, helping children get comfortable with smells, textures and colours of foods. Bang for your buck – cooking can give you the best use of food exposure time. How many ingredients are in that muffin or smoothie recipe? Well, the number of ingredients is the number of food exposures your picky eater will get when he is busy in the kitchen. And the chances of a kid eating the food they baked or blended or buttered is 10 fold better than if a parent pulls out the Killer B’s of Begging and Bribery.

Foraging for Food

There are so many great things that can happen in a food market, here kids can touch foods, smell, talk and think about food. Yes – even thinking about food is a powerful mental exposure activity. A happy stroll through the farmer’s market or grocery store can help set the stage for learning to love a new food. We can also add gardening to this list of exposures. When kids see where food comes from – the ground (not a store), wonderful things can happen. And the added benefits of getting dirty in the sunshine will help calm neurology and ensure  you have the best day ever with your kid.

Playing With Your Food

Playing with actual food is a big part of how we all learn to eat. But when you have a sensory issue as a baby, playing and exploring food can be hard. A big part of food therapy is sensory and messy play.   And the very best way to do that play for a picky eater is with food. So think about sensory bins with rice, beans, peas or oats. There is eatable playdough, pudding painting, pasta jewelry, making art with potato stamps and making fun art scenes with food. Your kids will be so motivated to be around food that they won’t even realize it is therapy.  Want to know how to make coloured rice?  Click Here

See how easy it can be! These are just some places to start with play based food exposures. An added bonus would be to add things that your child loves to some food play. Think about how powerful it would be for your Mindcraft loving child to help make Mindcraft Muffins. Get creative and add lots of fun. And take lots of pictures, then tack them up where your kid can see them. It is a visual reminder of how awesome they are and will keep them motivated.

Take a look around your child’s life. Look for food experiences where there is no anxiety. And that often means away from the dinner table where there are many levels of anxiety – food anxiety, social anxiety, sensory anxiety and often many, many memories of ffood failure. There is magic in parent directed play. When parents help support a new relationship with food, kids are able to lower their food based anxiety and try new things.

So add some fun with food and see what happens….I bet your kid’s newest food is closer than you think.

Lisa Pinhorn
Co-Founder of Feeding Futures
feedingfuturesnutrtion.com
Click Here to Email Feeding Futures

Play is the work of children. It helps prepare them for the grown up world and gives them opportunities to role play some scary things.Have a watch of our play therapy video. See how you can bring this very powerful tool into your home and help your extreme picky eater.

We love hearing from graduating families.  We wanted to share some messages about our FEAST Picky Eating program.

‘This was a great program for our family. Every week, we got one on one, individualized , private sessions with experts in the field, from the comfort of my own home, at a time that suited our family’.  

‘This program helped me see all the skills within my child, it helped me to stop looking at what was wrong and find her strengths’ 

‘I highly recommend this program to anyone that has a picky eater. The strategies and ideas were useful, individualized and worked’.

‘I learned that nothing is impossible, I had to believe that my child was able to learn new skills around food.  And that positive experiences lead to more positives experiences.’

‘The best part of this program was that it not only taught us about food exposure,but it gave a better understanding of why our son is a picky eater’.

‘This program was nutritionally based and behavioural based. It was great to have both aspects explained to me each week’