Food is frightening for my fussy eater

Food is frightening for my fussy eater

“My child seems genuinely frightened of food”.

“My child recoils, they are scared to touch certain things”.

These are common things to hear when I am working with families. It is understandably really difficult for parents when this happens.

Thinking that our child is scared of something so basic and critical for life is really confronting. It also erodes our confidence in being able to help them to overcome their picky eating challenges.

Why food is frightening for a child

As a psychology postgraduate I am privileged to be able to listen to psychologists from all around the world speaking about their specialty subjects to other psychologists. One of the workshops I attended recently was with a renowned expert on fears and phobias and how to treat them effectively.

The parallels with what happens for children who are really uncomfortable around foods is really obvious to see.

A really food anxious child is seeing foods and feeling the same about them as many adults do about snakes, mice or heights, for example. The food elicits the same fear response, and their body goes into fight, flight or freeze mode.

Think of something you find scary and the way that it raises your heart rate, makes you breathe differently, maybe sweat a little and get all jittery.

That’s the normal response to something that triggers us.

It just does not feel ‘normal’ to us when it is over a new nugget or a lasagne.

What we can do to treat fears

Treating a phobia like spiders is all about finding a new level of comfort around it.

This same methodology is the most common way to support children who find eating challenging. It is all focused on gently building more and more of a comfort level around a food.