Surprising reasons your child refuses to eat

Nothing is more frustrating than a child who doesn’t want to eat. While it is common for toddlers to seem extremely disinterested in food, it’s important that we as parents ensure our children are getting all the vitamins and minerals they need to keep their growing bodies healthy and strong. Yes, it’s possible your child is just a picky eater or holding out for ice-cream and cupcakes, but if you have to continually coerce your child to eat three proper meals a day, something might be wrong. 

What’s causing your child not to eat?

A growth spurt: Children go through growth spurts and during a growth spurt, your child’s appetite might increase. Outside of growth spurts, the desire to eat is considerably less. Studies have shown growth spurts continue to occur throughout childhood, although between toddler and puberty they occur less frequently and for a shorter duration.

Illness: Another reason why your child may have no appetite is an illness. If your child is sick and refusing to eat, ensure they stay hydrated and chat to your doctor about food replacements in the form of shakes. 

Reflux: A burning sensation post-meal makes a child very nervous to eat foods. Resolved reflux doesn’t always guarantee good eating as the memory and trust in the food experience needs to be experienced first. So be patient with your child.  

Constipation: Kids experience constipation and may not be able to articulate exactly what is going on in their tummy. A full colon doesn’t leave much space for the tummy to fill up with food. The feeling of fullness could come prematurely and thus decrease the amount of food eaten. This unfortunately can become a vicious cycle and therefore seek help to sort this out.

Feeding environment: Try feeding your child in a relaxed environment as sometimes a stressful environment may be the reason why your child is refusing to eat. Try not to fight with your child over meals, force-feed, or bribe them. These may act as short-term solutions, but they can negatively affect your child’s eating and nutrition in the long-term. It’s important not to go into mealtimes with an agenda. Try to make mealtimes fun. If your children look forward to mealtimes, they will be more inclined to eat their food. The more pressure they feel, the less likely they’ll eat and enjoy mealtimes.

They are full: Respect your child’s “fullness cues” and trust them when they say they’re full. Let your toddler self-feed and eat at their own pace at meals, provide lots of food variety at meals in manageable amounts, and let them be in charge of how much they eat. Make it known that if your child is too full to finish their veggies, then they are also too full for dessert.