Why Your Child Is Refusing Food

0:00 [Music] i know that uh y'all have all taken out time uh from children practices um a lot of work to be with us today on a very very potential topic uh and i've had parallel discussions with each of y'all on

0:31 our millennial moms or parents rather raising fussy eaters and what i love about this very very specially curated panelists and each one of your journeys is i personally follow and i'm sure everybody here follows as well because we're all a sandwich generation between um google sort of parenting or kids stop press sort of parenting which is digital to you know to to raising our kids uh the way our grandparents or our moms have raised us and and so does the food

1:01 practice come right so uh i think i think that was one of the biggest uh reasons why we thought this was an interesting conversation uh to have and of course our kids have so many more choices than we ever had and that makes decision making even more tough um today we have with us um chino and i was just discussing with her how should i introduce her so i'm going to call her as a creator founder of guy

1:29 gourmet she's a chef and mom to zanu thank you chino for being with us my pleasure we have dr manjeri rao kapadia um and uh she's of course a life saver for me but i'm gonna also introduce her as a homeopath and a gut expert and of course a mom to do as well um thank you dr rao thank you for always thank you thank you mansi i appreciate it um we also have tara shinoy who's a

2:01 pediatric feeding therapist um thank you kara for being with us here today thank you so much glad to be a part of this right um you know i've said enough but a really startling fact that i shared earlier on kid stop press uh this week was in a study recently published they said that in twit that by 2025 there'll be 17 million obese kids in india and this is of course horrifying but this is the truth uh i just hope we have very little

2:33 role to play and a very informed role to play um and i just want to uh throw open the panel as a doctor you get a lot of questions about what to do with my child he or she doesn't eat what i serve um and more importantly will it have any repercussions if he or she doesn't eat um and especially long-term impact because you obviously track a whole lot of history when you're seeing patients um what's your take and what are the

2:59 typical questions that you're bombarded with so it starts with firstly identifying what age group they come from okay and i do not like the title of fussy or picky at all because i don't think children are fussy or picky i think they behave in a certain way with regards to food due to what is happening to them in their system first question would be what has changed lately has anything changed in the family has anything changed with the

3:26 child's health has the child been ill for a while let's say had a fever a month ago and after that the pattern has changed so we try and identify the connecting link between the the events that have happened which has led to this child becoming fussy so pretty much my the constant rhetoric i will hear is she was fine she used to eat so well i don't know what happened to her all of a sudden maybe it's the grandparents

3:51 maybe it's the new school or whatever it's never some of the other factors the other factors would probably play a much smaller role the bigger factors is what's actually happening inside their bodies and that is where i i come i play a role where i try and identify what it is that has happened which has led to this event occurring how are you managing uh between what you cook at home what you do professionally and um and and do you find it to be a

4:20 struggle um firstly what i do professionally and what i cook at home has nothing to do with each other because my daughter of course some days like randomly you might make a truffle pasta and give it to her to try out the other day she tried a morel mushroom for the first time which was usually exciting for us but firstly i agree with dr rao that fussy or picky kids i mean we forget that they have free will and they are

4:44 people little people who arrived very complying but then are developing their own like i still make a face if i see doodie on a plate like i hate it i don't want to eat it so just because we are putting in so much like instagram research and pinterest and this and that and composing these fantastic meals for them it's actually us who are getting offended that they are not appreciating our hard work it has nothing to do with that my daughter

5:10 ate windy for a year and nothing else and i was just like okay now what to do so i think it's phases it's conditioning it's also a lot of like uh not just to do with food but are they being raised very entitled are you offering them a menu full of options if they don't eat one we did that we were like oh you don't like this you want this we can just whip it whip it up like

5:37 what have we done to encourage this kind of behavior is something i would say is good to look at right um zara over to you and the same question that i asked dr rao what are the questions that you are most often bombarded with and you know what you get most frequently asked yes uh fancy so most often parents are very very anxious that's the problem you know that my child is um not eating enough the

6:06 portion size or my child is not eating vegetables trying new foods all these questions are like you know very very um common i keep um getting this one thing to know here is our expectation of how much a child should eat is very very different from what actually their body needs now you want your child to finish that one bowl of rice that might not be what your child's body needs right and you just want to finish

6:37 that and you just you know distract the child you just stuff it inside the mouth obviously the child is going to get diversion towards food right now like uh dr rao said and like chino also said um picky eating is a term which i would not like to use at all because uh you know there will be phases where kids do uh you know um eat less or the quantities less or they hesitate to try new food all these are

7:09 for a reason now their uh you know eating habits whatever they are not eating much or they are not trying food or even towards food is because uh you know it's for a reason definitely there will be underlying issues so understanding that is very very important rather than you know distract feeding force feeding this is not going to help at all right um dr ra when you when you mention about there are certain life events that

7:41 happen that causes this disturbance in the pattern what are those typical uh things that parents should watch out for that has happened or if they can't associate anything with that typical event and i mean if i if i was to go back i mean they were they were eating everything and then then i don't know what happened or what did i do wrong or what conspired and you can't point a finger to something specific then i mean

8:10 you know so two questions one is what could be those significant life events and the second if there is if there's nothing like that that you can point towards then what could it be so first of all uh to start with when they are growing they go through phases and in during each phase because the brain is growing as well the the quantity of saliva the antibodies within the saliva the quantity of gastric juice the antibodies

8:37 and the antibodies overall and when they are vaccinated they're producing humongous amount of antibodies to different different viruses then the their microbiome you know they are gut bacteria when they are born they are only reliant on the mother's breast feed and the fact that they get it from being breastfed or even if they're having bottle yeah anyhow that is the time when all of these changes are taking place so there is no it's not a static process it's a highly dynamic

9:05 process which will change on a daily basis it's not like it's a change that comes quarterly or half yearly it comes on a daily basis as a result if they do well on one day they may not do well on another day but we don't look at the quantum of food eaten we look at whether they are smiling i used to work in uh with a pediatrician a senior pediatrician in asha parikh hospital in bombay if he would see like a hundred

9:29 patients in the opd literally she would finish the opd in one hour and each each mother with the child should say at the end of one month i got frustrated i said i haven't learned anything from this woman she's not saying anything she's saying java to everybody and she's screaming at those who are giving their children serelac so finally i mustered the courage which was so senior she said the child was smiling that bulgham doesn't matter the fact that he's not

9:53 eating doesn't matter that potty doesn't matter just let them go the child is smiling so we see the parameters child is smiling child seems to be playing child is active let it be the food is a variable that is only doing the supportive work they are also getting nourishment from your love from the family situation from the environment around them how much they are thriving looking at external stimulus all those things matter but we only look at the

10:16 protein part of it or the quantum 250 ml i i receive big big reports of parents 9 am this 9 30 am this four florets of broccoli and two strands of asparagus and that's not correct you know you know one of the most requested um topics on kid stock press is a menu for toddlers and uh you know 9 a.m this 11 a.m this and and and guilty as charged but you know we were so tired of responding there was this

10:46 request that we actually made that uh but you're absolutely right um with zanu being only four and you know you've been just passing through that phase did you go through this this phase where you're like okay 9 a.m has to be this 11 a.m has to be this has she eaten so much broccoli carb protein fiber fat did you did you go crazy over it i mean i am guilty of making elaborate menus every six months when i feel like

11:12 you know everyone's going crazy in the house and no one knows what to do and i'm like sit down everyone and tell me what you like and stuff like that i think the only time i wrote stuff down with zanu was initially when i was breastfeeding her after that no i don't think we've ever followed uh i don't believe in food like that like doctor i was saying you know this uh uh protein and carb and how much she was

11:35 she was never a big eater but she was always a happy baby and she seemed like she was um enjoying what she was doing what happened was i mean like you're saying we don't know what causes them to suddenly change now in retrospect i'm kind of guessing it was around the time when i weaned her when she was 14 months old and she suddenly had access to unlimited milk like in a bottle she stopped eating and then i realized

12:03 later that she actually was it was just too convenient for like all her baby-led weaning and sitting on a high chair and chomping on asparagus just stopped and she said she was mobile suddenly so she didn't want to sit on the high chair she had access to all this which she did with me because it was a limited amount and then for about like a good six months she didn't eat any vegetable but bhindi and then they stopped all my instagram

12:28 videos of like her eating by herself and all of that but like i mean as long as she was eating something she was eating a chapati she was eating windy she eat cherry tomatoes and she ate fish and she ate rice and that's what she ate and then again it started changing when her body started changing again you know when she turned two and a half um again things started coming back a little bit of adventure in what she was

12:53 eating and a little bit of more exploration and uh she's still not like oh my god i'll try everything i've seen kids who just literally are excited about food and will try anything that's just not her personality it has nothing to do with the food we are offering or what she wants to eat that's who she is she's cautious she's an observer you know so you have to get to know who your kid is beyond just what they're eating

13:21 right that i'm gonna flip the question over to you that two parents come to you with specific concern that oh my child is not eating fruits or my child is not eating any vegetables or my child is not eating broccoli and then what would that solution or what would your response be to them yes uh i would also like to uh add one point uh to what you asked uh to you know chino and dr rao that why suddenly parents you

13:49 know my child was eating fine absolutely fine and suddenly my child doesn't eat anymore why does that happen now one thing what happens is every child you know 80 to 85 percent of the kids go through a phase of food neophobia okay so food neophobia is fear of new food so this happens uh around say 15 months or sometimes one year that much for 15 months and for some kids it might extend to you know as long as six to seven

14:17 years so this is when they feel that you know in one year or 15 months my baby was absolutely eating everything and suddenly my baby has ever developed aversion towards food the baby is rejecting everything so it is a phase uh where you know most kids go through this it could be food neophobia now how you deal with food neophobia when they are in this phase that definitely matters how long it is going to last how uh worse it is going

14:47 to be and you know during their phase of food neophobia you just force them to eat now uh put any parent comes to me i uh tell them one thing you know put yourself in your child's situation or put yourself in their shoes now i give you something which you never ate okay maybe uh you know something yeah like you know some worms insects or whatever what others eat i mean in some parts of the you know

15:15 world they do eat but you have never seen this it is new for you in your plate and i just force you to eat it you know i just shovel it into your mouth and force you to eat would mean times be pleasant for you would wouldn't you be aversion towards meal time so you might feel okay i am just giving you know bhindi or beans to my child why is the child having abortion towards that come on i'm

15:39 not giving insects or worms or something for your child that can be yucky i mean that can be gross your beans might look very very gross to your child because they are just learning to eat now we are what we have seen all this food for so many years so for us it might not be gross for your child it might be gross so next time you force your child to you know eat this bhindi or eat this beans remember that you know

16:05 somebody is forcing you to eat all these you know whatever you don't eat so that is how they feel that is how anxious they feel and in defense of all the other mothers our kids find all the vegetables very scary i think that's going to be the response there yes so what happens is like you asked me that you know parents just do come to me saying my child doesn't even eat one vegetable or doesn't even eat

16:35 food right so yes i get this a lot but what happens is a chinese child's will to try a new food or you know a new vegetable or a new dish only comes by exposing them to you know that fruit or vegetable again and again and again and again and again you don't say that my child doesn't eat bhindi and stop cooking hindi all together no that doesn't happen so you have your job is to offer

17:01 eating or not they will decide right so each time you expose your child to this food whatever that they're not eating their brain is building new connections right so when that happens they get more and more comfortable towards that food even if they're going through this phase of food neophobia so they get comfortable each time you expose them to that food so keep doing it because your child is not eating one particular food don't stop offering it to them

17:34 you