Are You...
Making Mealtimes A Battleground?
Learning What Is Safe To Eat
Go On, Just Try It...
Both babies and survival experts can teach us how young children might learn to feel safe around food.
If trying something is one of the last stages of learning what is safe to eat, how does learning start?
Before children become self mobile they are very trusting of what parents offer them.
Watching a 4 or 5 month old baby exploring food for the first time is a fascinating process.
First they pick it up and examine it. Then, after throwing it on the floor a few times, they might try to get it somewhere near their mouths. Most likely they'll smear it all over their faces and just about everything else as well. Eventually they might succeed in getting it in their mouths, but the likelihood is they won't swallow any, or only a very small amount. As their skills develop they will gradually manage to eat more and more.
This bears an uncanny resemblance to what a survival expert would tell us about how to be safe around potential foods that are unfamiliar.
First smear it on your skin. If after a while there's no adverse reaction, rub a little on the inside of your lip. Again, if there's no adverse reaction chew a little and spit it out. Eventually, eat a little. If there's no reaction eat a little more, and then slowly build up to a larger quantity.
Each of these stages needs to be given at least a couple of days before moving to the next. Even then, you can never be totally certain that you aren't going to do yourself more harm than good.
But there is a better way...
Even safer than learning yourself, is to simply watch others eating.
If you can see someone else eat something and survive, then do it again and again and again, eventually you reach a point where you instinctively feel that that food must be safe for you to eat.
Of course, having decided it is safe doesn't automatically mean you think you'll like it, but that's another story I'll cover elsewhere.
So, the best way to feel safe is to watch others eating, then to handle the food, then to touch it to our lips, then to try a little bit, then to slowly build up to more.
The trouble is, how many children these days routinely get a chance to watch adults eat, or have parents with the patience to let them explore food in their own time?
Remember, young children do not refuse to eat things just to wind us up!
Created 16/05/2019
Last Updated 21/05/2019
