{Guest Post} The Emotional Side of Picky Eating

An introduction to Emotionally Aware Feeding {EAF}

When Jennifer invited me to write a guest post about EAF for her blog, I thought I would begin at the beginning and answer the question ‘What is EAF?’

EAF stands for Emotionally Aware Feeding.  In short, this refers to the fact that when you consider the business of feeding your child, you need to understand the feelings involved in order to give her a positive relationship with food. The long answer to the question ‘What is EAF’, however, is more complex and refers back to the world of psychological and therapeutic theory. As a Child and Adolescent Therapist, this is my home territory– I have applied the ideas usually associated with family therapy to the dinner table and come to some surprising conclusions.

So whose emotions do we need to be aware of? Most people focus on the child when tackling picky eating. It is easy to label a child ‘picky’ and decide that the problems are innate. Whilst I very much accept that certain feeding problems are inborn, the emotions I teach parents to be aware of are their own.

The first EAF rule is “Keep mealtimes relaxed and upbeat”. This might sound simple, but in fact it requires a degree of awareness of your own feelings in order to be achievable. So why can’t you fake it to make it? Because children know what is really going on. They may not have names for the feelings they pick up, but they pick them up nonetheless. In short, children don’t ‘hear’ your surface niceties and attempts to get them to eat with swooping aeroplanes and choo-choo trains approaching the tunnel – they ‘hear’ your anxiety about their nutritional intake and maybe even your hidden anger or frustration that they are rejecting what you have prepared…again.

Once you understand that you can’t pretend to be calm and relaxed at mealtimes, you may be wondering what you’re left with. The alternative is this: process your emotional reactions to your child’s eating then you can be genuinely calm.  Here are three tips which will help you to achieve this:

1.     Get your child’s weight and growth checked – if you know that there are no problems with her health, your anxiety will diminish enormously

2.     Process your own food history – by talking to someone you trust about how you were brought up in relation to food, you will gain important insights into what food and feeding mean to you and how this may be impacting on your role as a parent

3.     Focus on the social side of eating – if meals are about enjoying one another’s company rather than what is going into your child’s mouth, the atmosphere at the table will automatically lift.

There are many other aspects of EAF that can help you solve your child’s picky eating. I have written about these in my book War & Peas, published earlier this year. If you are worried about your child’s eating, the first step towards making a change is to step back from thinking about what he is eating and start to think about how he is eating. If his eating behaviours are tangled up with emotions and power struggles, you need to begin to separate these out.  Practicing EAF will enable you to do this.

Although EAF is simple and accessible, it is not easy. This is because you need to follow EAF consistently and will doubtless meet with resistance as your child tests whether or not the changes you have put in place are here to stay.  With a lot of determination (and support from friends and family) your hard work will soon pay off and you will start to enjoy happier and more relaxed meals with your child.

Jo Cormack is a counsellor and mum of three. She is passionate about helping parents of picky eaters, using an approach that she has developed over the past few years called EAF (short for ‘emotionally aware feeding’).  Her book  (War & Peas) explains how EAF works and why. It is available as an e-book and in paperback . She and her husband have been foster carers which spurred her on to research on picky eating as many children who are fostered have problems around food. You can reach Jo on Twitter and her Website.   

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