Every parent has pleaded, tried to bargain with, and shamelessly begged their child to eat just one bite of food off their plate. Every parent has had their child tell them they don’t like that food anymore when they just ate it last night. Every parent can tell you who their picky child was or what that one comfort food was they would only eat for the entire year. When it comes to the time you spend convincing your child to eat, how long do you think you’ve spent? Here is the total time parents spend using all their energy to negotiate with picky eaters.
How many hours parents battle with a child’s eating habits
In just one year, a parent will spend an average of 67 hours in negotiations with a child to get them to eat their food. Think of all the shows or sleep you could catch up on in that time. A survey of 2,000 American parents with kids of school age found that 44% of the adults stated the constant battle of wits about food is negatively impacting their child’s diet.
Parents shared that dinner is the hardest meal to get through, with around five of the seven dinners revolving around parent-child negotiations on what they will eat. The age when it gets the most difficult is 5 years old, or when a child starts Kindergarten, which makes sense.
The reasons for the food fights
The biggest food group children want to get out of eating is vegetables, with 37% of kids saying no way at almost every dinner. The next complaint is that the food smells bad to them, coming in with 33% of the complaints, closely followed by the food looks gross, with 32% of the time being the reason why kids turn their noses up at the table. It seems presentation matters to children when being served their dinner.
The last reason children want to get out of eating a certain food is that it’s new, and they don’t want to try new food, with 14% of parents listing that as the driver of the struggle bus at dinner. Getting children to try new foods and textures was cute when they were a baby, but having a 5-year-old tell you they don’t want to eat new foods is a different game.
Veteran parents all have that one child who ate nothing but chicken nuggets and bread and butter for two years straight because they didn’t want to constantly battle with a picky eater. As a parent, you have to decide what boundaries you will give your child when it comes to mealtime. Knowing it adds up to 67 hours in one year alone, times how many children you have and how long they are picky eaters, parents may want to reevaluate their stance on chicken nuggets and bread and butter for dinner.
