Effects of Forcing, Bribing, and Sneaking Food

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Your baby or toddler needs to experience enjoyable stress-free meal times in order to be a successful feeder. If you as a parent or caregiver are struggling with your child’s limited volumes, food refusals or meal time tantrums and have resorted to sneaking food in her mouth when she is yawning, laughing, or crying, bribing your child to eat, forced your child to eat or if you have ‘tried everything’ in your attempts to feed your child, you may be inadvertently reinforcing they very behaviors that you are trying to extinguish. Your behaviors and your child’s behaviors need to be changed.

Why is my child refusing foods?

There are many factors that could be contributing to or maintaining your child’s refusal of foods. Some babies or children experience discomfort while eating. This discomfort or pain is paired with feeding and in turn, reinforces their disinterest in food. Early medical interventions can cause or contribute to uncomfortable feeding experiences. Gastrointestinal complications, such as gastro-esophageal reflux, slow gastric emptying, constipation, eosinophilic esophagitis, FPIES, or food allergy/intolerance may be causing discomfort and negative associations with eating. Difficulty coordinating breathing and swallowing, increases the risk of aspiration and airway obstruction and makes feeding frustrating and scary. Sensory processing difficulties affect a child’s response to feeding. It is not uncommon for several complications to co-exist. When the underlying issue has been addressed and managed, often the association does not just disappear. Your child may need help to understand that feeding is safe and can be enjoyable.

Shouldn’t I be more forceful since my child won’t eat?

No. Forcing a child to eat can result in significant behavioral problems and eventual refusal to eat. Eating is the only thing a child has complete control over. When a child is refusing food, everyone wants to help. With good intensions, you may receive comments from friends or family members. Your may hear “make him eat”, “he’ll eat when he’s hungry”, “hold his hands so that he can’t bat the spoon away” or “sneak it in when he is laughing”. Unfortunately, this advice is dangerous. If you have already tried some of this advice you know that it often results in greater aversive behaviors or total refusal. If you have forced feedings don’t fell bad. Sometimes when parents don’t know what else to do they will resort to feeling the need to force, bribe, or sneak bites of food. Sometimes parents are motivated to use forcing techniques when a short-term increase in volume results. The ‘gentle’ forcing then becomes overt forcing before the parent even realizes. The forceful behavior then leads to refusal. Identifying the reasons a child is refusing is an important first step. It is important for your child to want to eat, not to eat only when forced. Typical reasons children don’t want to eat include reflux or other GI isses, food allergies/intolerances, sensory processing disorders, oral function difficulties, and swallowing impairment. Once the interfering factors are identified, a program to address these interfering factors can be established, then you can begin the very important work of building acceptance and trust between both you and your child and your child and food.

How can I re-build trust with my child during mealtime?

Once you have initiated management of any medical interfering factors of your child’s food refusals, your therapist specializing in pediatric dysphagia and feeding disorders will help you eliminate all force feeding and will design a program with specific recommendations to help you provide pleasant feeding experiences for your child. You will be working on changing your behaviors and the behaviors of your child. Direct therapy with activities designed for you to do at home will help you begin to progress to enjoyable feeding experiences. Consistent attendance of therapy sessions will enable you to continue to address feeding behaviors and make the necessary changes towards healthy eating.

For additional information please refer to our other educational papers entitled:

Extreme Picky Eaters, Milk Allergies, What is Reflux?, Feeding Complications of Reflux, Swallowing Food Whole, Dealing with Difficult Feeding Behaviors, Is My Child Chewing?, Oral Exploration, Exploration of Food, Establishing Healthy Eating Behaviors and Typical Feeding Development