But She Ate It Last Week.

“But she ate it last week.”

The mom sitting across from me looked genuinely confused. And I understood why. Her daughter hadn't just tolerated this food before.

She'd eaten it. Happily. Multiple times. And now? Absolutely not. Wouldn't touch it. Didn't want it on her plate. Wasn't particularly thrilled that anyone had the audacity to suggest she'd ever liked it in the first place.

Toddlers do have a flair for dramatic plot twists. Her mom started asking the questions most parents would ask. “Should I keep serving it?” “Do I ask her to take a bite?” “What if she keeps dropping foods?” “Should I make her something else?”

They were all reasonable questions. But I didn't answer them. At least not yet.

Instead, I started asking questions of my own.

I wanted to know what happened before the “no.”

Had anything changed about the food?

Was it prepared differently?

What did her daughter do when she saw it?

Was she refusing similar foods?

What happened when she said she didn't want it?

Was anyone encouraging her to taste it?

What had she eaten earlier?

How did dinner usually end?

Her mom eventually looked at me and asked: “So...you don't think she's just deciding she doesn't like it?” Maybe. But maybe not. And that's the part of feeding that can be so frustrating.

Children aren't equations.

We don't get: Food + hunger = eating.

Sometimes texture feels different. Sometimes appetite changes. Sometimes a child is testing what happens when they say no. Sometimes they're worried they'll be asked to take a bite.

And sometimes... they just don't want the food that day. Adults get to do that all the time. No one follows me around my kitchen saying:

“But Kristin, you ate chicken last Tuesday.” Thankfully.

The “no” was information.

It just wasn't the whole answer. And that's an important distinction. When we're worried about our children's eating, we naturally want to fix what we can see.

They refuse. So we encourage. They refuse harder. So we negotiate. They get upset. We get frustrated.

And suddenly nobody remembers why there was broccoli on the plate in the first place.

That's why I wanted this mom to stop looking at the refusal as the problem for a minute. I wanted her to get curious about what might be underneath it.

Because different reasons require different support.

The most important change didn't happen on her daughter's plate.

Her mom came into the session asking:

“How do I get her to eat this again?”

By the end, she was asking:

“I wonder why this became hard?”

That might sound like a small difference. It isn't.

One question sends us immediately searching for a strategy. The other helps us understand which strategy might actually make sense. And that's the part of feeding support I wish more parents were given.

Not another list of things to say. Not another rule they're supposed to follow perfectly. A way to understand what they're seeing.

Because when you understand why, you can make a much more confident decision about what to do next.