How hypnotherapy can help end your child’s fussy eating

Is your child a fussy eater at the moment? Here we explore how hypnotherapy could help.

A common catch-22 situation among parents of fussy eaters is that they would rather see their child eat anything - even if it's not nutritious - than let them go hungry.

This is completely understandable and sometimes the best mindset to have. If the habit continues for a long time, however, it can result in the child becoming more demanding about the foods they eat.

What can I do to help improve my child's eating habits?

There are several things you can try as a parent. Hypnotherapist Penny Ling advises making mealtimes a more enjoyable experience.

"Don’t allow mealtimes to become a battle of wills and create a healthy eating environment to start with. Eat meals as a family at the table, as children see adults eating a wide variety of foods and often will want to try them themselves. Always offer a healthy option first and have plenty of fruit and vegetables to hand."

- Read more about how Penny uses hypnotherapy to help fussy eaters.

Other ways you can make mealtimes more fun include:

Include your child in the cooking process

Children may be more excited about eating if they have been involved in making the food. Consider some different ways they can help, whether it's stirring a sauce, fetching the condiments or chopping some veggies (supervised of course). 

Try more do-it-yourself meals

Another way to get little ones involved is to have more meals with DIY elements. Some ideas could be:

• tacos/fajitas 
• pizza 
• kid-friendly sushi-rolls
• yoghurt with various toppings
• mix-and-match bento box

Make the eating process fun

Aside from meals that have a DIY element, there are other ways to make the eating process more fun in general. This could involve arranging foods into fun shapes, using a sticker reward chart for trying new flavours, making up fun stories about food, pretending to be a food critic and allowing them to use their favourite plate/cutlery to eat. 

Hypnotherapy for fussy eating

If you're at the point where you need support, hypnotherapy could be a helpful option. Hypnotherapy for fussy eaters can be extremely effective. The idea is that the hypnotherapist will help your child retrain their subconscious mind to be more open to new foods.

Hypnotherapy, in this case, can be great fun as children have vast imaginations and can picture any given scenario with far more ease than an adult.

The hypnotherapist will introduce the child to some sort of imaginative scenario, for instance, an adventure into the woods to visit all the townspeople. Whilst there, they are treated to a number of different feasts. Because they feel like they should be a polite guest, they try each of the foods and are surprised to find that they enjoyed most of them.

"Children tend to be easier and quicker to relax once a good rapport has been established. Unlike adults, children are mostly unaware of the usual misconceptions and myths surrounding hypnotherapy and respond to change better, without question," writes hypnotherapist Les Roberts in her article, why hypnotherapy can be effective for children.

How hypnotherapy can help with fussy eating 

Hypnotherapy for fussy eating aims to change any negative associations with food, replacing them with more positive ones. This can be especially helpful if the child has had a negative previous experience (such as choking, or a bad taste).

Your child may have some subconscious beliefs about food, such as "I don't like vegetables". As hypnosis works at this subconscious level, these beliefs can be changed to something more helpful, such as 'Vegetables help me grow healthy and strong".

It also works to reduce any anxiety around mealtimes. This paired with the ideas above to make mealtimes more enjoyable can be a powerful combination to make meals something to look forward to, rather than dread. 

Hypnotherapy may also be used to build confidence in your child, helping them to feel more in control and willing to experiment.

Learn more about hypnotherapy for children and reach out to a professional today using our search tool.