Just Work Around It: How to neutralize a child’s food resistance by getting it all out on the table

Oct 14, 2009 by Anna Migeon

Your kid won’t eat what you want her to eat. You’ve got a problem, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it needs to be solved.

“Every battle need not be won to win a war,” says Robert Conklin, author of How to Get People to Do Things. “Neither do all problems have to be solved, nor all resistance quieted.”

Sometimes you can just work around it, writes Conklin. How? By simply letting the resistant one have her say.

Face the resistance

“Gross. I don’t want that stuff with meat in it,” says your little darling.

Of the many ways a parent may react to this statement, broad is the way that will lead to a bigger problem and narrow the path to a…