Parents’ use of food as a reward is linked to poorer emotion regulation in toddlers.
- Offering food to calm or comfort an upset preschool child leads to poorer emotion regulation.
- This poor emotional regulation in toddlers promotes emotional overeating, “defined as eating in response to negative emotions like stress or frustration.”
- This coercive feeding practice also causes emotional undernutrition, which is not influenced by parental behaviors but rather by biological responses to stress.
Do you tend to give candy or cakes to reward your child? This is not a good idea, according to researchers at the University of North Florida (United States). In order to reach this conclusion, they started from an observation: “Around preschool age (3 to 5 years), a crucial time for both emotional regulation and eating habits, there is a shift from undereating to emotional overeating, defined as eating in response to negative emotions like stress or frustration, which can lead to weight problems and potential eating disorders.” This suggests that parents are using foods to control toddlers’ emotions, rather than teaching them appropriate strategies.
4 coercive eating practices were tested
As part of a study, published in the journal Appetitethe team hypothesized that this practice of coercive control over eating would be associated with a child’s poorer ability to regulate their own emotions, which would lead to increased emotional overeating. To test this theory, scientists recruited 221 mothers of 4 and 5 year old children. The latter answered questions assessing their eating practices, emotional regulation skills and their child’s emotional eating behaviors.
Then, four coercive eating practices were tested: “offering food to calm or comfort an upset child; providing food as a reward for desired behavior or withholding it as punishment; offering food in emotionally charged situations regardless of hunger; using food to encourage or discourage specific behaviors.” Toddlers’ emotional regulation was measured using a validated checklist that assessed their ability to manage the intensity, duration, and expression of emotions. Emotional overeating and undereating were assessed with a questionnaire examining how often youth ate more or less than usual in response to their emotions.
Giving food as a reward promotes emotional overeating
According to the results, all four coercive eating practices were linked to poor emotional regulation in children, which in turn, was associated with increased emotional overeating. Another observation: coercive eating practices also led to emotional undernutrition, but it was not influenced by emotional regulation and therefore less by parental behavior. Thus, it may instead come from biological responses to stress. “Future experimental and longitudinal research is needed to confirm these data,” the authors concluded.
