Handing your child chocolate to quell their tantrums? Study says it is more harmful than you think

Parents often think that food can manage kids' behaviour, making it the easier way.

Parents often manage and control their children’s behaviour and emotions with food. It’s not uncommon for parents to pacify their children’s tantrums with chips or chocolates to calm them or to put forth the tantalizing offer of dessert if the child eats broccoli. However, a study published in the journal Appetite revealed how these feeding behaviours, which may seem harmless, can skew a child’s relationship with eating, leading to habits like emotional overeating. The research by the University of North Florida examined how parental regulation of eating behaviour shapes children’s relationship with emotions and eating, especially during the preschool years.

Relationship between emotions and eating habits

To calm down an upset kid, parents often hand out chocolates. (Pexels)

The study assessed four specific parental feeding practices: using food to regulate emotions (giving food to calm an upset child), rewarding with food (giving or restricting food as a reward or punishment), emotional feeding (offering food in emotionally charged situations, irrespective of hunger), and instrumental feeding (using food to encourage certain behaviours).

Using food as bait, such as allowing a child to eat pizza only if they finish their homework, during the formative years moulds an unhealthy perception of eating. This practice teaches children to associate eating with emotions rather than hunger.

Rely on food to cope

Parental behaviour is a guiding path for children, and they pick up a lot from their parents. So, when parents use food as a tool to soothe or control emotions, children inadvertently pick up on that and depend on food as a way to cope with their feelings. When confronted with stressful and frustrating situations, children may resort to overeating as a way to calm themselves. The study also elaborated on emotional undereating, where children eat less than usual when faced with negative situations. However, while emotional overeating has a direct connection to parental feeding behaviour, emotional undereating may be a natural biological response to stress rather than an emulated behaviour from parents.

The study indicates that parental feeding practices leave long-term consequences. It may seem easy to put forward food as a motivator, like promising candies if children behave well in front of guests or banning desserts until they clean their cluttered toys. It’s an easy way to get things done, but it makes children more dependent on food, treating it as a way to cope.