The tale of the picky toddler is a pretty familiar one, with parents nearly always blamed for caving into their toddler’s demands for cheese sticks and crackers. But, as Rachel Rabkin Peachman wrote in a blog post on the New York Times’ Motherlode blog, new research published in the journal Pediatrics shows there may be a connection between picky eaters and anxiety, depression, and ADHD.
The study sampled children between the ages of 2 and 6, and found that “even moderate selective eating (a.k.a. picky eating) is associated with symptoms of psychological disorders such as anxiety, depression and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.” Children with severe selective eating were “seven times more likely to have social anxiety and twice as likely to have a diagnosis of depression compared to children without selective eating habits.”
This connection between picky eating and psychological disorders was also discussed in Stephanie V.W. Lucianovic’s Suffering Succotash: A Picky Eater’s Quest to Understand Why We Hate the Food We Hate. (Although, she takes a broader view that the picky eating itself may be caused by genetics, psychological issues, parents’ approach to food, or being a supertaster.)
The researchers do stress that this is a correlation and not a causation. For instance, perhaps children with heightened sensitivities may be both more likely to be sensitive eaters and have social anxiety. They have a heightened sensitivity to the world, and that can manifest itself in relationships with food and people.
It is all quite though-provoking and complex, even if it does let parents off the hook for their child’s picky eating. If you were or are a picky eater, does this resonate with you?
