Dear Laura... My kid goes from zero to hangry, how can I support them?

Welcome to ‘Dear Laura’ - a monthly column where I fashion myself as an agony aunt and answer the questions that readers submit. If you’d like to send in a question for me to answer next month, you can submit it here.

I’m happy to answer Qs about anti-diet nutrition, developing a more peaceful relationship to food and weight-inclusive health, annoying diet trends and news stories, body image challenges, and, of course, challenges with feeding your kiddos. Please give as much detail as you’re comfortable with and let me know if you’d like me to include your name or keep it anon.

Please remember that these answers are for educational purposes only and are not a substitute for medical or nutritional advice; please speak to your GP or a qualified nutrition professional if you need further support.

This month we received two very similar questions that we have amalgamated into one. They’ve been edited for length and clarity. Here goes:

My 4.5 year old daughter really struggles with being HANGRY. She will often only eat barely enough to take the edge off her hunger, leaving the table to go and play, and will shortly become hangry, where nothing goes, often accompanied by huge meltdowns at difficult times such as leaving for school/starting bedtime. I asked her whether she eats in school until she feels full, to which she said yes, but that she leaves food on her plate (which has to go in the bin), which she can’t return to when she feels hungry again since she’s outside playing.

I'm at a loss on how to handle this. I don't want to force her to eat. I cannot force her to eat. I can politely ask her if she's 'sure' she's full but it seems annoying to ask her to double-check. Our dinner times are generally hectic (both parents working full time, 2-year-old sibling at the table), but we’ve implemented some boundaries like eating together, always offering foods the kids like, staying at the table for five minutes once we’ve all sat down (adults too). But still she will barely eat anything, declare she's done, and get up to play. Then, cue bedtime/we've cleared the table/we need to leave for school, she gets hangry. I don't want her to be hungry when she heads into school so - do I give her a cereal bar to make sure she doesn't starve? Do I let her be hungry, and hangry?

Adding to this, I am neurodivergent, and chances are high that my kids are too. I don't get traditional hunger cues and get hangry AF. I get that maybe she simply does not get the right signals from her body (I tried to explain to her that sometimes my body tricks me when it comes to being hungry, and that I need to look out for different feelings, but I'm not sure that's helpful really or confusing). Or that her brain just goes, yeah well, that's enough now, exciting stuff is happening, moving on!

On top of this, she's always been a bit cautious around food, not particularly adventurous and now rejecting both new and old foods. I just feel totally lost as to how to make sure she gets adequate energy from something that's not just the fucking cereal bars. I'm just not sure what the parameter is that determines whether we get 'will eat enough' or 'will be hangry in five minutes' and that's pretty hard work. I want to make sure she gets what she needs, energy wise, but also support wise at meal times, but I'm not sure where - if anywhere - I'm going wrong.

Oh boy, do I feel this one.

Last weekend, A had a birthday party and didn’t eat much. Afterwards, he was too excited/overstimulated/hyped to have his lunch, and instead wanted to play with his friend. But they were both too out of sorts to either play or eat.

Ideally I would have taken him home and let him cool off before trying to feed him, but my husband had just had surgery and I needed to keep him out of the house. The whole thing was a disaster. There were tears. There were screams. A resisted every attempt I made to get him to eat. He didn’t want the cheese sandwich or apple that I’d packed him. He didn’t want the doughnut or churro I tried to bribe him with. And it took many, many attempts to get him to eat something. 

All of this is to say, I don’t have all of the answers here. Your child’s temperament, sensory processing, age and development (among other things) are all interacting to make a perfect (shit) storm. 

I want to first of all reassure you that you’re not ‘going wrong’. This is a tough nut to crack. When it comes to neurodivergent kids, which I'm going to assume yours is, there's no perfect solution. We can offer scaffolding and support for these kiddos, but I don't want to give the impression we can completely mitigate hanger or even meltdowns with what I'm going to talk about.

But what I can tell you, for sure, is that there’s something going on here with your child's interoception. 

I want to be clear upfront that I’m not an occupational therapist or other specialist in sensory processing. I can tell you a bit about how some of this applies to feeding, and I would encourage you to use the following as a jumping off point for your own research, or speak to an OT.

Let’s back up a bit. All living beings have a sensory system that informs their lived experience. Sensory information comes from the environment all around us, and from within our own bodies. You are probably already familiar with the senses of taste, touch, sight, smell, and sound. But there are three more senses that you may be less familiar with: vestibular (sensing how our bodies move through space); proprioception (processes sensory input from joints and muscles); and interoceptive (how we sense signals originating from within the body). At any given moment, the brain is trying to make sense of all of this information, a task known as sensory integration or processing. 

As with eye and skin colour, height and weight, there is variation in how people receive, interpret, and respond to sensory information. Some people may appear very sensitive to sensory stimulation such as sounds, light, textures, or touch (as with hair or teeth brushing). These people will experience sensations very intensely, to the point that it can be extremely uncomfortable or even painful. 

Other people may need more sensory stimulation because sensory signals are muted or dampened (note this is different from hearing or vision differences per se). 

Both of these presentations (hyper or hypo sensitive) may be sensory seeking in some instances. Hyper sensitive people may seek sensory input in one sensory system to drown out other more uncomfortable or distressing information. Hypo sensitive individuals may need more stimulation to elicit the feedback they need. And of course, some people can be hyper sensitive in some senses, and hypo sensitive in others. And to make things more complicated, sensory processing differences may also look like difficulties with planning and organising movement, poor balance and posture, or struggles to differentiate different sensory stimuli. For more on sensory processing differences, read this.

As I said, interoception is the sense that is responsible for perceiving signals and stimuli that originate within the body. This includes everything from needing to wee or poop, all the way through to pain, and sensations that give rise to emotions: butterflies in the belly indicating nerves or excitement, tightness in the chest suggesting anxiety. It’s also responsible for perceiving pain, thirst, tiredness, and, you guessed it, hunger.