The Ick Factor

The Ick Factor. I can’t stand it. Unless, of course, it’s working to my advantage.

I’ll give you an example. If it weren’t for the Ick Factor, people would recognize that people can be trained like dogs. But, because no one wants to be associated with a likeness to dogs, we shy away from learning from the similarities we share with the animal world. Mainly, that we learn the same. True, humans are more complex, but that’s secondary to the similarities.

e.g. Getting your children to eat lots of tasty healthy foods is where I’m going with this. If people understood that this is primarily influenced by scarcity and freedom, the world would be a lot healthier. Now I understand I don’t have a ton a credibility with healthy eating since I try to eat two packages of Pop-Tarts daily, you can still learn what works for me, test it yourself, and, as always, adjust accordingly.

People want freedom of choice. We know this. Whether it’s the illusion of choice or total freedom of choice, is another blog post, but for our purposes here, let’s say illusion of choice will work with children. Maybe it’s mean to only give a child a choice of eating what’s on their plate or not eating at all. If that’s how you feel, you’re going to have a hard time digesting this. However, if you are searching for what works, proceed.

The other thing is scarcity. Now with children, we know they don’t like to have their toys taken away from them. Coincidentally, this goes for many possessions in their lives, clothes, cars and, you guessed it, food. Interestingly, even if it’s the illusion of possession. The illusion of possession is them thinking they own these things, but ultimately, they don’t. Their parents do.

I’m going to change direction here a little bit and propose that you combine scarcity and ownership with choice. You do this by taking away (threatening to or pretending to, at least) the food that they refuse to eat, and then giving them the choice of eating it, or not. It’s up to them. “Little Johnny, we’re going to pass your plate around the table and let everyone have a bite. If there’s anything left when it finally gets back around to you, then you can decide if you want to eat it or not.

Hey, sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind.

The Ick Factor isn’t just everyone taking a bite of their food (the image of this will be enough.) But, more importantly, not feeding your child (or even the threat of it) is akin to child abuse. Luckily, it won’t go this far, but that won’t stop some parents from not being responsible for being effective at persuasion.

If you want to get crazy with this, you can even throw in a fairness element. Children, as you know, insist on fariness. “Johnny, it’s not fair that you get to be the only one eating chicken (when they smirk, you know this is working on them.) Everyone else has to eat either a hot dog or a hamburger (chicken is a toss in the dark effort to try something new and different).”

Sometimes we have to sacrifice a short-term discomfort for a long-term comfort.

Here’s another example of the Ick Factor at play. Sometime during the spoon-feeding phase of child-rearing, your child will want to swipe at your hand vs eating. Not their fault. It’s just a natural defensive reaction to shoving something in their face. But, this makes it hard to get the food in their mouth.

Instead of restraining them, which just makes them frustrated every time, try rewarding them when they don’t swipe, by inserting food. If they don’t restrain their own hands (freedom of choice,) they don’t get the reward. The Ick Factor, again, is not feeding your child momentarily (apparently this is worse than forcibly restraining a child and shoving food in their mouth or even worse screaming at them and throw dishes across the kitchen.) But, rest assured, if done correctly, and with conviction, your child will learn quickly that they get to choose when to eat (which presupposes they are eating) and they get to feel like they are training you to perform on demand (another favorite of children an dogs.) A childish win-win, but none the less, a win-win.

Don’t let the Ick Factor prevent you from doing what works and what’s best for your child, seeing through the BS, making the right decision, or acting on a well-researched thoroughly-considered opportunity.

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Photo Credit: flickr and hugovk

*Hold harmless disclosure: Let me emphasize that this me exercising my First Amendment right to write about a persuasive bluffing strategy played out over mealtime, not an endorsement of the starvation of children, the non-feeding of children or any other mistreatment of children, obviously. Any misuse or misunderstanding of the writing contained in this blog post, or any of my posts for that matter, is is strongly opposed by the author, Jade Handy and State Of Mind Coaching & Training.