Picky Eating Archives

Dinner time is no easy feat for families with children. It starts the day they’re born when they sleep all day and then become colicky when it’s time for the parents to eat dinner. Then comes toddlerhood when they do everything with the food but eat it. Food is on the floor, the ceiling, in their hair and every crevice that’s impossible to clean but not in their mouths. Preschoolers aren’t much better; this is when they decide to assert their independence by saying, “I don’t like it.”

It’s no wonder parents wave the white flag and become short order cooks by making separate meals each night. One meal that ensures Child #1 will eat and another meal that Child #2 will eat, plus one for the parents. It feels like it takes three meals in one night for it to feel like a successful dinner.

Successful family dinners are not meant to please everyone. The reality is to plan and cook one well-balanced meal, regardless of your families response (rejection). Here’s how:

Be authoritative and set the menu, allowing input from family members.
Family-style meals, keeping it simple.
Stick to the meal time structure, if the kids choose to pass on dinner remind them it is their choice not to eat.
If your child chooses something else, have them make it themselves. Remember, being authoritative means you provide the what (nutritious foods), they choose the how much and whether not.

The more you accommodate personal preferences, the more unsuccessful mealtime becomes. The variety of meals shrinks and parents quickly fall into a rut. Parents who cater to each family member inadvertently create a meal time dichotomy of we eat this, and the kids eat that. If you’re finding yourself in this stressful situation then I highly recommend the following resource:

Fearless Feeding is a book about childhood nutrition that will calm and empower parents, provide step-by-step feeding guidance at every child development stage and teach parents the skills they need to get healthy meals on the table fast.

Bon appetite!

Go Strong Mamas!

BONUS: We love Gordon Ramsey’s YouTube channel, he’s generous with tips and advice as well as incredible recipes. Here’s a recent one where he shares some delicious lunch recipes for kids.

This feeding tip actually applies to everyone, even if you’re a picky eater yourself. If at first, your kids do not eat it, try try again. 10 times on 10 different occasions to be precise. There is research out there by Lisa Birch who discovered that the brain takes 10 times on different occasions to decide a preference.

I have to remind myself of this with my own boys. We try to expose them to as many different foods as possible and every now and then there is a particular new food they just refuse to eat. Cooking with egg roll wrappers are the target right now. Chris made vegetable spring rolls about a week ago and they were delicious. The boys played and examined them but did not even try them. This week we made ground chicken with vegetable dumplings, delicious. Second week and the boys took a bite, and ate them!

It doesn’t happen all that quickly with most kids. My boys are seasoned foodies and both Chris (inadvertently) and I (intentionally, professionally) are trained feeding therapist. That being said, we remind each other of the counter-intuitive methods we use. Let’s face it, feeding your child is not commonsense. Refer back to the previous post and then store this extra knowledge as a reminder each time your child refuses to eat something new.

So when your child doesn’t eat something new RESIST the fighting urge to tell them, “Just try it”. Instead, reassure them that they DO NOT have to eat it. Remember to encourage the small steps it takes to eating, if they touched it, reinforce by saying, “good pushing it off your plate”, “you’re so brave to touch something new”. Talk about it, “what does it look like to you?” and attempt to make it fun and new. If you do, the next time you reintroduce the food, your child may take another step towards eating it. Refer to the steps of eating that should be on your fridge or kitchen wall for constant reference and reassurance. Use the steps as your guide and you will watch as your child advances a step closer every time you reintroduce a new food.

Dinner Time Dichotomy

Getting Your Kids to Eat New Foods.