How do you feed a picky eater?
Dinner with my 5-year-old is an ordeal. I do not want to cook separate meals. How do I stop the fighting at dinner and get them to eat?
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I remember reading Touchpoints, where he says that at a certain age, children don't actually NEED to eat that much, and they are far more interested in exploring and moving than in eating, so he recommends just putting little bits of everything on their plates, and letting them come back to it.
Our experience with the oldest is that she would eat pretty much anything till around 15 months, then she spent 6 months being intensely fussy, pretty much eating only pasta or bread sticks. We just put extra vitamins in her milk and let it ride. Now (at nearing 5) there are still quite a few of the classic no-no veggies she doesn't like, but she eats lots of apples, carrots, and has a fairly balanced diet.
Children differ too, our younger daughter is far more inquisitive, she's up for tasting anything, even if she decides she doesn't like it, whereas her sister is much more conservative.
Overall, I would say the most important thing is to teach your toddler to ENJOY eating. We have a friend whose daughter is 6, and she just doesn't eat. Every single mealtime is a battle, every single mouthful is a battle. I strongly suspect it is at least partially because of her mother forcing her when she was younger.
Remember that food is an excellent weapon in the battle of the wills. This is one of the few areas where your child can exert his/her will and 'win', so you don't really want to go there. Our eldest daughter is far more 'fussy' when she is at home, and when both parents are present - because she can get more 'mileage' out of the conflict. Sometimes I suspect it's just a way to get attention.
Of course, we are also influenced by our own upbringing - "waste not, want not". My parents grew up in the post-war years, when being fussy was pretty much criminal. That doesn't mean that now we should be wasteful, of course, but we do perhaps need to rethink and justify our priorities, and what food and eating actually mean for us.
(Disclaimer: cross-posted from here)
This is a first world problem. You don't hear that children starve to death because they are picky eaters.
Children want to eat what they like the most. If you give them the choice they would only eat junk.
They don't appreciate and understand the nutrition value of a food only its taste and of course its look. In fact majority of adults are the same, no wonder we have an obesity epidemic.
Of course everyone has favorite and less favorite foods. But at the end it all comes down to how hungriness and food availability.
Some useful techniques:
Don't give them junk before proper meal time
Don't try to feed them when they are not hungry. They are more likely to be more experimental if they are hungry
If they don't want to eat something which should be fine (they ate it before or they just want something else), don't give in. If they are hungry they eat almost anything.
Be prepared to skip meals. Nothing happens if they skip a meal every now and then.
Do not try to introduce new foods when they are tired and before bed time.
Smash or blend vegetables so they more look like creams and soups to make it less obvious
Continuously try to introduce new (healty and fresh) food to them
Don't keep any junk at home. Especially ice-cream, chocolate, fruit juice, health bars, fruit bars, etc. Give them treats when you go out with them or visit someone. They have plenty of opportunities to eat junk, often it's just unavoidable
Try to avoid giving them anything which is not fresh or freshly made. Most things from any packaging are most likely processed food where lack of fresh ingredients is substituted for excess sugar, salt and fat.
Don't be fooled by advertisements, if something is heavily advertised it is most likely junk, heavily process food.
If you are consistent they will it almost anything
I have three children, the eldest daughter is the picky one. We have always had a rule that you are not forced to eat anything, but you have to taste - we made this rule explicitly to "one spoonful per one year of age" - so now that she's turned five, she will taste 5 spoonfuls of each dish. Sometimes she even ends up liking what she was suspicious about at first.
If I'm introducing a new food, I try to not make it the whole meal - it'll overwhelm my son. Kiwi fruit, as an example; he wouldn't eat it sliced & plain. So I started slicing it finely and adding it to his yoghurt in the morning, and into a fruit salad for the evening dessert, slowly making the pieces bigger. Now he loves them and I just have to peel it and he'll eat it whole.
As I've previously mentioned, my son is currently in the 'I don't eat green vegetables' phase (he's 3.) So I make sure he gets carrots and cauliflower at dinnertime, and I give him carrot sticks and cucumbers as snacks. I also make sure I make a broccoli, leek and spinach soup once a week and give him a small bowl of it. He'll it soup if it's green.
Having him help with the dinner is also a good way to get him interested in it; he wants to sample the sauce or stir this and whisk that - but as it's also been mentioned, I cook one meal, and that's what he gets. If he won't eat what's on his plate, then once I'm done clearing the table and taking care of the other dishes, his plate is taken and tossed. If he gets hungry later he gets carrot sticks, an apple and some raisins, but nothing more.
Picky eaters usually require a closer look to determine what is the root of their food habits. Causes for picky eating can be related to oral sensory responses, normal developmental patterns, taste/flavor preferences, and behavior ploys to name a few.
Does your child have a history of gagging/choking on a bottle or food as an infant? Some are born with hypersensitivities that cause eating to be a negative experience. Children who had adversive experiences early in life requiring intubation, feeding tubes, or placement in NICU are often problem feeders.
As children develop, the drive to explore their world is greater than their hunger for food at times. They may eat very little for several days or eat only one or two foods at a given meal. During these times, the quality of their diet would best be considered by an accumulation of the foods eaten over several days. A survey of several days is a better reflection of how well one's diet is meeting nutritional demands.
A child's stomach is the size of their fist. So they need far less food than we sometimes imagine. Be sure to monitor juice, soda, and milk consumption. These often fill small stomachs and reduce hunger with calories while limiting their desire for more nutritious choices. Presenting food in muffin tins or ice trays is a fun way to encourage a variety of foods in small amounts that match a little ones tummy size.
Children need to explore food in a variety of ways and have many repeated exposures to accept a new food. Research indicates 15 or more pleasant experiences is needed. Having children help with food purchasing, preparation and clean up is a helpful strategy for increasing pleasant contact with food. Children learn from imitation. Having children sit at the table for meals with the family increases positive contact with food and provides them with a good role model. Opportunities to play with fun foods will also be helpful in bring peace times to the table.
What has worked well for us is:
A: Dole out small portions to begin with (and I might make a serving with less spice or something if I'm making a meal that is not so kid friendly). I regularly use salad plates as our dinner plates. Seconds are welcome when everything on the first plate was finished.
B: If she does not eat a proportionate amount of veggies, I save them and give them to her with Breakfast, Lunch and then again the next night at Dinner.
C: If her dinner was not proportionately eaten and she is hungry later, she can have left-overs of the food of which she did not eat enough. Otherwise, no dessert, no snacks, go to bed hungry.
I say proportionate because it really shouldn't be about finishing the plate. If I've given her a proportioned plate, but when she says she is full all she ate was her roll and two bites of fruit or chicken, she didn't eat a proportionate meal (and yes I use this word with her). If the portions on her plate are all smaller and she ate relatively proportionate amounts of all the foods on her plate then she can have what the rest of us have for breakfast.
If what you're making is nutritionally on-target and there are no allergy issues, continue serving only what everyone else is eating. You'd be surprised how un-picky kids become when they realize they're not going to get their way.
Our approach has been to put on our daughter's plate what we expect to count as supper. Then it's up to her whether or not she wants to eat it, but if she does not she cannot move on to any snacking/desert or anything like that. Then we don't have to fight with her about it though. The rule is that she cannot have a snack later if she doesn't eat her meal now, and it's her choice if she wants to eat the meal.
She still gets upset about it at times, but it's fairly easy to deflect it as "it's your choice whether or not to eat it, we don't really care, but you know the consequences if you don't."
My five kids range from "ultra picky" to "eat only healthy foods" to "surprise, I've changed my likes and dislikes".
Keep healthy foods around, so their choices are all generally healthy. Keep reintroducing new foods that they wouldn't eat within a reasonably close timeframe. Sometimes it takes 7-8 tries. Try different ways of preparing the same foods. Try to make the food look inviting to a kid (make a smiley face out of the vegetables). Give much praise when they try something new. When your kid(s) are listening, tell other people how much your kids love trying new foods. Make trying new things an exciting experience. Try eating a bit of the food with them at the same time. Say, "Let's do this together! I'll have a bite with you!".
Sometimes, its futile, but they still need to know that you're in charge, so I'm definitely an advocate of forcing them to at least have a bite of each thing on their plate. If they don't, we use a standard timeout regime just like anything else: warning, ultimatum, timeout for one minute / year of age, apology, sit back down and eat what I told you to eat.
Side note: Don't praise multiple helpings, even if the food they're eating multiple helpings of is healthy. Just praise that they tried it. Praising a second or third helping encourages overeating.
Most parents don't believe this, but kids will not starve themselves to death for the sake of being persistently stubborn.
The solution is simple. As long as they give you trouble:
Don't have the foods "they like" around for them to snack on (e.g. not come hungry to the dinner table)
What you want them to eat is "what we've got. We don't have anything else."
Don't want to eat? Fine. Hit the bath/bed hungry.
You'll see results within a day or two. They will eat. They will not starve. NO more fights.
I was a picky eater as a child. This used to frustrate my mother enormously. She tried everything she could to get me to eat, it just didn't work.
Worse, nowadays (50+ years later) I still feel sick/scared when someone brings me a plate of food I know I cannot finish just because of the stress my mother put me through.
Just a few years ago I worked out why - I have some strange intolerance to dairy products which makes me feel nauseous about 5 minutes after eating some foods. At the time I had no idea this was not normal so I never noticed.
I did find if I ate very quickly I could get enough food in me before that feeling started but I would rarely finish the meal - which disappointed my mother. This also meant that anything I needed to chew got in the way so I ended up not liking many nutritious foods.
Moral
Please do not let your parental instincts push you into making mealtimes a stressful experience for your child, even if you are worried, do not show it. You will only do harm.
I shall take you through what I do, this is a reasonably time consuming approach but i also have two ASD children (for a total of 7) so there are nine of us to feed each day.
Plan a week's menu out ahead of time. Each day have two options; let the child pick from the two options before you go shopping, so you are buying the one they have decided on. If you take them with you all the better as they will SEE you pick the item they have requested.
The two options need to have very similar tones, for example where they might like chicken nuggets (but you want a healthy alternative) option one would be chicken nuggets, two would be fresh chicken (perhaps a stir fry etc), now the trick with this solution is to make the dessert options relative to the main course option, so chicken nuggets gets yogurt (something simple) but fresh chicken gets ice cream (something exciting).
I have found this has worked on 6 of my seven children, they will make the decision to have the healthier option to receive the more desired dessert.
Further to this I cook both options some days as one or two will not take the bait, but the side dishes (chips, rice, veg etc) are identical, therefore they then see their plate look the same except for the important bit, and next week they choose the other option.
Of course, if your issue is related to the sides I'm sure you could devise a similar situation, where the choice you'd prefer gains them the more exciting dessert.
I am a strong believer in not forcing a child to eat any food. Some kids are just picky, and others are responding to their body's warnings -- about allergies, chemical sensitivities, and other hazards.
I was a picky eater. We found out in my late teens that most of the foods I wouldn't eat as a child were things that could cause me serious health problems due to a chemical sensitivity. I had an instinct to avoid them. Lucky, my mom humored me, having grown up with a sister who had serious allergies.
Is having it your way worth risking your child's health? My son, at five, could warm up some chicken nuggets or get lunch meat and crackers if he didn't want to eat what the adults were having. It's no big deal. Also, once he realized that no food would be forced on him, (and I started letting him pick out new foods that we'd learn to prepare together) he slowly became a more adventurous eater.
We cook one healthy meal at home and put an appropriate amount of food on everyone's plate. You are not forced to eat anything. However, that's what's for dinner, we aren't cooking seperate meals for everyone. If you don't eat everything on your plate you don't get dessert.
Also, I've found that getting the kids involved in planning and, especially, cooking the meals greatly decreases the fighting over eating them.
We used to have big fights at home over food. We just let it go. Everyone is happy now.
Basically, sometimes my child eats only meat, sometimes only carbohydrates, sometimes only fruit. I trust my child to know what is currently missing in their body. I certainly don't.
Obviously we don't serve candy and cakes instead of real food, but I'm more than willing to just boil some pasta or a sausage. It doesn't take that long.
Sometimes the child wants to taste our food, most of the time not. I believe eventually my child will grow up and enjoy a variety of food.
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