Far and away, the number one question I get from friends, family members, and clients alike is what the heck to do when your kids won't eat their food. And if you have kids, you've been there -- you slave away on a delicious dinner you know your kids are going to love, present it beautifully, hype it up, then set it down on the table only for your 3-year old to say "EWWWWW, disgusting."
In my first years of feeding tiny people, I thought I truly might lose my mind over not being able to convince my girls to eat their food (just because I was a dietitian, I somehow thought that meant they would be born with a love of green vegetables??), but then I decided to change my approach and take it less personally. Now, in order to deal with the picky eater (or eaters in our case), there are a couple things we do to make dinnertime run a little smoother.
The power - Pep talk time: you are the parent, they are the child. And you are in charge of what food goes in their bodies. Since we care about our kids, we want them to eat food that is good for their bodies and truly, toddlers and kids do not understand that, so don’t take it personally. Young kids are in the critical stages of growth and development of their bodies and brains and feeding them healthy food during this period is key, so keep your eye on the prize here.
Give them something they like - I always try to make sure I put at least one thing I know my kids will like on their plates. I find that if there is something my girls like and are familiar with on their plates, they don’t immediately put their guard up against the rest of the food. A serving of berries or rice or a piece of pita bread usually does the trick. While I wouldn’t recommend only a piece of pita bread by itself for dinner, if it encourages them to eat some hummus…awesome. And if it doesn’t (and sometimes it’s all that gets eaten), at least they visually see what a healthy food pairing looks like.
Start small with new foods - Placing one piece of an unfamiliar food on their plates is a good place to start. Often, kids can get overwhelmed by volume when it comes to food they don’t know or aren’t sure about. Repeated exposure in small quantities (ex. 1 piece of broccoli or 1 baby carrot) has proven more beneficial for introducing new or different foods to kids.
Tastes change - Just because a kid loved sweet potatoes as a baby doesn’t mean they’ll love them as a toddler. Our tastebuds change (especially once we get a taste of sugary sweet foods) and we can change them as well by continued exposure. Give kids time to make a decision on whether they like a food or not and then even if they decide they don’t like something, continue to offer it as part of a meal - you never know when they may decide to try it again.
Don’t give in - in our house, if you don’t eat your dinner, you don’t eat. Hear me here….YOUR KIDS WILL NOT STARVE. The easiest way to undermine healthy eating is to give in and start fixing your kid their own dictated meal because they refuse to eat the one you made them. There are plenty a night that my kids have gone to bed without eating anything for dinner or only eating a slice of cucumber or a strawberry. It’s ok. They won’t starve from skipping a meal. One of the biggest push backs I get on this is parents’ fears that their kid is going to wake up in the middle of the night if they haven’t eat anything. First, this is unlikely. BUT if they do, give them a drink of water or just do what you normally do to get them back to sleep and assure them breakfast will be available in the morning. Just like any other phase kids go through, it won’t last long.
I don’t have any hard and fast rules on making kids try something or take a bite, etc. I always encourage them to try all their food but never force them. But, if we have a dessert or treat after dinner, they have to eat the majority of their food to get a treat. I know that’s pretty subjective, but my feeling is that I just want to see that they have made an effort to eat the healthy foods on their plates. I also try to use some nifty little one-liners as motivation for eating specific foods - for example, if they have cucumbers, I may say “cucumbers help your skin look glowy like a Disney Princess” - (my kids love princesses…what can I say?).
I know this can be one of the most difficult parts of parenting so if you have any questions about how to get control over mealtimes or encourage your kids to try something new, let me know in the comments below or send me an email.
May the feeding force be with you :)
