10 Tips for Helping Your Picky Eaters

Oftentimes, someone will tell us how ‘lucky’ we are that our children eat so well.  But the fact is, luck has NOTHING to do with it.   It’s taken a lot of hard work, consistency and a little creativity thrown in as we’ve encouraged them to venture out and try new things.

But we weren’t always here…

Wide-eyed and new to this whole getting-a-toddler-to-eat thing, I remember asking an experienced mama her secret to getting all 5 of her boys to eat just about anything she put in front of them, including lots and lots of veggies.

Her simple response: “I expect it.”

I was left scratching my head a little.  This seemed daunting, but we were determined to work on it.

Now four kids later, they will eat nearly everything that we put in front of them…  because we expect it!

While there are still days that they begrudgingly eat, go on an eating strike and/or complain, it has been fascinating to watch them acclimate and actually enjoy eating healthy, nourishing foods with gusto.

Today I’m going to explain how we got here and how we are continuing help our children cultivate a taste for healthy food!

So without further ado, here are my top 10 tips!

1. Expect It!

Ok, ok, I just told you I would give you more than this, but it is important to have the end goal in mind. What do you expect?  You are the parent.  And yes, you can and should expect them to eat what you offer. Our children will rise to our expectations.

2. Small Portions!

When introducing a new food, we start with small portions.  They are required to ‘try’ it.  Our children each have preferences.  While we try to honor these to some extent, we’ve also taught them that they need to take at least a few bites.  We try to make this fun by issuing our boys the challenge of ‘training their tastebuds’ just as an athlete would train.

3. Give Them Better Choices.

If you were to ask my children if they would rather have a carrot or a cupcake, they’d take the cupcake each time.  The key here is to empower your children by giving them choices that are a win-win.

What not to do: Would you like a carrot or goldfish for your afternoon snack?
How about:

• snack time: “Would you like pepper strips, carrots or cucumber slices?”
• after dinner dessert: “Would you like an apple or an orange?”
• oh, you’re still hungry: “I have sliced veggies in the fridge.”

My boys, even at their tender young age eat A LOT.  We’ve already been eyeballing our food budget and preparing for the teenage years.  While we set limits on carb foods and even fruit, there is an open-fridge policy for fresh veggies!

As I shared a few years ago, we’ve had great success in the veggie department when we are out and about.  For some reason, when we go to the zoo, they have voracious appetites.  Since veggies are the only snacks I pack, except for an occasional piece of fruit, they’ve acclimated to pounding enormous quantities of veggies in the form of red pepper strips, carrots, cucumber slices or peas.  Even if they are not currently into those veggies at home, I’ve found that if that disappear quickly when that is the only option on the road.

4. Give them a Reason: Nutrition Education

It must be the homeschooler in me, but just about EVERYTHING in life becomes an opportunity to learn.  And that is certainly the case here.  We really hit a turning point in their attitude towards food when we equipped them with the ‘why’ behind nourishing food!  We fell in love with Dr. Sears book, Eat Healthy, Feel Great.  It has been read over and over again.  They actually understood ‘why’ we should put good food into our bodies and the concepts of food that helps them GO (and what boy does not want to GO), foods that slow us down and foods that stop us.  I blogged about our nutrition learning adventures with this fun book that literally had my kids begging for broccoli.

Long-term, if we want them to own healthy eating choices (or any choices for that matter) we really need to give them a reason to embrace good decisions beyond just ‘because I said so.’

5. Eat to Learn-Learn to Eat  

I’m a big fan of engaging the senses during our homeschool adventures and that includes our taste buds!  I always try and play up the adventure and encourage them to at least ‘try’ it!  We’ve eaten George Washington’s breakfast, foraged in our suburban neighborhood so that we could make pancakes out of mesquite pods and eaten Chinese, Mexican and Indian foods as we travelled the world during our geography unit.  While we’ve had a few flubs, these kinds of culinary explorations usually pay off.

6. Let Them Help

This powerful option was on full display tonight as I was getting ready for dinner.  My four-year old is all about helping me in the kitchen right now.  He loved peeling the carrots and pretty soon his brothers were peeling too so they could all have a pre-dinner snack.  Peeling is a great motor skill for those preschoolers of ours and a wonderful way to get them invested in the process.  They still love making cucumber boats and sailing them right into their mouth and down into hungry tummies! We’re also big fans of the apple-ring sandwiches!

I’ve been convicted in this area a lot recently and it has been paying huge dividends as let them do more in the kitchen.

7. Make It a Competition

Now I’m not sure how this would fare with the girls in your family, but our boys thrive on competition.  I used this to my advantage a couple of weeks ago when I was trying to unload the rest of the broccoli.

Mom: Who wants another serving of broccoli.
Boys: “me”
“not me”
“not me”

Mom {in a moment of brilliance}: “Fabulous.  Xander and I will definitely out-race you both   tomorrow after eating our extra servings of green-light foods!”
Boys: no comment, just a mad rush to claim rest of broccoli!

We’ve used many a variation on this theme!

8. Find Fun Names

When my boys were really young, Rich and I found that much of our sons pickiness was mental and if we were creative in naming foods, we could circumvent his picky inclinations.

So we eat

• Snowball Soup
• Cowboy food  {finally got past the squash aversion with this one}
• cheesy triangles -cheese crisps
• trees-broccoli {actually this didn’t fool him when he was young, but it has been quite effective with our third born.}
• flaming swords – red pepper strips

And our newest one we want to try: “Rabbit Food”.  A friend of mine told me her kids all gather around pretending they are bunnies and nibble on bits of romaine lettuce.  I’m intrigued!

Of course, sometimes even the best plans can totally flop.  My kids still don’t like raw cabbage, even when it came to creating boats.  While not full-proof, this can still be quite effective.

9. Have a Plan

My personal nemesis when it comes to eating better as a family is having a plan.  Since I’m busy with homeschooling and everything else, I’m usually too tired to even think come dinner time.  The habit that has saved me is creating a meal rotation to take the ‘think work’ out of dinner prep.  I have a 6 week spring/summer plan and a 6 week fall/winter plan. It has made life easier and we actually eat something for lunch other than pb&j from time to time…

10. Try, Try Again…

And finally, it is important to keep on trying.  It can be discouraging at times, but it has been neat to see our persistence paying off!   If you keep offering them good food choices, they will acclimate.

This is still a work in progress for our family, especially now that we have a toddler in the house again… I’d love to hear what has worked in your home.  I’m always looking for new tips!

linking up with: Hearts for Home