Picky Eaters Tips

Patience and persistence are the tools for parents of a picky eater. Your tenacity to make nutrition a priority will pay off in the long run as your child grows and begins to form food associations, preferences and priorities. Your guidance and role modeling will be a positive and formidable influence. (but you can’t see it right now, so hang in there and don’t give up.)

* Don’t despair. That leads to frustration and stress at meal times. That doesn’t help you or the child. Be patient there is no magic solutions because kids, like us adults, have different personalities, tolerance levels, patience, moods etc. So in other words, what works for one child may not work for another.

*Introduce one new food at a time.  Introduce it with another food they enjoy.

* Don’t make your child clean their plate. Forget that old fashioned way of thinking. We now know that kids, especially under five, have a good sense of their hunger. They will stop eating when they are full. The portion size they were given may be too much for them.

* Avoid bribing please! ie “If you eat your vegetables, you can have dessert later.” Think about the message that will send to your child. Dessert- reward, fun, happy, success. Vegetables, not fun, requires a condition in order to eat them, Multiple studies have shown that bribing kids doesn’t promote good healthy food preferences in the long run.

* Just try to offer them one bite of the healthy food they don’t want to eat. If your child refuses, don’t give up or get mad. It just means they won’t try it today but that does not mean forever. Keep bringing that vegetable back to mealtime every several days or so.

* Take advantage of other activities to expose your child to healthy foods outside of mealtime. Have them help you pick out the vegetables and fruits at the grocery store, or better yet, at the farmers market, Maybe the farmer will tell your child how they grew it. Let them help prepare the foods. I know I have said this before, but it can take kids 15 exposures before their curiosity is piqued enough to try a new food.

* Be a fun healthy eating role model. The kids are watching you and paying attention. Pile on those veggies on your plate and let them know how delicious it is. A little extra acting is okay. You have an audience!