If you have a picky eater in your family, then you already know how stressful mealtimes can be!  You also might know that your child can pick up on your stress levels like a new ball on a summer day! So what is a stressed out parent to do?  Do you cater to their every food preference so they won’t go hungry, or even worse, miss out on key nutrients?  Do you just put the family meal in front of them even if they don’t like any of it, as you grit your teeth and hope for the best?  

The answer lies somewhere in between!  And just where this “in between” is will depend on how severe the picky eating is. Keep in mind that many kids of the toddler age, and even a few years older than this will enter a stage of picky eating compared to their infant years. This is partially due to their newfound sense of themselves (and their ability to say no!), but also because their taste buds can be quite sensitive at this age.  Foods may actually taste very different at a younger age. However, their taste buds are also untrained in many ways that make it harder for them to appreciate more complex flavors and textures.  And even if they are starting to appreciate new foods, they might have a harder time with mixing the textures together in one fork or spoonful. However, sometimes kids will get “stuck” in this picky eating phase due to stress related factors or even just habits that the best intentioned parents fall into.  There are a select few kids who might have some medical issues going on (i.e. silent reflux, oral motor issues with chewing/swallowing, or even sensory issues), which can be difficult to tease out sometimes, so if you’re worried about this, consult your pediatrician who can help you determine if either pediatric outpatient Speech or Occupational Therapy (OT) is warranted. Although both of these occupations work on feeding concerns, speech therapy tends to focus more on the mechanics of chewing/swallowing if there’s oral motor issues like weakness in the jaw whereas OT tends to focus more on sensory issues related to taste and texture. If you want more general strategies for helping your child with picky eating, I highly recommend the book, “Helping Your Child with Extreme Picky Eating”, by Katja Rowell and Jenny McGlothlin, especially if you’re feeling stressed about whether your child might need further help. 

So, wherever your child is on their food appreciation journey, keep the following principles in mind:

Read below for 10 tips

1.Come hungry!  When we are hungry, we are much more open to eating what’s on our plate, period.  There’s even a saying: “hunger is the best cook” (or “sauce”). Food not only tastes better when you’re hungry, but you’re much more likely to want to try new foods when you are too. But, if your child is prone to grazing between meals, your child might not even be remotely hungry. This is because even a little grazing even 2 hours before can throw off their appetite. Even if they are small snacks, they can really add up! If your schedule is thrown off (i.e. travel, new schedule, etc.), you might be extra tempted to give in, but try to remember the 2 hour rule for younger children, and about three to four hours for children kindergarten-age and older. Excluding milk or juice is also important because they are sneaky appetite spoilers.

2. Give up control. This is probably one of the hardest hurdles to overcome, but the one that gives you the greatest outcome. Luckily, you won’t be giving up control of everything. The parent can decide WHAT type of food is presented to their children, WHERE they will have the meal, and WHEN. This will ensure that the meal is balanced and that there is a set schedule with a predictable location. However, with this approach, everything else is left up to the child including, IF or HOW MUCH, they will eat. The theory behind this approach is that the power struggle of trying to get your child to eat is eliminated, which also decreases stress for both parent and child.  Those desperate pleas to take “just one more bite” often lead to whining and over time can build resentment and lack of interest in trying new foods over the long haul. Of course, by choosing the meal and not giving in to what the child wants will also prevent doing “short orders” just for your child.  There’s only one caveat for this tip, especially if this is not something you’re doing already. This change might be too much of a leap for the child, especially if they see there are zero foods that they like on their plate. To reduce the stress even further, consider offering 1-2 highly preferred food items (foods you know they always eat), alongside the family meal to reduce your child’s stress levels. If it’s bread rolls, all the other family members can get a piece too. If it’s corn or even if something seemingly ridiculous for dinner like dried cereal, so be it. It will help the child to come (and hopefully stay longer) at the table. The last thing you want is to put your child in a fight or flight state of stress when being introduced to new foods at mealtime. Trying to achieve that “just right challenge” can be tricky, but it’s totally worth it, and definitely err on the side of caution when in doubt. As the child becomes more gradually more accustomed to this new mealtime structure, you might try introducing only 1 highly preferred food item instead of 2 (or even slightly lesser preferred item that they will sometimes eat). Meal planning a week in advance can be advantageous, especially until you find a rhythm and a routine with this. 

3.Offering food family or “buffet” style. By serving the food in the middle of the table, you give the child control as to how much they want to serve themselves. As mentioned above, you want to include “safe” (or highly preferred foods that your child always eats), as part of the family meal, despite how silly it can seem.  This sends the message that there are no kid or adult foods – that it’s all the same and the kids don’t get any different or special treatment. You also want to ensure the foods are within your child’s reach, so that they can serve themselves if they want to.  If they need help with physically serving themselves food, you can offer to help them. You can also have them point to where they would like the food, and ask them how much (and hold out a small or large amount to ensure that’s what they meant). There are variations to how you approach this, depending on how receptive your child is. If your child has a strong history of picky eating and is prone to pushing back very easily when presented with lesser preferred foods, you may want to back off completely from even gentle encouragement (and definitely stay away from tactics such as “first try this food, then you can have your preferred food”). Many times, over the course of a few weeks, the child will get curious about the other foods on the table, especially if there’s no pressure to eat it.  If siblings and parents are eating it happily, and something smells good, they might become even more curious. You might find them trying foods off of someone else’s plate.  Remember, to go from an anxious state to one that is calm and regulated at mealtime, could take days, weeks, or even months, depending on the child.  However, it is worth the wait to have them develop a natural curiosity of new foods at their own pace. However, if your child is able to remain at the table for an extended period of time already AND they are starting to show some interest in the other foods, you might want to encourage them to try a bite of a new food (perhaps something they have tried with previous success or something similar to what they already like), before obtaining a second helping of their highly preferred food item again.  Some feeding therapists will even encourage having a small “looking” or “tasting” plate of foods alongside their regular plate to challenge them. You can ask to kiss, poke, or smell the foods on the plate. Typically you want to stop at the level that your child is displaying a negative reaction (i.e. grimacing, backing away, wincing, etc.). This will tell you what their “just right challenge” is. If anxiety comes up with any of these strategies, you can forgo this completely. It will depend on how negative the child’s past experiences have been, how adventurous they are with trying new things, and how much pressure or anxiety they feel. Family-style meals overall will help the child interact (even by seeing and smelling) a greater variety of foods, even when it’s just passing a bowl, or serving themselves foods they never tried before.  Merely sitting at the table for a family meal is a lost art these days, and this alone will help the child see how adults interact with foods, which is invaluable.  If they are successful with eating even a small amount of a new food they’ve tried, you can make note of this, and give them a slightly bigger amount next time. Feel free to take notes of any new foods or progress that they make, especially if they are really struggling to branch out.  

4.Change the cues of the environment.  If your mealtimes have resembled more of a battleground than anything else, then a reset of your mealtime environment can make a big difference. A physical reset of the kitchen table can signal that things will be different. This can help your child (and you) break old negative associations at mealtime. For instance, you can change the location of where everyone sits or put new placemats on the table. You can even put on a candle if your child can handle this.  Timing this environmental tweak with the change in your mealtime “rules” can break any old and negative association at mealtimes and help everyone to start fresh. 

5.Educate the child on the properties of the food. There are many ways to help your child learn about food that doesn’t include eating it.  Depending on the child’s level of comfort (again, aim for the “just right challenge”).  What might be challenging for one child might be a breeze for another.  You can encourage them to interact with the foods in different ways including touching it with their finger (and licking it off if they want). Feel free to model it for them. Don’t be afraid to have some fun with it. If this is too much for them, they might be open to just having it on their plate (visual interaction). If they can’t tolerate this, even sliding it off on another plate using a utensil is another alternative. Then you can encourage them to discuss what they learned about the food. If they touched it, can they describe what the texture felt like (i.e. wet, mushy, hard, bendy, etc.).  If they use an unusual word, that’s OK too, depending on your child’s vocabulary.  If they end up tasting it, you can ask them about the flavor:  was it sweet, sour, salty?  This might be hard at first, but will get easier the more they learn about different types of foods. You can also ask about the texture in their mouths (i.e. was it crunchy, soft, chewy, melty, etc.). I generally try to stay away from the question, “did you like it”?  This is mostly because I like to keep it educational and discovery-oriented in order to shift the child’s mindset around food.  Food should be something to discover and not something to always judge. There’s a subtle difference. 

6.Play with food (hint: not during the meal itself).  Playing with food in non-pressured ways include helping you cook or prep food of any kind. For younger kids, you can even incorporate food in sensory play. For instance, if your child hates mushy textures such as mashed potatoes, you can try having them help you stir mashed potatoes with a large spoon so they are at least visually interacting with it and learning about its properties.  Let’s say, your infant does not enjoy the texture of yogurt or purees, you can have them do finger paint with yogurt of puree (with added food dye for extra fun). There’s also the added bonus of not worrying about putting non-food and potentially toxic items into their mouths.

7. Act cool, like you don’t care.  If you are anything like me, I was praising my kid every time they took a bite of new food. It felt like the right thing to do!  Maybe it’ll encourage him to eat more variety or quantity.  But what I realized (and learned through my OT training), was that kids will then learn to please adults and not about the food or even their instincts around food at all.  Even if I wasn’t scrutinizing every bite, I found myself praising him for eating his vegetables when I noticed out of the corner of my eye. When the focus comes off the child, and they are just another person eating at the table, there is way less pressure to “perform”. This will often automatically make them feel more comfortable. 

8.Establish rules and routines (no whining, no yucking someone else’s yum”). For some families, it works to set some ground rules. Most of this just works through modeling the behavior you want. By not stressing about how much food or what the child is eating, this will open up the question of what to do or say during mealtime? If the topic of food comes up, you can talk positively about it or in a neutral way. You can try to establish a rule about not saying something is “yucky” or “gross”, but instead stating “no thank you”.  Sometimes, general conversation about one’s day will naturally arise, but other times to get the ball rolling, you could have each person at the table take turns by recounting 1-2 highlights about their day. Just because you are establishing rules and routines doesn’t mean, however, that you can’t have some fun with it.  There was a time when my child didn’t want to try tacos. But when he discovered them, he was so excited that he wanted to put up a Mexican restaurant sign (I think it was Taco Bell). It was literally just a piece of paper stuck to the wall with tape and he got such a kick out of it.  No one ever said that mealtime has to be so stiff, so don’t be afraid to add some pretend elements.  Calming music sometimes helps to relax the nervous system as well, which can only assist with digestion. Even the cue alone for the music (prior to dinner), might send signals of relaxation after the routine becomes more established. Definitely save any stressful topics or arguments for a later time! 

9.Take dessert off of its pedestal.  There’s a difference between having dessert at the end of the meal and using it as bribery.  Sometimes the difference is subtle, but it’s all in the wording. If your child screams that they want dessert instead of their dinner, you can simply state, “we have dessert after dinner”. This is very different than stating “I will give you dessert ONLY if you eat your vegetables first”.  This gives the child the impression that dessert is the “good” food and vegetables is hard work and something to get through. Instead, when all foods are presented in the same manner, there is no “better” food if you will. There are no scary vegetables to overcome first before they can finally relax and have their safe food. Sometimes, children respond better when you explain the reasoning behind something, so you might add that it helps our stomach to eat foods with nutrients first to avoid a sugar spike. Some feeding experts agree that even praise for eating something non preferred (maybe vegetables) is even a subtle indication that they are doing “hard work” and that the prize is dessert. When giving dessert as a reward, this might even create an unhealthy relationship with sweets down the line, when your child is given more liberties with what they choose to eat.  However, some kids will respond very positively to praise and stickers, I would just recommend that it’s not over the top. The emphasis of the praise should be placed on the “trying” and “being adventurous”, as opposed to whether they liked the vegetables or whatever non preferred food item it is. Just how you would praise your child for being brave in any situation when trying something new. 

10.Don’t spoon or fork feed your child. This one might seem obvious. Although it can be awfully tempting to find creative ways to encourage your child to eat more food (i.e. remember the airplane landing in the mouth?) this can backfire for a few reasons. First of all, they will be less inclined to try the food on their own in the long run.  It’s less work to just wait for the parent to do it, so why bother, the child might unconsciously think. Another reason is because if there is an external factor (parent) trying to control how much food goes into their child’s mouth, it’s sending a message to the child that they cannot trust their body’s signals of fullness or whether to keep eating.  The lesser known concept of interoception is gaining a lot of attention these days in the OT world and beyond. Interoception is the awareness of one’s internal organs, which you guessed it, include satiety signals. If we are feeding our children, we might be interfering with these signals as we don’t truly know what they are feeling. If we arbitrarily state that they need to finish their plates, this can sometimes set them up for overeating later in life.  If there is praise attached to cleaning one’s own plate, they will use this external cue to know when they are done rather than their more important internal cues.