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We are on a joy-filled journey through parenthood, but sometimes when we are at the table the joy can be replaced with frustration. A child refuses to eat and the climate gets tense.
What are parents left to do when the flying airplane spoon no longer works?
We are on round two of combatting the picky eating tendencies of the toddler years. Both my son and daughter were excellent eaters as babies, but once they turned two, a flip was switched and dinnertime became a battle of the wills. Thus we now have a repertoire of strategies at our disposal to turn mealtimes back into joyful experiences.
Here are some strategies for keeping the table a peaceful place AND getting your kids to eat their food.
Offer Choices
If your child is refusing to eat her dinner (especially if you know it’s something they like, or have eaten before with no trouble!) consider that it may be not the food that is the problem, but their need for choice. So much of your child’s day is dictated by others. When it comes to the final meal in a completely parent-directed day, a child may rebel when food is set before him. We can make our kids do a lot of things, but we can’t make them eat. Sometimes this is their one chance to be in control and they take it by refusing to eat. Offer choices throughout the day as often as you can. “Would you like to wear your hair in a ponytail or pigtails?” Remember, offer two choices that you are completely ok with.
Involve Your Child
Allow your child to pick a recipe, shop for ingredients, and help prepare the meal. When a child has ownership of the meal, they are more likely to eat it.
Include Humor
When my kids are grown, I don’t think they will remember how we made them eat their vegetables, but they WILL remember the fun we had at the table. Sometimes when our kids are having trouble trying a new dish or enjoying their broccoli we offer an incentive: “For each bite you take, we will make a funny face.” We take turns making funny faces. We are laughing so much they almost don’t even notice they are cleaning their plate. And what better thing for them to associate with healthy food than laughter? A variation on this is, “For each bite you take, we will say a funny word.” When both kids take a bite my husband says an outlandish word that no one has ever heard. We sometimes peal with laughter.
Share a Story
The table is a great place for books and stories. Read a picture book and turn the page when everyone has taken a bite. Or tell a story from your childhood and stop at a cliffhanger saying, “Find out what happens next when you take another bite.”
Use Logic
Have you ever heard of people using smaller plates when they are dieting? The smaller plate entirely full of food makes one feel as if they’ve eaten more. The opposite is true for little kids. If you provide a large dinner plate with the same serving size normally used, your child may be more apt to dig in. Try cutting up the bites and spreading them out. A plate served in this manner is much less daunting than a full child-size plate.
Make it more Manageable
Similar to the tip above, make your child’s food more manageable. This one may seem obvious, but don’t forget to cut their food up in bites- small bites! My 2yo doesn’t care for raw carrots- even when cut into small rounds. But carrot shreds she loves! Think to yourself, “Is there a way I can present this same food differently?”
Play a Game
Our family owns the game
My First Orchard. In the original version a die is rolled and the player removes a fruit from its tree indicated by the color on the die. If a raven is rolled a raven figurine moves closer to the orchard. The object of the game is to harvest all the fruit before the raven gets to the orchard. We have modified this game for the table by providing paper plates with four quadrants of different colors. When the die is rolled a bite is eaten from the indicated color. If the raven is rolled any bite can be taken off the plate and discarded! Try with a meat and three sides.
More Games!
This was the first meal time tactic I ever used. Our son was having a hard time sitting and eating. I grabbed a toy tractor he was more interested in than food, placed it at the end of the table and announced the tractor would drive closer with each bite. When the tractor reached his plate he could be done and play with the toy. Make this competitive with two items that are racing to a finish line.
Provide a Visual
I don’t know why this works, but it has worked for me. Divide your child’s food into small bites. provide two small containers: one empty and one full of counters (such as pom-pom balls). Instruct your child to move a pom-pom ball to the empty container with each bite they take. When all the counters have been moved your child is finished. (Of course provide supervision and make sure your child knows not to put non-food items in their mouth.)
Offer a Reward Bite
In our home we call this strategy “bite-for-bite.” When you are serving at least two dishes and one is less appealing than another for your child, ask your child to eat a bite of the less appealing food first and reward himself with a bite of his favorite food. When starting out you may have to have possession of the tastier food for it to work.
Reverse Psychology
This is a family trick that has been used by grandparents in our family for over a decade. It’s usually how Josh’s dad gets the grandchildren to eat their food and they eat it up (pun intended)! He will place a bite on a fork and announce to the family, “This is my bite. No one eat this bite.” He then holds the fork nonchalantly near the child’s mouth while he becomes distracted. Once he turns his attention back to the fork the bite is gone. He then acts surprised and disappointed that his bite disappeared and tries again. The whole family enjoys egging on the child to eat it when he’s not looking and seeing the look of mischievousness on the child’s face as they make the bite disappear.
Be a Good Example
Don’t forget to be a good example. If you (or your husband, ahem) is picking around the vegetables, then it’s hard to expect our kids to be much different.
Keep in Mind
We never MAKE our kids eat their food. If a strategy isn’t working, we simply put the plate away when dinner is over. We don’t make a big deal about it. However when breakfast rolls around that leftover supper might make an appearance. We’re not ones for wasting food around here. Sometimes knowing this alone is enough for my son to eat his food. “What are we having for breakfast in the morning?” is a question I occasionally hear and one that I always have a delicious sounding answer for!
You can probably tell that the focus of our dinners isn’t on whether our children eat their food or not. The focus is on enjoying each other. Take the focus off your kids and their “performance” and place it on them as individuals.
We don’t force our kids to clean their plate. We trust they know when they are full. We do require that they try one bite of each dish served. Sometimes it’s that first bite that is the hardest, but once they try it they realize they like it and the meal continues on.
I would caution hiding vegetables. I do swap out zoodles for noodles, and use sweet potato strips in place of lasagna noodles, but I call it what it is. I never try to hide the fact that the vegetable is there. How are our kids supposed to come to love vegetables if they don’t get to know them? Sure, if I’m going to make muffins anyway it’s great to add in a veggie, but our kids need multiple frequent interactions with the real vegetables to grow to love them.
Most of the time our kids are wonderful eaters. When we are out others usually can’t believe how much they eat. I attribute this to the fact that we do not snack. The kids do eat one snack when they wake up from their afternoon nap, but they are not snacking throughout the day or afternoon. One small snack that’s finished by 2 or 3 and they are ready to eat their dinner at 5 or 6.
Thankfully the occurrences of needing to use these strategies are becoming fewer and fewer. And thankfully, because we didn’t succumb to toddler food and making separate meals for our “picky” eaters our kids have a wide variety of foods they enjoy and have reached the other end of toddlerhood once again eating their vegetables without putting up a fight. Take courage, momma! It can happen for your family too!
What about you? How do you get your children to eat and yet retain the joy and camaraderie that belongs at the table? Drop me a comment below!
