The Low Stress Motherhood approach to transforming picky eating is achieved by taking a teaching approach.
With some lifestyle tweaks (9 tips for how to do this below), patience and calculated play times, you can say goodbye to dinner table battles, power struggles, mealtime stress, and hello to more ease around meals with a more curious and happy eater.
Let’s take a look at the approach I’ve used with over 20 different picky toddlers from different families and backgrounds here at my Montessori-inspired daycare and preschool…
First, it is important to know that we cannot control all of the factors that contribute to our children being picky. Things such as social influence, food inconsistencies and exposure to foods or lack thereof, all play a part in our children’s eating habits.
{Related Article: Why Your Toddler Is A Picky Eater}
So, do not carry the full burden of the fact that your child is picky and instead, follow the method that I lay out below to see if this added influence helps create the mealtime change you want to see.
The Teaching Approach
By having food as part of their learning and our teaching, toddlers become more curious and trusting toward foods, and have a better overall understanding, which inevitably makes for better eating habits, and a healthier relationship with food. We call these, food-focused activities.
Just as we teach our toddlers about sharing & pottying, handwashing, dancing & their ABC’s, we can play an active role in helping them understand what foods are, where they come from & why we eat them.
With the teaching method, we focus on doing this in a non-mealtime setting. No pressure, all learning. It’s engaging, interesting, fun, and exciting for toddlers! And, even though these will be non-mealtime experiences, they absolutely count as food exposure.
{Related Article: 5 Things You May Be Doing That Make Your Toddler’s Picky Eating Worse}
Ok, this sounds good, but what can our toddlers *really* understand so young?
According to Jean Berko Gleason, Ph.D., professor of psychology at Boston University and author of The Development of Language, “Toddlers can clearly understand complex conversation long before most parents think they can.”
By as early as 14mos, children are masters at reading social cues – Parents.com
So, don’t hesitate to talk to your toddler about these things to see the change you want.
Ok, so how exactly are we teaching them about foods? What do we say and what is the setting like? We can teach them about:
- food colors
- shapes,
- origins,
- textures
- smells
- how they grow
- ways they can be cooked
We can describe their flavors and textures:
- sour
- tart
- creamy
- crunchy
- juicy
- sweet
- mushy
- smooth
We use facts to describe foods, we let the children be hands-on with the foods we’re discussing, and we let them explore the flavors and decide what they like.
The setting for these food-focused activities can be at their play table, or on a learning tower at the kitchen island with you, or in their high chair at the table with you.
Whichever is easiest for you. All work well. Sometimes you may even find yourself on the kitchen floor snapping the ends of asparagus together! It doesn’t have to be picture-perfect and what you make is not as important as the act itself.
Simply, expose your child to new foods and talk about them – “chicken comes from the farm”, “asparagus looks like a paintbrush!” “carrots are orange like your ball!” “zucchini’s are heavy but zoodles are light!”
Often times, children will be curious to taste the foods during these food-focused activities.
This teaching approach gives your child more control AND informs them, which makes them feel more comfortable with foods and feeling safer to take bites. Lack of control and food fears play a key role in whether your child is picky or not, so give them some control and talk about all different foods often.
9 Things You Can Do To Make Change
Forget mealtime-only conversations about food! Here’s how you can exercise the teaching approach – outside of mealtime – that will expose your child to more foods, and over time, get them more excited to try new things:
1. Food-focused activities. Meal prepping together is the perfect place to start. Have them chop or wash fruits and vegetables. Have them fill and roll up their own burrito. Let them scoop their own food into a cool cup. You don’t have to spend the afternoon on this, a quick 10 minutes still makes an impression over time. Other activity ideas are: books with pictures of real foods paired with real foods for them to hold, helping wash veggies in a bowl, grabbing produce from the grocery store shelves, and color sorting foods.
{Related Article: How To Set Your Space Up So That Cooking With Your Toddler Is Simple & Enjoyable}
2. Chat: Give them a heads up that you’ll start trying new foods and why. For example: In 2-3 days we’re going to be putting some new foods on our plates every night with dinner. Mommy cannot let you only eat plain pasta each night. I love you and it’s important that I help you take care of your body. And to do that, we need to eat all different color foods so our bodies can run, sleep, poop!” When toddlers know what to expect and understand the ‘why’, they are else’s likely to be upset about change or newness.
3. Incorporate looking up pictures of a bunch of new foods together *before trying anything new. Simply use your iphone to look up foods and discuss them, or get some books with pictures of real food and read those together at story time.
4. Let them pick out & grab different foods at the grocery store.
5. Let them choose their own utensils and bowls/plates for meals. Give them the power of choice. Get them involved in the mealtime process and they will most likely look forward to mealtimes more. You set the rules about when food is served, what food is served to keep structure and control but, give them some control as well and you will experience less power struggles.
6. Tell them they’re going to discover a bunch of foods they really love & will want to eat everyday! And some they won’t like at all. Tell them it’s okay not to like foods! Everyone has preferences, that’s normal!
7. Make it playful learning: Make a wall chart to celebrate all the foods they discover – one side for love & one side for don’t love, and use stickers to keep track. Tip: On the ‘don’t love’ side, you could have it as – ‘don’t love/try it cooked a different way’ & talk to them about how foods can taste different if cooked differently. Even if your toddler is young, they can understand well before they can speak.
8. Encourage action in a non-pressuring way, as research shows that doing so can worsen picky eating habits. Instead, try something like: “OooOh, this carrot is orange like and orange! And it makes a snapping noise when I break it! It must be crunchy like a chip! Is it soft or is it crunchy?!” This type of question builds curiosity. Using a chip as an example also builds in some security/reassurance (if they like chips).
9. Repeat and remind. Toddlers’ brains are still under construction so it is a necessity that we repeat and remind – what we’re doing, why we’re doing it (our bodies need different color foods to work properly) that it’s their decision to try something, that it’s up to them what they like, and so on and so forth…
If you have a picky eater, incorporate these things into your time with your child over the next 4 weeks and see what happens.
Resources
For more support with your picky eater, click here for a FREE instant download of The Transforming Picky Eaters Cheat Sheet.
And to learn more about the FREE step-by-step Picky Toddler Email Challenge I offer, click here.
This comprehensive guide (The Picky Toddler Challenge) is sent directly to your email and walks you through 4 weeks of strategic action so that you can see real change in your picky toddler’s ways. Included is 2 food-focused activities each week, a toddler eBook about discovering new foods, affirmations and mindset tools, and more!
final words
Picky eating can be very triggering for us parents, especially if we grew up in a house that was filled with mealtime pressure AND if we find ourselves exhausted after a long day, not knowing how to handle our toddler’s volatile behaviors.
Remember to breath, take breaks when you feel that heat in your chest and those stress responses bubbling up (yelling), apologize to your toddler as needed (we are human too and make mistakes and act in less than ideal ways too!) and know that you are NOT failing if your toddler is picky. You are NOT a bad mom if your toddler is picky. And your child is NOT bad either.
These are habits that can be changed, with time, patience, love and consistency.