Picky Eating
Try our activity-based, low-stress approach and see change within a month. These are powerful checklists, how-to guides and scripts for transforming picky eating.
How To Get Your Picky Eater To Try New Foods
The Low Stress Motherhood approach to transforming picky eating is achieved by taking a teaching approach.
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. 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.
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 & describe their flavors & textures: sour, tart, creamy, crunchy, juicy, sweet, mushy. 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. Often times, children will be curious to taste the foods during these 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.
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:
- 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.
- Chat: Give them a heads up that you’ll start trying new foods in 2-3 days. When toddlers know what to expect, they are else’s likely to be upset about change or newness.
- 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.
- Let them pick out & grab different foods at the grocery store.
- 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.
- 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!
- 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.
If you have a picky eater, incorporate these things into your time with your child over the next 4 weeks and see what happens. For more support with your picky eater, click here for a FREE instant download of The Transforming Picky Eaters Cheat Sheet.
Know exactly what you can do to make change, peacefully. Say goodbye to mealtime stress, fuss and fights, for good.
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Want complete support with Picky Eating? Consider the complete Peaceful Transforming Picky Eaters Starter Kit that Includes...
- The Transforming Picky Eaters eBook
- A Simplified 4-Week Plan To Follow
- A Mindset Prep Checklist
- Supply List
- Script Wording For Common Challenges
Watch this free training...
A Complete 4-Week Plan That Will Change
Picky Eating Habits
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