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Toddler Won't Eat Vegetables? Here's What To Do
toddler won’t eat vegetables
Can’t get toddler to eat vegetables? In this article I will share with you what to do if your toddler won’t eat vegetables. You’ll learn reassuring facts as well as actionable steps you can take to get your picky toddler eating more colorful variety, asap!
Picky eating is common among young children. In fact, up to 50 percent of children are reported as picky eaters by their parents or caregivers. (as of 2018) – nationwidechildrens.org
Here at my daycare and preschool, all but 5 of the 30+ babies and toddlers I’ve worked with over the years, have been described as ‘picky’ by their parents and showed picky eating habits. (and ALL have changed their habits within a month of working together! YES! More on how below…)
Picky eating most definitely comes with the territory of having a toddler. Sometimes meats are tough for toddlers, often times new foods are scary and a hard ‘no’ from the first time they see them on their plates, and one of the biggest struggles for many families is that their toddler won’t eat vegetables.
‘Please eat some veggies! This can’t be good that you aren’t eating the veggies!’ – Have you thought this before?
Having this constant worry paired with the push back from your toddler, can make meal times continuously tense and uncomfortable.
This is not enjoyable for anyone. And that is what I want to help you do more than anything – make mealtime more enjoyable for your whole family. Because when we are enjoying more and worrying less, life is better.
So let’s start off with some information that you may not have heard yet –
Hot tip #1: if your toddler won’t eat vegetables, fruit shares a lot of the same nutrients as veggies! So, you can serve more fruits, more often, to meet the nutritional needs of your child during their picky phase!
Hot tip #2: let your toddler get hungry and tell you that they are hungry (or wait for them to start digging around in the pantry). Once you hear or see this, ask them what they want with their XYZ lunch (you choose the main and they can choose a side – to help with power struggles), then, while they are waiting for their lunch, set out a little plate of veggies (maybe some dips) on the counter/their kid table and tell them they can grab something from there while they wait for XYZ lunch. (Try some carrots, cucumbers, roasted broccoli, bell peppers, kale salad with pumpkin seed and cranberry salad topper…) Many hungry toddlers will go for it while they wait!
Read this next:
12 Things You Can Do If Your Picky Eater Doesn’t Like Meat (Yet)
How To Use Food Chaining To Expand Your Picky Toddler’s Diet
5 Things You May Be Doing That Are Making Picky Eating Worse
Now, here are some ideas for getting your toddler to eat more veggies…
what to do if your toddler won’t eat vegetables in 7 steps
step 1: make meal times about relaxing, hanging out and enjoying
Let all the stress, pushing, rewarding, asking and coaxing, gooooo. Release yourself of the stress, strain, and responsibility of asking your picky toddler to try, taste or eat anything.
Do this for at least 3 days of meals, preferably one week.
Some parents wonder – ‘should I punish my child for not eating vegetables?’ and the answer is no, because the most recent research shows that punishing can worsen picky eating in toddlers. And that is not what we’re here to do. We’re here to change their habits and ease your stress as soon as possible!
Make relaxing, hanging out and enjoying the main focus of mealtime long-term, rather than focusing on ‘bites’ and intake amounts. (Concerned about your toddler’s nutrition? See the calories and nutrients they need here. It can also be very helpful to look at your toddler’s overall intake over the course of 3-5 days, rather than one single meal. Often times, they are eating more variety than we realize in the moment.)
Why try and make mealtimes relaxed and happy? Because, if mealtime is uncomfortable, your toddler is less likely to be open to new foods anyway. Plus, you’re constantly stressing. And you stressing doesn’t change the fact that your toddler is still picky. So let’s let that stress go by not fixating on your toddler’s ‘bites’ anymore. Let’s find other ways to approach their picky eating that work better and make you feel calmer, and everyone happier at the dinner table.
THAT will be so healing for all! A more relaxed and comfortable mealtime setting will help get your toddler to eat vegetables and become less picky, overall.
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Step 2: start playing with food, away from the table
Does this sound like a funny one? Well, to be perfectly honest, one of the fastest ways I have gotten even the pickiest of picky eaters (gag at the sight or smell of new food, would only eat the same lunch everyday, wouldn’t touch their plate if it had new food on it) to try new foods, without me saying anything, happily and over and over again, is by doing activities with food!
When toddlers are happily playing, they are comfortable and inclined to explore. THIS is exactly the feeling we want them to have toward foods. So, to build that positive association with foods, and to push away the fear, get to playing!
THIS is ‘exposure’ in an ideal, low-pressure, happy setting. (This is where the pickiest of picky eaters I’ve worked with have tried zucchini, cucumber, carrot, beef, beans – SO many things they never touched on their lunch plates!)
If your toddler is not eating vegetables, get them playing with foods! Scrubbing! Snapping! Stacking! Here is a great article on a simple sorting activity you can try with your toddler: Sorting Activities That Will Get Your Picky Toddler Hands On With New Foods
The intent when playing is not to talk about eating. It is purely to explore the colors, shapes, smells, textures and sizes of the foods, to get silly, to feel, play and be hands on. Getting hands on with foods is one huge step closer to getting your toddler to eventually taste them!
Another thing I love to do is read books about the farmer’s market or where foods come from, AND have a basket of real food for the children to hold and grab and explore, while I’m reading about the foods. This is about discovery and learning and is powerful for motivating and teaching toddlers to eat new foods, without any pressure.
See these supplies for changing picky eating:
Step 3: talk to them about what foods do for our body
‘Yellow foods keep our heart strong! Green foods help keep us from getting sick! Red foods protect our eyes! It’s important that we eat all different colors to keep our body working well so we can run fast, jump high, sleep well, poop easily!’
Forget saying – “that’s good for you/ that’s healthy”, get more specific! Get expressive, get playful and get serious.
Give more reason as to why you’re saying something is important to eat so they understand better, rather than feel like mom or dad is just telling them to do something (they don’t want to do – enter power struggles). There are important reasons why we tell them to eat certain foods, they don’t know those yet, so let’s help them learn why!
And remember, lots of foods are wholesome and ‘good for us’ and still, those aren’t the only foods we will eat, they will see us eat or they will want to eat. We will also enjoy foods that don’t give us the best nutrients, and having a balance and a healthy mindset toward all foods is key for accepting the more wholesome foods alongside the ‘treat’ foods.
Describing foods and comparing new foods to ones that they love, is also very powerful when a picky toddler won’t eat vegetables. Doing this can build their curiosity to try new things.
For example you could say, “this bell pepper is crunchy like a chip and juicy like a watermelon!” Use foods they know, like and love to compare to the new foods you’re describing. Another example might be, “this is dinosaur pasta! Roar!” if it’s a green spinach and wheat pasta, and they love dinosaurs. If your toddler won’t eat vegetables typically, saying things like this might help get them more interested!
Wondering what your toddler can really understand at a young age? 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 14 months, children are masters at reading social cues. -Parents.com
So we can convey seriousness, help them get more curious about foods with specific wording and help them understand more about ‘why’ it’s important we eat a colorful variety, at an early age.
Check out these helpful toddler books about foods:
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Step 4: give them a heads up about some food changes & new house rules
After you’ve been doing fun food activities together, teaching about foods and kicking back at meal times together for a little while (maybe 5-7 days), it’s time to start to shift some house rules. Setting mealtime boundaries will help minimize power struggles and will keep you moving forward with introducing new foods to your picky toddler so they can learn that they like more foods.
Making changes to their usual mealtime routine might be a big transition for them. And toddlers struggle with transitions usually because they are overwhelmed by their emotions. They haven’t learned how to manage them yet and are still learning how the world works (we can’t just play at the park all day, we have to leave eventually/ we’re going to get ready for bed now because it is getting late and you’re going to struggle more if you don’t rest soon, so we have to turn off your favorite show to go brush your teeth…) So it is a constant up and down of feelings and behaviors due to those feelings.
A lot of times when we are transitioning our toddler, it is from something fun to something less fun.
In this case, with foods, maybe your toddler is used to having a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with goldfish everyday for lunch, and plain pasta with dino nuggets for dinner.
For us to transition them from this routine of same foods, to a new routine of these foods PLUS new foods, giving them a heads up will let them know what to expect. They can have time to process things versus all of a sudden seeing new foods on their plate and being overwhelmed when they do.
Some new rules/mealtime boundaries you might let them know about and begin enforcing could be:
- We can’t just eat one color at dinner anymore. We need to have at least 3 colors! Mom will start putting 2 more colors on your plate at dinner. You can choose one if you want to!
- We need all different foods to keep our bodies growing and strong. I’m going to start putting new foods next to the ones you love on your plate too. Some of the ones we’ve been learning and reading about!
- We aren’t afraid of new foods! We are brave food explorers!
- Mommy won’t make something different for you. I make one meal for everyone, and we can all choose our dips and one side that we want!
- We eat all different foods!
- Mealtime is a happy time where we all feel relaxed and comfortable!
Step 5: give them power around meals & get them helping prep some
Instead of mealtime feeling like a burden or something that happens to them, let them take some control and independence at mealtimes, so they can feel like an active participant. Toddlers love to help, be busy and feel like an important part of a process.
A few ways I do this here at home and at my preschool, is:
- Have a low, designated cupboard and drawer with their cups, plates, bibs, straws and snacks for them to choose on their own when it is meal time. They love to choose their own colors and help set things up at the table!
- Ask them what they want sometimes, and let them collaborate on meals. “I’m making pasta for dinner. What would you like to go with it?!” Sometimes, if they don’t like what I’ve made, I’ll remind them this is what’s for dinner, and invite them to collaborate on what they want tomorrow – “I’m sorry babe. We’re having sushi tonight for dinner. Find something on your plate that you want to eat if you feel hungry and you can help me plan what’s for dinner tomorrow, ok? What would you like tomorrow?”
- Get them on a learning tower and give them a task or two. Toddlers are messy until closer to 3 years old so, giving them one or two tasks during meal prep is usually more than enough! I like to let them rinse veggies and fruits, sprinkle ground beef and cheese on their tortilla or scoop the cookie batter onto the cookie sheet.
- Let them grab foods at the grocery store and unload delivered foods from boxes
- Gardening
Check out these top-rated supplies for cooking with toddlers:
Step 6: let them know it’s okay if they taste something and don’t like it
If your toddler has felt pressure to take bites or eat things they have been served, it is worth telling them directly that – “it is okay if you decide you don’t like something.”
Let them know they have a choice and that it is normal to love some things and not like some things!
I like to tell toddlers things like:
- “There are going to be some foods that we discover we love and others we find out we don’t love. That is normal and ok!”
- “I didn’t like zucchini until I tried it pan fried in stick and as noodles! See which one you like better!”
- “I didn’t really love tofu until I cooked it with a yummy, spicy sauce!”
- “How we cook foods makes them taste different!”
- “It’s okay if you decide you don’t like something. Let me know and we can try it a different way next time.”
- “We don’t know if we like something unless we try it. It’s okay if you don’t like some things! I don’t like some things!
If they don’t like something, I say okay. I don’t serve it again right away and I continue to serve it in different ways when I do. I also repeat lines like the ones above, now and again, as needed.
Step 7: Keep it up & keep serving variety
Keep at it all. Continue to incorporate food activities for at least a month. Keep talking about and teaching about foods. Continue serving new foods with ones they love. Enforce your mealtime boundaries and keep relaxing at the dinner table.
While they’re learning about new foods in whole form, you can most certainly blend extra veggies into marinara, add zucchini into brownies or breads, mix quinoa with rice. Doing this can help you include more veggies now. (BUT, don’t forget that fruits share lots of nutrients that veggies have too and getting our toddlers to accept new foods in whole form is key and king, here! Not hiding veggies that they never truly learn to accept and then begin to distrust us when we serve them foods because they wonder what we put in it. Ah, no thank you!)
Rest assured, with time and the steps listed above, this WILL get your toddler to eat vegetables and discover other new foods they like! And while they’re discovering, we are not going to stress the whole time. We are going to sit back, relax a little more and let them do their thing within the settings we set for them.
A healthier, happier mealtime environment for all! Here’s to less stress for you and more colorful plates for all!
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