Picky Eaters – Getting Kids to Eat Healthy
Do you have a picky-eater in your house? Are you struggling to get your children to eat a healthy, balanced meal because they simply refuse to eat healthy food? Is your picky eater becoming an overweight statistic, willing to only eat fried foods, pizza, hot dogs, waffles and other sugar-coated sweet treats? You may even find yourself feeling like you’ve become a “short order” cook in your own home, serving up cafeteria-style meals for each family member just to keep the peace. If this sounds at all familiar, and you want to learn how to get your picky eater to eat healthy foods and have better health, carefully consider the following:
Children learn what they live, so if parents are not setting the right example, by eating a healthy diet themselves, parents are setting the stage for failure with their own children‘s health. Getting children to eat healthy food needs to begin when children are very young, while their tastes for different foods are still developing. Toddlers and older children can learn to love healthy foods, even if they are now very picky about what they will or will not eat.
“Samantha” is an overweight eight year-old child, who has just begun eating salads and a couple varieties of meats. Until very recently, she refused to eat anything but hot dogs, waffles, pizza, chicken nuggets, French fries and anything loaded with sugar. When she and her parents are invited to dinner at someone’s home, they inevitably bring along a box of frozen waffles and syrup to heat and serve their “picky eater” in place of the planned meal. Samantha’s parents’ would lament, “we think she has a mental block”, due to her refusal to eat anything remotely healthy. I dare say it isn’t the child who has a mental block! Samantha’s parents have enabled this behavior in their child by passing on their own dislike of healthy foods, and they now have an overweight statistic to show for it.
“Tara” is a mother of two young daughters, six year old Jessica and five year old Chelsey. While Tara is preparing a healthy and nutritious meal for her husband, she will ask her daughters what they want to eat for dinner because “they hate everything”, ultimately preparing three separate meals in order to “keep the peace” at the dinner table. Tara often complains that she doesn’t like this never-ending ritual, but fails to realize that putting a stop to it is well within her abilities as a parent of these two young girls.
Children that are picky eaters are that way because parents are allowing it to happen. It’s your parental responsibility to make the rules about meals and snacks – not your child or teenagers. If you want your children to eat healthy, then serve them healthy and nutritious meals that the entire family can enjoy together. If your child adamantly refuses to eat the healthy meal set before them, then cover and save their meal in the refrigerator until they later say they’re hungry. Then simply say, “That’s good because I saved your dinner for you”. Reheat and serve the meal to your child. Children that are truly hungry will eat. Children are not harmed by missing a meal or two. It’s important to remember that being a picky eater is a learned behavior, and it will take time and determination on the part of the parents’ to change things around.
Getting your children to learn to love fruits and vegetables can often be accomplished by offering small amounts of dipping sauces, dressings, or flavored low-fat yogurt to dip into. Instead of doling out cookies, brownies, donuts, chips and other high-calorie snacks, keep a variety of well-stocked fresh fruits or vegetables in easy reach of hungry children. From the time my children were very young, they ate and snacked on fresh and uncooked broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, celery with peanut butter, and all varieties of fresh fruits. We regularly introduced new items, especially different ethnic foods, and over a period of time learned to love all healthy foods. Sugary sweets such as cakes or cookies were saved for a special treat on weekends, rather than a nearly nightly occurrence following the evening meal.
Changing the behavior of a picky eater may not be an easy task, but nothing about parenting is easy. The sooner parents’ start changing their own attitudes and behaviors towards healthy eating, the sooner they can expect their children to do the same. If you have some tips on getting children to eat right and eat healthy, please add your comments for the discussion.
Helpful Resources-
Just Two More Bites!: Helping Picky Eaters Say Yes to Food
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Eating is another area where teaching by example works well. Some kids love to snack off of parents’ plates, so make sure that your plate has good stuff on it.
Sometimes it’s a big help to expand your own horizons as a cook. Talking with friends, I discovered recipes that are delicious and full of “hidden” ingredients like whole grains and vegetables. Also, it’s good to remember that most kids don’t like highly spicy foods, or the tastes and textures of onions, mushrooms, etc. If you add those kinds of ingredients, then chop them up small enough not to recognize – it helps!
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I have a 12 year old picky eater any suggestions for changing his eating? I have allowed this situation to continue but he needs to change as he eats no meat and no veggies.
Oh yea, I know that “short order cook” feeling … or at least the expectation of it. The main way I’ve found to get my kids to eat healthier is just the old fashioned “you’ll eat what I make, or go to bed hungry”. There’s been more than a few times that Johnathan has eaten nothing but rice.
I figure eventually they’ll learn.
Oh yea, and I agree with Heidi’s comment above … and I’d add that it’s also often helpful to keep the kids out of the kitchen while the meals are being prepared. Sometimes it’s better if they don’t know what’s in it.
Keep havin FuN!
Todd
Success with Todd’s last blog post..Success and Motivation Lessons from a Billionaire
Todd you crack me up! You sound just like me!
There is no way that I would ever allow myself to fall into that crazy trap of being a short order cook. It’s either “eat what’s in front of you” or go hungry.
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I have no authority at all to provide the answers. My son is only 14 mths old. I do think, however, one of the many reasons this is a bigger problem these days is the emphasis put on feeding very bland food to our babies. My son has always eaten what I am eating, or some mushy version of it, anyway, and I’ve always made a point of us eating dinner together.
He already wants to take part in the cooking and loves to stir the pot or stand on a stool beside me while I prep our food. I’m not sure about the advice of keeping them out of the kitchen. If they eat it when they don’t know it’s in there, how does that teach them to eat it?
Every child is different of course, and people will be dealing with this at different ages, but it seems far better to me to get them involved with food, to get them interested.
As for whether my son will continue this way, I guess I don’t know, but what I do know is that if he won’t eat the food I prepare for him, he’ll go to bed hungry. The other thing he already does is say Taa when I give him his dinner. There’s not very much I’m rigid about, but appreciating the effort people make to feed you is an important value in my book.
Aside from the nutritional problem of children refusing to eat the healthy food prepared for them, does anyone else have a problem with how ungrateful and disrespectful this is? And if parents looked at it from that angle as well, would it help them find the resolve to set the boundaries?
[...] Being a parent, one of the most useful blogs I’ve been lucky enough to stumble on is Lin’s Telling it Like it Is. In her latest post, she shares some tips on getting our little picky eaters to eat more healthy. [...]
I guess I eat everything because as a child I wasn’t given options. Food was prepared, put on my plate, and I either ate it, or went without.
We didn’t have a lot of extra money, so dessert wasn’t something I grew up with either.
I now share a house with three other women, two of whom are picky eaters… and the person who does most of the cooking caters to them. As a result, I’m deprived the wide variety I love.
As for how to get a child to eat… I’m no expert, so beyond what worked on me (and most of my cousins), I would think it begins as soon as you move to the baby food stage. Introduce, and insist upon a taste of new foods regularly.
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Shari, I was thinking about how often I see parents of very young children (babies especially) in the grocery aisle grabbing up all those Gerber puddings in a jar, along with loads of the baby sweets.
It really is true that getting children to eat right, and eat healthy, begins from the moment they’re born. Parents that start their children off with having a taste for sweet foods, rather than choosing healthy foods right from the start, are beginning the trend toward enabling their children. It really makes me crazy.
I am happy to say that this is one of the parenting areas I feel I have done all right in.
We once ate in a restaurant where the cook came out to see the American kids who were eating spicy and strange foreign foods. I once arrived home with leftovers and my kids argued over who got to eat the baby octopus that was in my pasta. Something I admit was a little difficult for me to eat.
My kids love many different fruits and vegetables, good whole wheat bread, oatmeal, and much more. (That’s not to say we eat well all the time).
Their love of good food I believe is a result of several things. First of all I was never a short-order cook. My kids always simply got what I was fixing. The only time I have asked them what they wanted was on their birthday. They pick that meal.
We also made eating them fun. I didn’t really provide too many dips and such, but I would tell them in a playful voice not to eat the baby trees (aka broccoli) and then pretend to be really alarmed when they popped the baby tree’s in their mouth. My six year old still holds up her broccoli for me to see before putting it in her mouth so I can act alarmed.
I know that this wouldn’t work with many kids. But I knew that this would work with my daughter at this particular point in her life. I used a little reverse psychology. My daughter was getting a little bit of a funny look on her face when looking at the food. I emphasized how much I was enjoyed the food and said, “You don’t have to eat that. I will. It’s grown-up food anyway. You’ll want some when you get bigger.” She wanted to be bigger now so she quickly gobbled it down.
My friends that have picky eaters are the ones that have regularly asked their kids what they want for lunch. When given the choice it would be rare for a five year old kid is going to chose a whole-wheat sandwich with all the fixings over a bowl of Spagetti-O’s.
It amazes me how often I see people filling up their baby bottles with caffeinated soda. Somethings my kids have never had. That’s not to say they haven’t had soda before. They have but on special occasions.
Anyway, thanks for the interesting post. I am a first time visitor to your blog and I’ll be checking back regularly.
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Leisa! Awesome! You are truly a rarity these days! Many of the things you mentioned are the same things we did when my kids were little, and it worked like a charm!
Sodas in baby bottles? That’s crazy! It never occurred to me to do such a thing. And these babies are probably going to bed with that bottle too. Really great for the teeth and gums you know? ….shaking my head…….
Hi Lin,
My daughter is a picky eater alright. She refuses to eat a lot of vegetables, but she does like her broccoli and corn. She’s also a thin 2 year old, so we encourage her to eat fatty foods even though we know it’s not good for her in the long run. She needs to put on weight. We do curb the sugar intake.
Thanks for stopping by my site. I’ll stop by yours for more parenting tips.
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I’ve learned that kids don’t like the LOOK of certain foods, not so much the taste. Mix it up a bit and get creative with your food choices, meatballs don’t have to be round balls of meat.
I’m definitely a subscriber to the “you’re welcome to eat what I’ve prepared or you can wait until the next meal comes around to see if it looks any better.” school of thought. And I think you can have that philosophy (and enforce it) without it being something spiteful or mean-spirited.
Along similar lines, kids only get the idea that it’s okay to NOT eat certain parts of food if you’ve fostered that notion. Contrary to what some seem to believe, babies do NOT come out of the chute hard-wired to hate bread crusts – their parents instill that in them. And that’s crazy! In fact, the crust of the bread is more nutritious than all the rest!
There’s a book I received called The Sneaky Chef – I want to say the author’s name was Melissa Gilchrist. It is packed with recipes that sneak good foods into the foods kids love. My own kids eat just about anything, but my nephew is a junk food addict. When his mom comes to stay with me for any period of time, she’ll bring Chef Boyardee, sugary snacks, pudding cups, and the likes. So I made up a batch of brownies from this cookbook – you use pureed spinach and blueberries. He wolfed them down. For those with really fussy eaters it might help!
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These are all great ideas everyone, thanks for the helpful tips here.
Anne, I hadn’t heard of that book before, so thanks for passing that along as well. I’ll check it out, and maybe even find a way to slip it to Samantha’s parents.
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This article has been included in the latest edition of the All for Women Blog Carnival, hosted this week at Australian Women Online.
You might find this article, which appeared in the New York Times last year, interesting. It’s about parents’ frustration with children’s menus.
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Tip Diva, thank you for giving me the heads up on that article in the NY Times. I’ve checked it out and felt it was “spot on”.
My picky eater is my husband. I am vegetarian and he is a meat-eater. We both cook and fix what each of us wants to eat.
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Hello,
I used to cater to my son, who is now 22 months old, because I thought I was doing the right thing. He is very strong-willed and will cry endlessly, but I realized one day that with all the work that I put into the kitchen of making healthy and delicious food, and with all the obese children out there, who are at risk of serious health problems, I would put an end to this nonsense of being afraid of my own child. It doesn’t mean that if he hates a food, I’m going to be cruel and keep forcing him to eat it. It means that I’m going to cook healthy, delicious meals, and clean when we are done eating. I’m not going to go and prepare another meal just because someone doesn’t appreciate the work that was put in it. I, too, get cravings for cheeseburgers and french fries, but I can’t afford to eat them money-wise or weight-wise, and if I’m not willing to replace my craving for a nice salad, lean protein and some whole grains, I must not be all that hungry after all. I also want to mention something. Some parents seem down on the concept of hiding veggies and whole grains in traditional dishes that kids love. If you did just this alone, perhaps it wouldn’t be teaching your children the long-term habit of eating healthy foods. The goal, to me, is to boost the nutrition of EVERYTHING we eat, and yet still offer whole grains and veggies alongside of it. You can boost the nutrition of meat by dipping it in a little cauliflower puree and before putting on the batter, and you can add flax seeds and quinoa into the batter. That doesn’t mean that you can’t serve some quinoa as well, it just means that no matter what, we are getting our nutrition. So in other words, I think that parents should think kid friendly, but at the same time, once dinner is served, dinner is served, and don’t feel like you have to cook two different things for two different people, unless of course, there are medical conditions or allergies involved.
Hello Charlotte, your suggestions are wonderful, thank you for adding to the conversation. You make an interesting and valid point about parents often being afraid of their child’s whining and crying about what is being served, often times giving in to demands from their child rather than standing strong. Good for you in wanting to instill healthy eating habits in your children, and doing everything you possibly can to ensure their health and well being and helping to avoid obesity in children.
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[...] and snacks for you and your kids to eat. Set realistic goals. Even if you believe your child is a very picky eater, you can still establish reasonable goals for your children such as having your child eat fresh [...]
My daughter is picky, she has lived on Rice Krispies for breakfast the past 2 years. I just have had to let her eat lots of what she likes, I don’t make food an issue in our house, and a good multivitamin (tho it may not do a whit of good anyways)